Indian Law Partners (ILP) promoted its first non-founding partner into the partnership in Delhi, elevating counsel Gaurav Wahie with effect from 1 April..

The firm, started up by former DSK Legal Delhi partners Piyoosh Gupta and Gopika Pant in March 2011 as a best friend firm of international Ashurst, also promoted senior associate Kanika Premnarayen to counsel in Mumbai, and two associates to senior associate. Premnarayen heads the firm's Mumbai office.

Gupta commented: “The promotions were well deserved and in keeping with the experience and talent of our lawyers.”

Wahie, who graduated from NLIU Bhopal in 2005 and obtained an LLM from UCL London in 2006, is also a former DSK Legal lawyer who had joined ILP in its founding year. He had previously worked in Fox Mandal for nine months after his LLM, and then in Talwar Thakore & Associates for two years before DSK.

He said that the firm was seeing a lot of inbound M&A deals in the petrochemical sector and outbound transactions in the services sector.

Gupta added: “We have almost doubled our numbers over these past three-and-a-half years and are focused on growing scientifically based on the quality of work we do as we think its imperative in our profession to develop talent based on knowledge which takes long and requires patience.

“So while we remain boutique that does not detract from our flexibility to grow without compromising our ideology. We’ve done excellent transactions in various sectors including the petrochemical sector in the last six to eight months and assisted clients with exits and restructuring of their investments here.

“Japanese clients are expressing extremely positive reactions to India and Gopika just recently spoke at two forums in Tokyo on what the change in government means to Indo-Japanese business for which we have received very positive feedback. We have received significant instructions for and and have recently advised Japanese clients on some large transactions.”

Gupta said that the firm is currently discussing the possibility of setting up a Bangalore office within the next two years, but has no other immediate expansion plans.

He noted that best friend referral relationships were harder to maintain for larger firms.

DSK Legal shut down its Bangalore office in April, as reported by Legally India yesterday.

UPDATE: The two associates promoted to senior associate level are Vineet Gupta and Anant Dang.