Nishith Desai, Wadia, Khaitan on $120m CarWale CarTrade merger

Friday, 27 November 2015 By Legally India Corporate M&A

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.

Wadia Ghandy Nishith Desai Associates

Comments

KhaiCo at it again 1 Dec 2015, 11:51

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Can someone please specify the acquisition value of Zigwheels by Cardekho, which according to the ET article was the biggest consolidation in the automobile market in India?

Interesting Deal 1 Dec 2015, 11:58

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Apart from the popular opinion that the product has been deemed to be overvalued, it's very heartening and positive to see such deals being cracked by law firms in the backdrop of the growing perception that the law firms are in the red as far as their corporate practice is concerned.

Big Money 1 Dec 2015, 11:59

Lots of money involved. NDA's corporate practice gaining steam.

Golden deal? 1 Dec 2015, 12:16

Certainly not the biggest deal as far as the figures are concerned. Though, one can't ignore this deal for two reasons- 1. (unreasonably heavy acquisition value ), 2
Relative success of the law firms in reaching out to popular startups for funding and acquisition related measures-it benefits/encourages the 1.start ups, 2. Helps ease the negative perception about the corporate legal market. Good to see law firms playing an important role in this whole 'startup boom' hullabaloo

ThePhantom 3 Dec 2015, 23:53

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Lol... seeing the number of lawyers Khaitan engaged, it seems that the firm had no other work. Other firms engage a maximum of 4-5 lawyers on such small transactions. Khaitan had some 5-6 partners itself!! Better to engage smaller and more effective firms than Khaitan. Wonder how much their clients had to pay the number of Khaitans lawyers. This is just shocking. Being from a top tier law firm I have not seen more than one partner, one PA, and couple of SA's and Associates on such a matter. Is this Khaitans way of improving partner and associate CV's?

Guest 7 Dec 2015, 01:41

Clearly the concept of a full services' firm is something you haven't heard of. Kudos to Khaitan for menti

Guest 7 Dec 2015, 01:42

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WG seems to only have banking and funds' partners left - since they are now doing corporate deals also.

Guest96 7 Dec 2015, 16:03

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so good to see WG on the big deals!

Credits 10 Dec 2015, 05:07

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One thing that I have noticed about KCO's deal reporting is that they have started placing the name of the managing partners after another equity partner. In an another report Daksha's name was reported before Haigreve's and in this report, Niren's name has been mentioned before Rabindra's. KCO's way to to give credit to the partner who has brought the transaction to KCO or spearheading the transaction before the MPs.

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