Amarchand Mangaldas has hired dual-qualified chartered accountant and lawyer DD Nageswar Rao as a partner in Delhi. Rao’s was formerly the India country head of tax at Siemens, with his over 20-year career also including similar roles at the Coca Cola India and Colgate. Rao (pictured left) told Legally India that he qualified in 2007 as a lawyer from Delhi University. “Once you fall in love with tax, you also need a formal degree to be able to practice law both as a lawyer and as an accountant. For India it’s a requirement that if you want to appear in the high court or Supreme Court, you need to be a lawyer and it is not sufficient if you just have the actual know-how on tax.”

Between 2007 and until two weeks ago he said that he served as country head of tax for the Siemens group of companies, before which he was at Coca Cola India Inc for seven years, preceded by his work at Colgate Palmolive.

He added that in the last two decades he had been trying to establish a unique selling point (USP), which included practising both as a board director and an indirect tax specialist, focusing on tax litigation, value added tax (VAT) and income tax across India.

He joins Delhi tax partner Aseem Chawla and principal consultant (designate) Gagan Kumar.