TMT is often broadly defined to include anything under the sun in the tech, media and telecoms sector. But the real TMT practice is TMT regulatory work - data privacy, intermediary liability, OTT regulations, other broadcasting regulations, gaming, communications (VoIP etc). In this space, these are the best law firms:
- Trilegal (it has Rahul Matthan, so of course they are the best!);
- Nishith Desai Associates (entrenched relationships with various industry associations thanks to Nishith bhai, and therefore are able to do a lot of high-level policy stuff, in addition to their practice.; BTG Advaya.
- BTG Advaya (Small team, but they do some extremely top-notch work)
- Ikigai Law (While they do a lot of marketing like Spice Route Legal, unlike SRL, their content actually have merit and strength in them. Also do a lot of policy related work for many prominent companies).
- PLR Advocates (the go-to firm for the Ministry for legislation drafting + used by several top companies for their regulatory/advisory/policy work).

The law firm matters, and the specific partner/ team as much. Here are some. This is from an earlier thread on Legallyindia.

1. Trilegal: Rahul Mathan at the helm ensures a lot of government work but he is less active on client work than before. ‘Statesman’ status. Generally a very well regarded and busy team. Nikhil Narendran, Jyotsna are good partners to work with. Nikhil is particularly focussed on telecom. Jaideep Reddy for fintech/crypto. Team is nice to work in.

2. CAM: Arun Prabhu is good. But the practice is not the same tier as Trilegal.

3. Ikigai: Cutting-edge work in a lot of new areas like AI, metaverse, blockchain. Works with almost all big-tech companies, especially in social media, ecom, cloud, satcom, fintech. Strong data practice too. Anirudh Rastogi is the managing partner, known for emerging tech/blockhain, Nehaa Chaudhari for policy/data, Aparajita Srivastava for fintech. Sreenidhi Srinivasan for data.

4. NDA: old tech and media practice with good clients but several good lawyers have left or are leaving the firm. Better work-life than at other big practices. Works in a lot of new areas of tech like crypto, drones etc. Gowree Gokhale is good for media and gaming. Huzefa for new areas. NDA puts a lot of writing on areas of tech.

5: Indus: It is a gaming and entertainment practice led by Ranjana Adhikari from NDA. Well known partner but in the gaming circles.

6. Spice Route: Key areas are fintech and data. Mathew Chacko heads up both practices in the Bangalore office. Mumbai office doesn’t do as much tech. Do a lot of vc investment work in tech startups too, headed also by Mathew. Senior Associate Aadya Mishra also known for data work.

7. Saraf: Building it out. Too early in the game to comment.

8. SAM: low key but good TMT team with big clients. Sahana Chatterjee does a lot of TMT policy work. Tejas Karia’s team does TMT litigation for large clients, but can be quite routine for the most part.

9. TMT Law Practice: Abhishek Malohotra has an established telecom litigation practice. His team also does gaming and data.

10. Anand & Anand: been building a tmt practice, but still best for IP aspects of TMT.