E-commerce player Snapdeal has expanded its in-house legal team by 50% to nine members, after hiring three in recent months, with its in-house team closing a fundraising round from Piramal Group executive director Anand Piramal without external legal advisers.

Both Snapdeal and Piramal handled the legal advice for the investment in-house, according to Snapdeal general counsel (GC) Smriti Subramanian, who had joined from OYO in 2018.

The valuation was not disclosed for the latest round of funding for Snapdeal, which is its first in two years in a competitive and expensive market dominated by the deep pockets of Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart. That said, according to its recently released annual reports for 2018-19, Snapdeal has increased revenues by 87% to more than Rs 800 crores, and reduced losses to Rs 186 crores.

Under Subramanian, the Snapdeal in-house legal team has now grown to nine with a series of hires, according to a press release.

Earlier this month the company had hired Johnson and Johnson legal counsel and 2014 Delhi University LLB graduate Prankur Chaturvedi as associate director, to head contract and compliance.

He is also a 2011-qualified company secretary, and had previously worked at Cipla, Oyo and Johnsons.

Snapdeal has also also added former PSA Legal Counsellors senior associate Mansi Airi in the in-house team, to specialise in cross-border and domestic M&As and technology transfers.

In April, the dot-com had hired Flipkart head of litigation Vijay Srivastava to be in charge of international and domestic disputes at Snapdeal, specialising in consumer and trade disputes.

The Delhi University 2005 LLB graduate and qualified company secretary had worked at law firm The Legist, until 2014, before joining HCL Infosystems and LG Electronics, before moving to Filpkart in September 2018.

Late last year, company secretary Roshni Tandon had joined Snapdeal to oversee the corporate governance and secretarial team. Roshni has over a decade experience working with listed and unlisted companies across renewable energy and media sector.

Snapdeal GC Subramanian said that the company had built a “lean and dynamic team” of in-house lawyers in the “highly competitive e-commerce sector which finds itself in a challenging and evolving legal and regulatory environment in India”.