KSB Partners, which was co-founded in 2006 by Samir Bedi, Srinivas Kilambi and Siddharth Singh, is set to dissolve after Kilambi left the firm to MNK, and with Singh heading up their jointly-owned LPO Lexplosion.

KSB’s remaining team of 12 retainers will work with Gurgaon-based co-founding partner Bedi and partner Deepti Sharma under the brand name SB Partners from its current premises.

NLSIU Bangalore graduate Bedi said that the firm was currently in talks to add a partner in its Mumbai office.

Srinivas Kilambi at MNK

Kilambi joined MNK Law Offices as a partner effective 1 August, adding a new practice area – debt and private equity – to the corporate commercial and litigation firm co-founded by former Arthur Anderson tax advisor Gyanendra Kumar with litigator Anuradha Mukherjee.

“I was looking to expand the business [and] spoke with them, Gyanendra and Probal [Bhaduri, a former AZB & Partners partner who joined MNK four years ago,] are my classmates from law school,” said the NLSIU 1994 graduate who was senior legal counsel at GE Capital India for eight years, and then at GE Commercial Finance for two years before co-founding KSB.

One associate from KSB followed Kilambi to MNK which currently has 15 associates including former AZB senior associate Ashish Vats who will join the firm on Monday, confirmed Kilambi.

He added that his practice at MNK would focus on transactions in the non-banking financial companies (NBFC) sector, but in the long term he would also target banks.

Former Luthra & Luthra partner Nivedita Tiwari had also joined MNK last month as an M&A and private equity partner. Kilambi said that the firm was currently in the process of growing a team sufficient to support the work of the firm’s five partners.

Siddharth Singh

KSB co-founder Singh, who is a graduate from Delhi University, continued to remain a partner at the firm, without being directly involved in its affairs ever since he assumed directorship of legal process outsourcing (LPO) company Lexplosion. Lexplosion was set up in 2008 by him, Bedi, Kilambi and NLSIU and IIM Calcutta graduate Indraneel Chowdhary, who is a former Amarchand Mangaldas associate.

Bedi, Kilambi, Singh and Choudhary continue as directors in Lexplosion which, operated independently of KSB, said Bedi, Kilambi and Choudhary.

Clarification: We have received a note from Choudhary, stating that Lexplosion is not an LPO but a legal and compliance risk management company. “We had started off looking at alternate business models initially and offshoring of high-end legal work was one of the things we considered along with compliance risk management. We settled down to doing the latter and have focused on the legal and compliance risk management space for over four years now…

“Amongst our many investors is Pramod Bhasin, the former Chairman and CEO of Genpact… We have nothing against LPOs. Just that we are not one…”