Nishith Desai Associates

Nishchal Joshipura and Simone Reis lead the corporate and M&A practice at Nishith Desai Associates. Over the past two and a half years, the team has more than quadrupled the size of its average M&A transaction. Joshipura was legal counsel for Birla Corporation on its Rs50 billion acquisition of two cement units from Lafarge India with an annual capacity of more than 5 million tonnes. A client commends the partners’ “domain knowledge [and] balance between technical and practical”.

Nishith Desai Associates’s IT, telecommunications and media team comprises an array of professionals – from engineers to management consultants to solicitors. Gowree Gokhale and telecommunications practice head Rakhi Jindal are well-known partners. The group handles cases involving legal, regulatory, tax, and technological changes in India’s entertainment, media, and sports industries, for clients such as Reliance Entertainment ADAG, Time Warner, and English Premier League clubs. Issues include content globalisation and the use of latest technology in all production phases. In telecommunications, the team is busy with matters related to broadband, tariffs (India has the world’s second largest wireless network) and the market’s transition to a unified licensing regime as recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Led by Vikram Shroff, the labour and employment team at Nishith Desai Associates specialises in talent acquisition operations in addition to documentation including human resources policies, non-compete agreements, and IP assignment agreements. The World Bank Group invited the team to assist with the global research project Doing Business 2015. Gowree Gokhale and Shroff advised AT&T on Indian employment law during its acquisition of IBM’s managed application and hosting services business. The acquisition involved asset and employee transfers around the country.

Led by Richie Sancheti, the fund investment team at Nishith Desai Associates advises on optimum structures for establishing domestic and international private equity, venture capital and open-ended funds. By having a strong drive to collaborate with other groups in the firm, the practice has represented investors such as General Atlantic Partners in entries and exits, and companies during their capital-raising transactions, such as online apparel retailer Goldsquare Sales India, which Sequoia invested in.

While the practice at Nishith Desai Associates is smaller than other top-tier firms, it brings innovative thinking to its mandates. The team has been involved in tax research and policy issues including devising the tax regime of Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, a development for offshore financial centres. Rajesh Simhan is advising a foreign public pension fund on whether the fund is a part of the foreign government, in general, and state government, in particular, making the fund’s interest income tax exempt. The matter is before the Authority for Advance Rulings.