Seated right next to India’s financial capital, Pune is attracting a genre of legal service providers that understand the uniqueness of its position and the clientele they serve. Katherine Abraham reports
In the past few years, Pune, the education hub of India, has swiftly made progress adapting and adopting the growth of industries, especially the automotive sector, with some of the best and biggest Indian and foreign brands seeking to develop this retirees’ paradise into a mini version of Mumbai, its larger neighbour located just 152km away.
With a steady flow of income from various sectors, the need for quick and cost-efficient legal services is also evident. India Business Law Journal spoke to Pune-based law firms to find out how the legal landscape of the city is evolving.
Cyril Shroff, managing partner of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) – one of the country’s largest firms, spoke to IBLJ about the city on his recent visit. “Pune is very different compared to a lot of other tier-2 cities because, in some ways, it is kind of like an extension of Mumbai,” says Shroff.
“There are very large corporate groups like the Bajaj group, or the Bharat Forge group, or the Thermax group, or the Kirloskars. So, they could have been in Mumbai, but just happened to be in Pune,” he says.
“I don’t see any qualitative difference between the kind of work that we would do for [Pune clients] and that we would with any other Mumbai client.”
Radhika Subhash, managing partner at JCSS Law, adds: “Pune is developing as a prominent city with industry players in the manufacturing, auto and IT renewables sectors, and is seeing a lot of foreign investment, so having a locally present law firm certainly helps support such businesses locally.”
Regarding their decision to open a branch in Pune, Obhan & Associates, a Delhi-based law firm, weighed up both personal and professional factors. “We were looking at places that we want to expand to, a different office within India,” says lead partner for the Pune branch, Vrinda Patodia. “The managing partner is Essenese Obhan, [and while] he is not from Pune, he studied in Pune and completed his engineering studies here, which gave him a connection with the city.”
The firm found it useful that Patodia, one of its oldest serving partners, was also planning to return for personal reasons, and so Obhan & Associates found a base in Pune.
“It’s an untapped market because, if you see Pune in general, till a couple of years ago anyone who wanted legal services would reach out to Bombay, or to one of the CA [chartered accountancy] firms,” says Patodia.
“There were very few standalone corporate firms, litigation firms and individual practitioners, but a professional setup was just not available.”
