Bharat Anand

Bharat Anand is a Senior Partner in the Corporate & Commercial practice, head of the Firm’s NCR (Delhi) office, and a member of the Firm’s National Executive Committee. A dual-qualified lawyer (India; England & Wales), he read law at Jesus College, Cambridge and spent several years at Freshfields in London before returning to India in 2009. Bharat is ranked Band 1 for Corporate/M&A by Chambers (Asia-Pacific and UK) and is recognised by Who’s Who Legal as a Global Leader for M&A and Governance. He has also previously served on the National Executive Committee of FICCI.

Bharat’s work sits at the intersection of high-stakes execution and boardroom judgement. His practice covers public and private M&A, joint ventures, growth and control investments, complex exits and restructurings, and board-level advice in sensitive or contested situations. He acts for financial sponsors, founders, family offices and strategic acquirers across financial services, insurance, healthcare, renewables, technology, telecom, consumer and manufacturing. A significant part of his time is spent helping clients think through deal risk, governance and dispute strategy on India-related corporate and shareholder matters, giving his transactional work a distinctly pragmatic, “how will this play out in real life?” edge.

On the private capital side, Bharat has been a long-standing adviser to marquee sponsors on high-velocity growth stories and portfolio shaping. For SoftBank, he has advised on multiple headline investments and portfolio actions—including Unacademy, Mindtickle, Zeta, Whatfix, OfBusiness, Cars24, Eruditus, ElasticRun and Ola Electric—as well as secondary monetisations (such as SoftBank’s partial Lenskart stake sale to ADIA) and the cross-border reorganisation of Meesho ahead of its proposed India listing. He also counsels Lightspeed on successive rounds in Exponent, Wheelocity, HealthPlix, ShareChat, Stable Money, Zepto and the Weaver platform, and advised on the marquee investment in PhysicsWallah and its proposed listing pathway. 

Other sponsor work includes advising Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India) on TrueMeds, Minimalist (sale to HUL) and the Razorpay cross-border merger; ChrysCapital on The Sleep Company; Tiger Pacific on Bira 91; Bertelsmann India Investments on Shiprocket, NatHabit and Univest; and Stride Ventures on the GoMechanic/Lifelong asset sale and debt work-out.

Healthcare is a particular area of depth. Bharat advised Everstone on the sale of a significant majority stake in Sahyadri Hospitals to Ontario Teachers’—the largest private hospital platform in Maharashtra—and Quadria Capital on anchor investments in Maxivision, Nephrocare, Encube, AIG and other healthcare assets. He has acted repeatedly for Manipal Hospitals on its acquisitions of Columbia Asia, AMRI and Medica Synergie, and on competitive bid processes across India. These mandates typically involve a mix of regulatory nuance, complex stakeholder dynamics and execution under intense time pressure.

His public and cross-border M&A work spans both control deals and carve-outs. Illustrative matters include Panatone/Tata Sons’ acquisition of Tejas Networks; Inbrew’s acquisition of 32 liquor brands (including Haywards and White Mischief) from United Spirits via an acquisition-cum-franchise model, followed by its acquisition of Molson Coors India; Jindal Poly Films’ business transfer; and the de-SPAC and business combination for ReNew Power. He has also advised on pivotal tech/industrial joint ventures such as BMW/Tata Technologies, and has long experience guiding global strategics—including Airbus, GE, Siemens, Eni, Tesco and British Telecom—through India entry, partnerships and restructurings.

• Corporate and M&A
• Investment funds
• Private equity