Nishith Desai Associates

Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners has invested $10m in Hiveloop Technology, which provides a B2B e-commerce marketplace platform under the brand ‘Udaan’. The company is founded by three former top executives of Flipkart, namely Sujeet Kumar, who led WS Retail at Flipkart, Amod Malviya, ex-CTO of Flipkart, and Vaibhav Gupta, former Senior VP who was leading product management and finance functions at Flipkart.

"Emerald Media, a Pan-Asian platform established by leading global investment firm KKR for investing in the media and entertainment sector, acquired a significant minority stake in YuppTV for $50m. YuppTV is one of the world’s leading over-the-top (OTT) video platforms for South Asian content offering live TV, catch-up TV and movies on-demand in 14 languages across the globe,” reported Business Wire.

Nishith Desai Associates Mumbai acted for Tiger Global and DST Global, which invested $30m (Rs 200 crore) in a series C round in home rental company NestAway, which was advised by K Law.

Nishith Desai Associates has expanded its Palo Alto presence with the hire of Aysswarya Murthi, who had been promoted to erstwhile Amarchand Mangaldas' Mumbai partnership in 2012 before joining US firm Reed Smith's Silicon Valley office in October 2015.

Nishith Desai Associates has opened an office in New York - its fourth office overseas and second in the US – hoping to tap the increased activity of private equity houses in that region of  the US.

Wadia Ghandy advised car trading website CarTrade owned by MXC Solutions on its $120m (Rs 790 crore) acquisition of CarWale, another car trading website owned by Automotive Exchange, from its founder Mohit Singh and its existing shareholder Axel Springer. CarWale was advised by Nishith Desai Associates. Axel Springer was advised by Khaitan.

Wadia Ghandy partners Radhika Bhatt and Gautam Ganjawala acted for CarTrade.

Nishith Desai acted for CarWale and its founder Mohit Dubey.

Khaitan partners Niren Patel, Rabindra Jhunjhunwala, Kumar Saurabh Singh, Anand Mehta, Bijal Ajinkya and Adheesh Nargolkar, principal associates Moin Ladha and Shailendra bhandare, senior associates Aravind Venugopal, Ashraya Rao, Ahana Sinha and associates Adyasha Das, Siddharth Sawhney, Parvati Parkkot, Yashashree Mahajan, Vijayaraghavan, Ankit Namdeo and Alisha Ganjawala acted for Axel.

This is reported to be the second biggest consolidation in the automobile market in India by The Economic Times.Axel Springer, one of the majority stakeholders will exit CarWale after the completion of the deal and the merged entity shall have about 2,000 employees with some 9,000 car dealers and 2.25 lakh used cars listed on the platform said their press release.

IndusLaw advised Olacabs on raising $500m (Rs 3,320 crore) from 15 investors, some of which were advised by Nishith Desai Associates (NDA), Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) and foreign law firms Goodwin Proctor, Gunderson Dettemer, Morrison & Foerster, Ropes & Gray and Fangda Partners.

AZB & Partners advised Singapore based infrastructure company Cube Highways & Infrastructure on its Rs 248 crores ($37.4m) buy of Madhucon Agra Jaipur Expressways (MAJEL) which was advised by Nishith Desai Associates (NDA).

AZB partner Yashwant Mathur, senior associates Esha Pruthi and Ambarish Mohanty and associates Shridha Malhotra, Devanshu Sajlan and Nitin Saluja acted for Cube.

NDA partner Rajesh Simhan advised MAJEL

Cube would operate the 57 kilometers stretch of National Highway 11, connecting the cities of Mahua and Bharatpur, on build operate transfer (BOT) basis connecting tourist corridors of Agra and Jaipur. MAJEL started operating in 2009.

International Finance Corp (IFC), a part of the World Bank group, had picked up a 20 per cent stake in Cube which is promoted by I Squared Capital. IFC had committed a $100m (Rs 6640 crore) investment in Cube, which will primarily acquire operating road assets in India, reported Mint.

Mega deal sees five law firms bring investment home.

Khaitan & Co and _Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom_ acted for clinical trial service provider Bioclinica in its aqcuisition of global pharmacovigilance, regulatory affairs and IT services provider Synowledge. Synowledge was advised by Goodwin Procter and Nishith Desai Associates (NDA).

Khaitan partner Rajat Mukherjee, executive director Daksha Baxi, associate partner Kabir Bogra, principal associates Monika Srivastava, Ritu Shaktawat and Sameer Sah, associates Nidhi Killawala, Sanchit Agarwal and Shreya Shree and Skadden Arps partner Robert Pincus, counsel Faiz Ahmad and associate Vincent J Cannizzaro acted for Bioclinica.

NDA partners Mansi Seth and Nishchal Joshipura and Goodwin partner Stuart Rosenthal and associate Oreste Cipolla acted for Synowledge.

Synowledge employs around 500 persons in North America, Europe, India and Japan. The founder of Synowledge, Sankesh Abbhi would serve as senior vice president and head of global safety and regulatory solutions at the merged entity reported Outsourcing Pharma.

AZB & Partners advised India’s largest doctor discovery platform Practo Technologies on its over $10m buy of smaller rival Qikwell Technologies India which was advised by Nishith Desai Associates (NDA).

AZB Mumbai partners Ashwin Ramanathan and Nilanjhana Singh and senior associate Parthasarathi Jha acted for Practo.

NDA Bangalore partner Vaibhav Parikh and associates Sangeeta Rana and Shreyas Bhushan acted for Qikwell.

Practo has bought four businesses in the last five months, including Qikwell, reported Mint according to which the other acquisitions were Insta Health, product outsourcing firm Genii and FitHo.

Birla Corporation bought the Eastern cement plants of Lafarge for Rs 5000 crore from Lafarge India following the Competition Commission of India (CCI) order for the French company to divest itself of the units after its Rs $44bn merger with Holcim.

Bertelsmann India Investments did a follow-on investment with Goldman Sachs, Zodius Capital and Norwest Venture Partners in the operator of Indian furniture online shop Pepperfry.com, which saw a $100m financing round, reported Mint and others.

Pepperfry was advised by BMR Legal Bangalore partner Siddharth Nair.

S&R partners Rajat Sethi and Rachael Israel and associate Raya Hazarika acted for Bertelsmann.

Nishith Desai Associates Mumbai M&A practice co-head Simone Reis acted for Goldmans.

Khaitan & Co partner Siddharth Shah, associate partner Surbhi Kejriwal, senior associate Abhiraj Krishna and associate Aayush Tainwala acted for Zodius. They were assisted by partner Bijal Ajinkya and senior associate Aditi Mukundan on tax issues.

There’s a crisis in the packaged food market after Hindustan Unilever Ltd followed Nestle India Ltd in pulling its instant noodles off the shelves. Tata Starbucks Ltd, too, has withdrawn some of its products.