Samvad Partners is a multi-specialist law firm with a market-approved dispute resolution offering. The firm’s core litigation areas encompass commercial, employment, competition, intellectual property and financial disputes. The team regularly appears in high-stakes cases before the High Courts, the Supreme Court and all relevant tribunals. The litigation and arbitration team comprises four partners and 17 associates spread across the firm’s five offices in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi. It is rapidly developing its mediation and insolvency and debt recovery practices in the wake of Covid-19. Another interesting feature is the firm pioneering and advocating for more online dispute resolution. This year, the firm climbs up one notch in three rankings categories: commercial, government and regulatory and insolvency disputes.
Four partners round out the disputes team: Arjun Krishnan, Poornima Hatti, Rohan George and Savani Gupte. Collectively, they cover antitrust, construction, government, insolvency, IP, labour and international arbitration dispute matters. Founder Harish Narasappa stepped down last year to become an independent counsel as a senior advocate.
In one highlight, the team represented BWCI Pension Trustees in litigation for enforcement of a scheme of compromise whereby the group companies of Estra would buy back the client’s shares in Estra, providing an exit to the client for its investment. The matter raises questions of law regarding the enforceability of a court-ordered scheme of arrangement through the courts when an arbitration clause governs disputes between the parties. The matter is also one of the few recent cases dealing with the court’s powers to enforce a scheme of arrangement that was voluntarily entered into between the parties. It involves important questions regarding the enforcement of schemes of arrangement under the Companies Act 2013, which may be an alternative to costly arbitration proceedings.
The team is a trusted counsel for the competition authority and one of its recent mandates was acting for the CCI before the Supreme Court in a dispute with several automobile manufacturers. The case relates to the validity and composition of the CCI. The automakers had challenged the constitutional validity of the Competition Act (the Act) before the Delhi High Court in a bid to stall investigation into alleged anti-competitive conduct. The case is of vital importance because it involves the constitutional validity of the Act. It has a bearing on the day-to-day functioning of the CCI. The Delhi High Court held that the Act was constitutionally valid, except for a particular section which permitted the CCI to take decisions through “voting” at meetings. The High Court reasoned that this form of decision-making was constitutionally impermissible in view of the adjudicatory functions performed by the CCI. The High Court imposed certain requirements for the composition of the CCI. It directed that a member with judicial experience should be a part of the final deliberations before a decision. Both the client and the carmakers have challenged this order before the Supreme Court of India.
The firm’s client stable includes Delhivery, Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction, Healthmap Diagnostics, MGH Group, Phasorz Technologies, QD Seatoman Designs, Society for Informal Education and Development Studies, Tata Projects, Yes Bank and Zetwerk Manufacturing Businesses.
