Clasis Law, the best friend law firm of UK-international firm Clyde & Co, has hired Ashwin Sapra to head up its intellectual property (IP) and healthcare practice.

Sapra, who had been with Luthra & Luthra between 2009 and 2013, joined on 18 March and will be based in Delhi as a practice head.

He said that all of the firm’s current partners were handling its IP and healthcare work before him. “The idea was to have me come on board and streamline it,’ he explained.

He said that he was going to drive the entire gamut of IP work at the firm, which in addition to other areas included a lot of patent litigation, patent drafting and patent advisory work. On the healthcare side he said his primary focus is going to be advisory work related to the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.

The 1998 Symbiosis Pune graduate began his career at Ashok Sapra & Associates, then worked at Mayer Brown Rowe and Maw, as it was then called, in Washington DC, joining Greenblum and Bernstein in Virginia, USA, in 2006 in the patent litigation department.

Before returning to India to join Luthra, Sapra was in-house for nearly three years at Ascend Therapeutics, also in Virginia.

“The Indian healthcare sector faces a number of high level challenges, both domestic and international, which stretch across operational efficiency, scaling of business, and globalisation of quality and delivery standards,” commented Clasis Delhi office head Vineet Aneja in a press release, adding that the firm had been “steadily deepening the breadth and level of specialisation we offer to our clients and international partners as part of the firm's strategic development plan”.