Amarchand Mangaldas has launched its Ahmedabad practice, inaugurating its Prahladnagar office today, relocating corporate partner Pankaj Agarwal full-time and Delhi litigation head Tejas Karia to start a dispute resolution practice part-time.

The office opening is nearly two months ahead of schedule, with Legally India first having reported in February that Amarchand had opened in Chennai and would open offices in Ahmedabad by June as part of its aggressive 2017 expansion roadmap. Amarchand is understood to aim for an office in Pune by 2013.

Karia, who began his career with practicing in Gujarat for three years and has been at the firm for eight years now, told Legally India that he would divide his time between Delhi and Ahmedabad.

“We already had an office there before, and are having a new start. We are focusing on the corporate side, and litigation of course comes along with it. We expect a seminal growth in Gujarat, and an amazing opportunity to service clients here,” he said, adding that Amarchand already enjoyed a large client base in Gujarat.

Agarwal told Legally India that the previous Ahmedabad office five years ago was a pure litigation practice and he was enthusiastic about growing a full service firm in the state.

Agarwal has been with Amarchand for six years after a stint at J Sagar Associates (JSA) in 2006 and Luthra & Luthra between 2004 to 2005. He specialises in M&A, private equity, joint ventures, financing, and corporate advisory with special focus on real estate and private equity transactions.

He said in a press release that Gujarat lacked a “structured full-service corporate legal advisory firm” a niche into which Amarchand would aim to fit, buttressed by the rapid economic growth in the state.

The Ahmedabad office currently has six to seven qualified lawyers, said the press release, and would aim to grow to up to nine lawyers by the end of the first year of its operations, but Karia added that there was no specific recruitment plan for the office at present.

Amarchand now has eight offices and 555 lawyers, including 59 partners, across India, spanning New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Photo by Kirti Poddar