Exclusive: Project finance specialist India Law Services (ILS) has opened office its fourth office in Bangalore with former State Bank of India (SBI) lawyer as its head in a bid to capitalise on market opportunities in southern India.

Exclusive: Nishith Desai Associates (NDA) has hired former Goldman Sachs India legal head Pratibha Jain to start up in Delhi, as the firm opened its second Mumbai office in the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) last week and invested Rs 1 crore ($219,000) in advanced IT infrastructure.

Exclusive: Phoenix Legal has opened a second Mumbai office in Nariman Point relocating its recently hired litigation partner and bulked up with Hariani & Co real estate and corporate partner Siddharth Hariani to expand to three partners in Mumbai.

Exclusive: ALMT Legal, following its split from Clyde & Co and a number of partners in April, has re-started offices in London and Delhi with two lateral hires joining as partners while Mumbai partners Sameer Tapia and Hitesh Jain will relocate part-time.

Exclusive: Vidhii Partners will open up an office in Delhi with three former Paras Kuhad Associates lawyers and has taken two senior industry experts onto its internal advisory board to bolster its new media practice and growth strategy.

Exclusive: Naik Naik & Company, as it will be now known after a rebranding effective tomorrow, has opened up a new office focusing on media law in Andheri in order to be closer to Bollywood studio clients, while finalising a third Mumbai office in mid-town and preparing to open in Delhi.

DSK Legal will merge with 15-lawyer Bangalore litigation and real estate firm AKS Law Associates on 1 April, hoping also to ramp up the corporate offering to South India.

Less than three-year-old firm RDA Legal has re-branded to PXV Law Partners and started an office in Mumbai by relocating its newly elected managing partner Rohit Das, while hiring three lateral senior associates from Amarchand, AZB and P&A as lockstep partners.

Exclusive: Bharucha & Partners has opened its first office outside Mumbai, entering New Delhi with partner Kumkum Sen from Raijnder Narain & Co, nearly a year after the firm opened in a second Mumbai location.

Exclusive: Start-up Vidhii Partners has opened its second Mumbai office, branching out into Bandra with a media law practice headed by new partner and former UTV Motion Pictures legal head Nandini Mehta.

Exclusive: Delhi law firm Zeus Law Associates has expanded with a second office in the National Capital Region (NCR) area, opening a branch office in Gurgaon to leverage infrastructure development and SEZ related market opportunities.

Argus Partners, which broke away from Amarchand Mangaldas Kolkata last year, has set up a Mumbai office relocating partner Ramya Hariharan to the city full-time while partner Krishnava Dutt will also spend half his time in the financial hub.

Former Luthra & Luthra and FoxMandal Little partner Vineet Aneja has now joined ALMT Legal to start up the firm’s office in Delhi.

Krishnamurthy and Co, which is branded as K Law, has opened up a new Delhi office and moved into a larger Mumbai office, as well as setting up an expansion path in Chennai and commencing construction on a larger Bangalore office.

S&R Associates is set to start up its greenfield Mumbai operations with Delhi-based co-founding partner Sandip Bhagat relocating full-time to the Mumbai to service existing clients and to build a full-service practice.

Link Legal has put pan-Indian growth further on top of its agenda, having opened up a new Mumbai office by relocating a young Delhi partner and hiring former GVK in-house counsel V Akshay Babu as its second partner in its Hyderabad office.

Delhi-headquartered law firm King Stubb & Kasiva is set to open a new office in Mumbai within months and has added a new equity partner to its head office ranks.

The firm is currently finalising the negotiations with up to two partners from Mumbai firms to spearhead its new office.

Managing partner Jidesh Kumar (pictured) said: “The Mumbai office would be banking, finance and infrastructure focused. We are looking at having an infrastructure partner from one of the top five law firms there.”