HSA Advocates regulatory practice partner Sakya Chaudhuri has left the firm with his team including partner Avijeet Lala and recently promoted associate partner Anand Shrivastava, to start up their own venture.

The exact number of lawyers joining is not yet finalised.

Chaudhuri, who was of counsel at Trilegal before joining HSA in 2014, declined to comment.

Several independent sources have confirmed the news since yesterday.

His new venture Niti Niyaman, which will deal with regulatory work among other things, is understood to become operational from tomorrow.

HSA managing partner Amitabh Sharma commented: “He is starting on his own - we wish him godspeed and all the best.”

The regulatory practice at HSA will continue to be led by founding partner Hemant Sahai, alongside three partners in Delhi and one in Mumbai.

According to HSA website profile of Chaudhuri:

Sakya’s focus areas of practice cover Regulatory, Arbitration, and Competition Law. Over the last two decades, Sakya has dealt with litigation matters related to civil, commercial, constitutional, labor, revenue and company matters and has extensive exposure in arbitrations. He has advised and represents various industry forums and regulators such as the Forum of Indian Regulators, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission and various State Electricity Regulatory Commissions on important legal and regulatory issues. He has advised clients on competition law issues in merger filings, investigations relating to cartels and anti-competitive conduct. Sakya regularly advises and counsels some leading clients such as Tata Power, Mumbai International Airport, British Gas, Bosch & Lomb among many others. Sakya is also an “Advocate-on-record” with the Supreme Court of India. He is also a visiting faculty at TERI University for their LLM programme on Infrastructure Law.

Previously, Sakya has worked closely with the antitrust team of a renowned international leading law firm on issues including merger control, cartel investigation, abuse of dominance, anti-competitive agreements and antitrust advisory to clients.