Aquilaw has opened two offices in Mumbai today after absorbing JKB Legal and adding its managing attorney Jay Bhatia as partner in the firm.

Aquilaw co-founding partner Sucharita Basu commented: “We would like to do a lot more corporate commercial work in Mumbai than what we could do in Calcutta, and in Delhi we have a very strong litigation practice.

“Also, we want to do good real estate work - today it means a lot of structuring, different kinds of financial instruments. And we also want to do some infrastructure and government work and a little bit of securities market work and gradually as we get somebody in banking, finance, intellectual property [in Mumbai we will expand to those practices].”

A GLC Mumbai 1998 alumnus, Bhatia founded JKB Legal in 2002 and brings with him three associates to Aquilaw.

JKB’s practice includes litigation, corporate commercial, real estate and intellectual property work, he said.

He commented: “Strategic reason [behind merging with Aquilaw] was that I was growing my practice and was looking at cross country bandwidth. Aquilaw has offices in Calcutta and Delhi, everyone had the same synergies, I have clients across the country so it just became easier.”

The firm has five lawyers, including Bhatia, in Mumbai with its corporate office in Worli and a small litigation office in Fort.

Now almost three years old, Aquilaw was started up in Kolkata by three partners and it added a litigation office in Delhi that same year. The firm now has 37 lawyers including 7 partners, one of whom has the designation of executive director.