Suresh Varanasi has joined the Delhi office as a partner last week with associates Aditya Singh Chandel and Ashish Singh who had worked with him at KPMG.

Varanasi had never worked in a law firm before and left KPMG's legal team a few months ago, after an in-house career at Aventis Pasteur, as it was then called, Xerox and tax acccountancy boutique BMR & Associates.

Commenting on his move to private practice, he said: "I think most importantly it was a fantastic opportunity to set up an indirect tax practice for a law firm.

"This is traditionally an area where all the Big Four [accountancy firms] have been doing very well in. But in the last few years law firms have also realised that a huge opportunity in this area and they are trying to invest money in indirect tax [teams]."

He added that Vaish Associates, Luthra & Luthra and Khaitan & Co had been some of the firms that had been investing particularly heavily into that area recently.

Next to AZB Delhi managing partner Ajay Bahl (pictured), AZB's tax practice consisted of two senior partners, three senior associates and several associates and focused mostly on direct tax.

Varanasi predicted that the likely advent of the goods and services tax (GST) in 2010 would be a "huge opportunity".

The GST would subsume all indirect taxes into one regime.

Varanasi explained that it would probably require considerable advice to implement the changes in existing corporate tax structures and ongoing transactions.