Contracts
under Indian law.
Every Indian contract stands or falls on the same handful of sections: s.10 for formation, s.23 for lawful object, s.27 which voids restraint of trade, s.28 which voids clauses that shorten your time to sue, s.55 on time being of the essence, and ss.73-74 on what a breach is actually worth. LexVio scores each clause against a benchmarked corpus of 22 market-standard clauses across SaaS, NDA, MSA, employment and vendor agreements, then hands back tracked-change Word output.
Last reviewed: 19 August 2026 · every citation on this page names the dataset it came from
- 11governing provisions
- 14product capabilities
- 5free tools
- 5limitation periods
- 7free templates
- 6audiences
Contract law in India is the Indian Contract Act, 1872 plus the drafting habits that have grown around it. Section 10 sets the four requirements — free consent, competent parties, lawful consideration, lawful object. Section 17 defines fraud, which is what a misrepresentation claim is built on. Section 23 makes consideration or object unlawful where it is forbidden by law, defeats a provision of law, is fraudulent, injures person or property, or is immoral or against public policy.
Three sections quietly decide most negotiations. Section 27 voids every agreement that restrains anyone from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business, save for the sale of goodwill — which is why post-termination non-competes in Indian employment contracts fail and non-solicits are drafted narrowly instead. Section 28 voids clauses that restrict a party from enforcing rights through legal proceedings or that limit the time within which they may do so, so a 'claims must be brought within 90 days' clause is not enforceable simply because both sides signed it. Section 74 caps a stipulated penalty at reasonable compensation not exceeding the amount named, which is why an eye-watering liquidated-damages figure is rarely the win it looks like.
LexVio's benchmarking corpus is India-first and deliberately narrow: 22 curated market-standard clauses across SaaS, NDA, MSA, employment and vendor agreements, covering 18 clause types — limitation of liability, indemnity, data privacy, termination, payment, IP ownership, confidentiality, non-compete, warranty, governing law, dispute resolution, force majeure, non-solicit, notice period, compensation, termination grounds, audit rights and delivery. A clause you paste is embedded, matched to the nearest standards, and returned with an above-market / at-market / below-market read.
The provisions, with their section numbers.
Each row names the dataset it was taken from — the seeded statute library, the compliance calendar's own statutory reference, the bare Limitation Act, or the DPDP research set. Nothing here was written from memory.
Tools that apply to this work.
Each runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, and none of them needs an account.
Indian-law NDA in five templates — mutual, one-way, employment, vendor and IP-heavy.
India-first templates, free to copy, modify and use commercially, without attribution.
State-by-state duty for sale deeds, gift deeds, leases and loan agreements. 22 states covered.
Periods quoted from the bare Limitation Act, 1963, plus the arbitration, cheque-bounce, IBC and consumer deadlines.
Section-wise TDS rates for FY 2025-26 — salary, rent, professional fees, contractors and 20+ more.
Limitation periods that bite here.
Quoted from the India Code bare Act. The period is only half the answer — the third column of the Schedule, the point from which time begins to run, is what actually decides the date. Each entry sets both out.
Free templates for this area.
Free to copy, modify and use commercially, without attribution. They are starting points, not advice — have a qualified advocate or company secretary review anything before you sign it.
Y-Combinator post-money SAFE adapted for an Indian private company. For pre-seed / seed convertibles where you want speed and a valuation cap without a priced round.
Board composition, reserved matters, transfer restrictions, ROFR/tag/drag, and exit rights for an Indian private limited company.
Subscription mechanics, conditions precedent, representations and warranties for a priced equity round.
Employee stock option plan and grant letter aligned to the Companies Act 2013 and the Share Capital and Debentures Rules, with the Indian perquisite-tax position at exercise.
Equity split, vesting and cliff, roles and decision-making, IP assignment, and what happens when a founder leaves.
Drafted to the DPDP Act 2023 and DPDP Rules 2025, not a re-badged GDPR Article 28 DPA. Statutory Data Fiduciary / Data Processor / Data Principal vocabulary, the Rule 6 security floor including the one-year log minimum, a breach window short enough for the Fiduciary's own 72-hour Board report, and cross-border handled the way Section 16 actually works.
India-compliant employment agreement aligned to the labour codes, with confidentiality, IP assignment and a non-solicit drafted against Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act.
The capabilities that do this work.
Every one of these is a real feature page with its own status — Live, Beta or Soon. If it says Beta, it is in beta.
Three-tier extraction cascade so PDF, DOCX, and scanned bilingual contracts all work.
Red, amber, or green for every clause, with an explanation and confidence score.
One number, 0-100, summarising your contract's overall risk position.
AI-generated replacement language for every flagged clause.
Produce a tracked-change Word document ready to send to counterparties.
India-tailored starting drafts for NDAs, MSAs, employment, SAFE notes, and more.
Upload a ZIP of contracts and ask one question across all of them.
Conversational Q&A over a single contract or matter with cited answers.
Generate replacement language and produce tracked-change Word files.
See which clauses are present, missing, or non-standard across your portfolio.
Where you fall on commercial terms across all your deals.
Paste any contract; get a Legal Health Score and top risks. No account needed.
What-if engines for litigation and contracts — outcome odds, damages, settlement, cheque-bounce, tax, and AI negotiation roleplay.
Every edit is versioned. Diff any two versions side-by-side.
The modules this area draws on.
The people who do contracts work.
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MSAs, SOWs and retainers — reviewed in seconds.
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Contracts — the questions people actually ask.
Is a post-termination non-compete enforceable in India?
As a general matter, no. Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 voids every agreement that restrains a person from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business, with a narrow exception for the sale of goodwill. Indian drafting therefore leans on non-solicitation and confidentiality obligations rather than on a blanket non-compete. LexVio's benchmarked corpus carries the market non-solicit for employment agreements and the market non-compete used in NDAs, so you can see the shape counterparties actually accept.
Can a contract shorten the time limit for bringing a claim?
Section 28 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 voids agreements that restrict a party from enforcing rights through legal proceedings or that limit the time within which they may do so. A contractual 'claims must be raised within X days' clause therefore cannot manufacture a limitation period shorter than the statute allows, however clearly it is drafted. The statutory period for a residuary breach-of-contract claim is three years under Article 55 of the Limitation Act, 1963.
What does 'market standard' mean in LexVio's clause benchmarking?
It means a curated, India-first corpus rather than an opinion. Twenty-two clauses across five contract types — SaaS, NDA, MSA, employment and vendor — each with the reasoning for why that position is the canonical middle ground. The canonical India SaaS liability cap in the corpus, for example, is twelve months' fees with carve-outs for indemnity, confidentiality, IP infringement, DPDP data-protection breach, and gross negligence, wilful misconduct or fraud. Your clause is embedded, matched to the nearest standards, and returned with an above-market, at-market or below-market verdict.
Does LexVio produce a redlined Word file I can send to the counterparty?
Yes. AI redlining produces a tracked-change Word document, and fix suggestions supply replacement language for each flagged clause rather than only naming the problem. Every version is retained so any two can be diffed side by side.
A map of the material, not advice on your matter. These hubs point at statutory text, free calculators and product capabilities. They are not legal advice, they do not create an advocate-client relationship, and they are no substitute for reading the bare Act as currently amended. Indian law is fact- and state-specific — stamp duty, registration and several employment obligations vary by state, and limitation turns on facts a web page cannot know. Take advice on your own facts before acting.
The law is in the document.
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