Nalsar Hyderabad 2014 alumnus Siddharth Nayak, credit rating agency Moody's former general counsel Gyanendra Mishra and Jamia Milia 2011 alumnus Suresh Sharma have co-founded litigation and corporate commercial firm Atharva Legal in January 2018, as a 30-lawyer outfit across six cities to majorly act for US businesses coming into India.

The firm has offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ranchi and Pune.

Atharva's managing partner Nayak, commenting on the firm's founding, said: “The rationale was to provide solid litigation-cum-corporate support for mostly US companies coming into the Indian market.

“[We will act for] a few other SAARC countries as well.”

He added that the opening up of foreign direct investment into India has given a push to law firms other than in the top tier due to the fact that many top tier firms do not usually have similar standards in both litigation and corporate expertise and the businesses end up having to engage two different entities.

“We as a firm intend to work in the lines of Karanjawala & Co [or other big litigation firms] but without counting out corporate and banking practices,” Nayak said.

He said that each of Atharva's partners have experience working on the legal panel of public sector undertakings and independently have multinational corporations as clients.

The team

Nayak was a counsel for the Enforcement Directorate of India (ED) since April 2015 before founding and becoming the managing partner in Atharva.

Sharma, a 2011 Jamia Milia graduate, had been a legal consultant for the home ministry since August 2012.

Mishra, a Delhi University 1999 alumnus had stints with Bhasin & Co and Accenture before serving as general counsel at Moody's.

Atharva currently has five partners other than the three founders and 22 associates.

The partners include:

• former Nalsar lecturer Rachna Bollu Reddy, who was practising independently in the Andhra Pradesh high court for the last four years,
• RGNUL Patiala 2012 alumnus Vaibhav Choudhary, who was also practising independently in the Supreme Court for the last two years,
• Nayak's Nalsar batchmate Sagar Devgan, who has had stints at Hero MotorCorp and Platinum Partners, before Atharva,
• Symbiosis Pune 2016 alumni Mridula Vijairaghavan, and
• Jamia Milia Islamia 2011-batch Vikram Singh.

Nayak said that it took Atharva two years to put together the current team and ensure that there was no conflict with the team's previous places of work.