office openings

Former HSA Advocates partners Sakya Chaudhuri, Avijeet Lala and Anand Shrivastava’s Delhi start-up Neeti Niyaman has expanded to Mumbai with the opening of a new office in Fort.

Bombay solicitors firm Solomon & Co has expanded to Pune after 109 years of operations only from Mumbai.

J Sagar Associates (JSA) has opened an office in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) special economic zone (SEZ), after SEZ rules had recently seen a liberalisation that allows legal services providers to operate from there.

Litigation specialists Karanjawala & Co has promoted 10 senior associate to principal associate level, raising the total principal associate ranks at the firm to 11.

Singh & Associates opened an office in Gurgaon, as its third in the national capital region.

LexOrbis has opened a branch office in Mumbai with three lawyers, in order to assist existing clients in the Maharashtra.

ANM Global, which had been set up in 2009 by Nidish Mehrotra and Anuj Gupta, has hired Citi vice president Binay Kumar Mishra as a senior partner to head the firm’s banking and finance practice from Mumbai.

Trilegal has opened an office in Gurgaon, and is relocating corporate practice partners Ravindra Bandhakavi, Harsh Pais, Yogesh Singh and Vaibhav Kothari there from its Delhi office.

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas has scooped Cognizant Technology Solutions India & APAC region general counsel (GC) Anand Bhushan to set and head up its new Chennai office after he fully leaves a little later this month, according to three authoritative sources.

Umesh Khaitan’s newly rebranded firm Khaitan & Khaitan has moved away from its top focus – the project finance practice, to focus on corporate governance, private equity and venture capital and environment law. It has also moved to a much bigger office.

Delhi law firm R&A Legal has now opened an office in Kolkata. The Kolkata office will be headed by R&A principal associate Samik Chatterjee.

TMT opened offices in Mumbai and Lucknow this month, taking its total tally of offices to nine – four out of which were set up in the last three months.

Singhania & Co opened an office in Indore – its tenth in India, which is headed by its Mumbai managing partner Pradeep Jain. The firm will focus on general corporate advisory, forensics and white collar crimes in Indore.

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas has started a Bangalore office with ex-Omidyar Network India general counsel (GC) Karthik Krishnan Mahalingam as office head and national venture capital practice head.

Tatva Legal partner Ekta Bahl has resigned the firm to join Samvad Partners to set up its Hyderabad office to extend “the reach of the firm to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana”.

Wadia Ghandy has shut its office in Chennai as the firm’s partner heading the Chennai practice, Shona Malvi, is going independent

TMT Law Practice opened its sixth and seventh national offices in Ahmedabad and Mysore, after merging with the practice of advocate Apurva Dave in Ahmedabad and assigning Bangalore partner Ashok GV the additional role of business development in Mysore.

Former Jones Day India partner Sumesh Sawhney joined Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan (LKS), as partner, to open up the firm’s office in London.

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.

Dhir & Dhir Associates has launched its third national office, setting up in Hyderabad on 28 October.