Law firms

IndusLaw advised Olacabs on raising $500m (Rs 3,320 crore) from 15 investors, some of which were advised by Nishith Desai Associates (NDA), Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) and foreign law firms Goodwin Proctor, Gunderson Dettemer, Morrison & Foerster, Ropes & Gray and Fangda Partners.

The details of the transaction has been removed since initial publication at the request of JSA.

Advaita Legal advised Berlin based educational television channel Da Vinci on forming a joint venture with Indian digital magazine The Quint which was advised by BMR Legal. The television programme Da Vinci Learning was launched in India on 18 November after the deal was completed.

Advaita principal Satyajit Gupta and associates Saurabh Sharma and Avichal Mathur acted for the Da Vinci Media and Da Vinci Media India.

BMR partner Amit Khansaheb and managing associate Nikhil Sachdeva represented The Quint.

Da Vinci GmbH was cleared for up to Rs 5 crore of FDI, by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) in November 2013, to set up a wholly owned subsidiary which would carry out the downlinking and distribution of a non-news and non-current affairs edutainment channel, reported Medianama.

Legasis Partners associate partner Nishad Nadkarni has joined Khaitan & Co in Mumbai as a partner in its intellectual property (IP) practice.

Every year, law firms send out creative electronic (and paper) cards celebrating the festival of lights. This year, we’ve collected a few of the larger firms’ greetings that have found their way into our inbox.

Kanth & Associates added former HDFC Bank and Bank of Fujairah vice president Arvind Garg as a partner to build its banking and finance vertical.

IndusLaw added Ray Vikram Nath – a registered foreign attorney in Japan – to build its Japan practice. Nath joins Indus Delhi as a senior associate.

Verus has added independent legal consultant Roochi Tripathy as a partner in Mumbai to focus solely on advising emerging businesses.

AZB & Partners advised Singapore based infrastructure company Cube Highways & Infrastructure on its Rs 248 crores ($37.4m) buy of Madhucon Agra Jaipur Expressways (MAJEL) which was advised by Nishith Desai Associates (NDA).

AZB partner Yashwant Mathur, senior associates Esha Pruthi and Ambarish Mohanty and associates Shridha Malhotra, Devanshu Sajlan and Nitin Saluja acted for Cube.

NDA partner Rajesh Simhan advised MAJEL

Cube would operate the 57 kilometers stretch of National Highway 11, connecting the cities of Mahua and Bharatpur, on build operate transfer (BOT) basis connecting tourist corridors of Agra and Jaipur. MAJEL started operating in 2009.

International Finance Corp (IFC), a part of the World Bank group, had picked up a 20 per cent stake in Cube which is promoted by I Squared Capital. IFC had committed a $100m (Rs 6640 crore) investment in Cube, which will primarily acquire operating road assets in India, reported Mint.

AZB & Partners advised former Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin and his family on their acquisition of a minority stake in ANI Technologies which runs taxi app Ola. Ola was advised by IndusLaw.

AZB Delhi partner Anil Kasturin and senior associate Jaishree Tolani acted for Sarin who, as Mint reported, is joining Ola as an independent director.

Indus declined to comment but it is understood that Noida partner Gaurav Dani led the deal for Ola.

Founded in January 2011 by two IIT Bombay alumni, Ola currently plies over 20,000 vehicles in over 100 Indian cities, is backed by investors such as DST Global, GIC, Falcon Edge Capital, SoftBank Group Corp., Tiger Global Management LLC, Steadview Capital and Accel Partners, acquired rival TaxiForSure this year in a deal worth $200m, and is being investigated for predatory pricing allegations in the Competition Commission of India, even as the Delhi high court imposed a ban on it.

Khaitan & Co advised Indian stationery maker Writefine Products on selling 32.5 per cent equity to Italian art products maker and distributor Fabbrica Italiana Lapis ed Affini (FILA). FILA was advised by AZB & Partners and Italian law firm Studio Legale Salonia Associati.

Khaitan associate partner Mehul Shah, senior associate Vivek Sriram,and associate Vidur Sinha acted for Writefine Products.

AZB Partner Alka Nalavadi acted for FILA which was increasing its shareholding in Writefine to 51 per cent from 18.5 percent.

Writefine Products, a Gujarat-based company that claims to have close to 3,000 employees, was valued at around Rs 740 crore (around $114m) in the deal, reported VCC Circle.

Khaitan & Co acted for Reliance Telecommunications in its acquisition of the wireless business of J Sagar Associates (JSA)-advised Sistema Shyam Teleservices for Rs 2,100 crore of equity, while also taking on Rs 2,400 crore of Sistema’s debt to the government.

Delhi based lawyer Abhay Vohra, who went independent from big law firms a year ago, advised CL Educate on acquiring 51 percent stake in education consulting company Accendre Knowledge Management, which was advised by its in-house legal team.

Like rival foreign-funded e-commerce player Flipkart, aggressive foreign entrant Amazon too has built up a complex structure skirting India’s restrictions on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the online retail space, by dividing its operations and investments between the customer-facing web front-end and a purportedly arms-length dominant supplier of the actual goods, reported Livemint:

Cloudtail India Pvt. Ltd, a joint venture between Amazon.com Inc. and NR Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures, has become the biggest seller or merchant on Amazon India’s platform, underlining how the world’s largest online retailer has used loopholes in the law to deploy a mix of the marketplace and the direct-selling business model in India.

Editor R Sukumar argued in a column in Mint on Sunday today: “Companies and their investors will probably explain their actions as being driven by India’s restrictive laws. And perhaps the government thinks so too. What else can explain its reluctance to act on such obvious and flagrant violation of the law. In the business domain, such behaviour, instead of being condemned, is actually admired.”

Khaitan & Co advised rail freight car makers, the Australia-based UGL Rail Services and the Indian Texmaco Rail and Engineering on UGL’s sale of its 50 per cent stake in its joint venture with Texmaco – Texmaco United Group Rail.

Khaitan Kolkata partner Padam Khaitan, associate partner Arindam Sarkar and associates Shourya Sengupta and Prithwijit Gangopadhyay acted for UGL

Khaitan Mumbai partner Haigreve Khaitan, associate partner Anuj Sah and Associate Sunayana Bose acted for Texmaco.

UGL sold its share in the Indian joint venture because it was starved of orders after the downturn in locomotive sales in Australia, and it was set up for primarily catering to the Australian market, reported the PTI.