Unlike many other large firms that have struggled to find good business in Hyderabad - Trilegal closed its office in January and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas only has a skeleton presence remaining there, Tatva has doubled down on the state following the Andhra Pradesh-Telangana bifurcation.

Tatva Legal has opened a sister office to its Hyderabad office, in Vijayawada, in Andhra Pradesh’s capital region.

The 3,000 square foot office on Vijayawada’s MG Road, near the Taj Gateway hotel, was inaugurated on 15 May.

The office has three associates based there full-time and Hyderabad-based partner Rajeev Reddy G spending three days per week there.

Tatva co-founding and Hyderabad partner Shailendra Komatreddy commented: “We were doing some work for the government of Andhra Pradesh for their capital city, that’s the rationale of why we opened there.”

“There are a lot of investments going there,” he added. “We thought we’d have the first mover advantage.”

Tatva had advised the Andhra government on the tendering of work to consortia and contracts to build its new capital city of Amaravati - which is neighbouring Vijayawada.

But Komatreddy noted that the firm was also doing private sector work in the Vijayawada, despite companies there primarily instructing individual lawyers to date.

Business there included a lot of investors, hotels, real estate developers and software companies setting up shop.

Tatva Legal’s Hyderabad office is 6 partners strong, making up a total of 50 lawyers.