Exclusive: HSA Advocates Mumbai partner and office head Utsa Shome, who had joined the firm in 2009 from AZB & Partners, will head up Kolkata firm Argus Partners’ new Mumbai office.

Shome (pictured) would join as an equity partner from 1 July, taking over in Mumbai from Argus co-founding partner Ramya Hariharan who headed up and started the Mumbai office in October 2010 but would now gradually be relocating back to Kolkata.

“Bombay has picked up the last six to seven months,” said Argus co-founding and managing partner Krishnava Dutt, who spends around three days in Mumbai per week away from the Kolkata head office. “Utsa will be building the team and building the practice and help take it forward.”

Shome explained that a marketing plan was already in place and that he and Dutt would particularly focus on three sets of clients, notably banking and finance, private equity and corporates they both already had relationships with.

In the longer term he hoped that he could also build up capital markets and litigation practices and that there would “definitely be lateral hires” in the office that currently had a strength of 10 lawyers said Shome.

“We’ll take it one step at a time. We are fine with the numbers that we have but obviously there are people who have also approached me and whom I’d be interested to take on,” he added.

Shome graduated from NLSIU Bangalore in 2000 and joined Hemant Sahai Associates, as it was then called, in 2009 from AZB & Partners where he was a senior associate following time at Luthra & Luthra and Dua Associates.

Argus was started in 2009 in Kolkata by Dutt and Hariharan who were formerly an Amarchand Mangaldas partner and principal associate respectively.

HSA Advocates managing partner Hemant Sahai said that he wished Shome all the best for his future endeavours.