Hariani property partner Kanakia picks up sticks for Sheth Builders GC role

Exclusive

Tuesday, 22 January 2013 By Legally India Law firms

Exclusive: Hariani & Co Mumbai partner Siddharth Kanakia, who was heading the firm’s real estate practice for the last five years, resigned in December 2012 to join real estate developer Sheth Builders as its vice president legal in Mumbai.

The Rs 3000 crore family-run realty company Sheth Builders, which developed the housing project BeauMonde in Prabhadevia, Mumbai, split in April 2012. Two of the three Sheth brothers who owned the company, have formed their own ventures taking away 33 per cent equity each, according to a report in the Times of India.

Kanakia, who was with Hariani & Co since graduating from GLC Mumbai in 2004, said that the company was not a client of the firm, explaining: “[The move to Sheth] was basically to get exposure of working with the corporates.

“I think [the real-estate sector] is picking up again.”

According to Hariani & Co’s website, Kanakia is experienced in land acquisition and development of commercial complexes and townships, and he said he also handled general corporate and media and entertainment transactions when he was an associate at the firm.

Hariani & Co founder Ameet Hariani commented: “It has been on very good terms that he’s left. He’s taken a choice to do something different and we wish him all the best.”

Hariani added that several others had also joined the firm’s real estate practice after Kanakia’s exit.

Mumbai senior partner Ajay Vazirani, Mumbai partner Heena Chheda, and Goa partner Sujai Joshi are currently heading the firm’s real estate practice. The firm recently advised the Runwal group in developing a Rs 220 crore ($40m) housing project on 218 acres of auto and engineering company Premier’s land, Hariani said. According to the Economic Times, Runwal group’s subsidiary Horizon Projects will develop a middle-income housing project on the land at Dombivili, in the outskirts of Mumbai.

In April 2012, Hariani & Co litigation head and partner Ranjit Shetty left the firm to join Juris Corp in Mumbai.

Comments

Dazed and Confused 23 Jan 2013, 03:34

+1 -1

Ok, I'm a big fan of LI, and Prachi, you appear sincere and hard working. Kian, you're supposed to be the adult supervision here, and the editorial quality of the site is plummeting. It's becoming a simple news wire. If you establish a rough matrix format - some breaking news, some enterprise work, some industry gossip - you can keep your mix interesting even during slow times. The site is on a steady slide of self-imposed irrelevance. Good god, I'm even looking at the dreadful bar and bench on occasion now.

kianganz 23 Jan 2013, 09:55

Thanks Dazed, duly noted. Admittedly, a problem we're facing at the moment is bandwidth and with only two of us handling editorial in such a large market with so much happening, sometimes the editorial process is not up to the task.

Being a good news wire is still our number one priority, but we do want to do more enterprise-type stories. Our Mint coverage every few weeks aims to do that, though we want to add more regular and smaller features too and are working on several ideas.

Ideally, we'd also like to expand the size of our editorial team, but until we can make ends meet more comfortably commercially, we'll try to try and keep improving our existing editorial process.

Keep letting us know how we're doing, always appreciated.

Best wishes,
Kian

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