Leading Indian law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) has hired a 49-lawyer capital markets team, including nine partners, from rival IndusLaw, marking the largest group move in India’s legal market so far this year. 

The team represents all of IndusLaw’s capital markets team and is led by partner Manan Lahoty, who has joined 1,000-lawyer CAM as head of its capital markets practice. 

Mumbai-based Lahoty is qualified in England and Wales as well as India and has advised on some of the largest Indian transactions in the domestic and international capital markets, including the IPOs of Coal India and Zomato, the latter of which was the first of India’s major digital start-ups to go public. He joined IndusLaw in 2019 after a decade as a partner at rival firm Luthra and Luthra Law Offices. 

“We are excited about the significant growth and undisputed market leadership that our capital markets practice will assume with this development,“ said CAM managing partner Cyril Shroff. “Capital markets is one of the four major practices of the firm [and] will be a significant practice of scale. I am confident that the capital markets’ leadership team will take this practice to new heights.” 

Joining alongside Lahoty across CAM’s offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru are partners Abhiroop Lahiri, Abhyuday Bhotika, Anshul Roy, Manshoor Nazki, Priyadarshini Rao, Puneet Passi, Ravi Dubey and Vishal Yaduvanshi. Almost all of them joined IndusLaw as a team from Luthra & Luthra when Lahoty moved over nearly five years ago. 

The team’s hire underscores CAM’s commitment to capital markets work and will take the practice to more than 130 lawyers, including 16 partners. It follows the departure of capital markets partners Vijay Parthasarathi and Vinay Sirohia for Trilegal last month, shortly before another capital markets partner, Abhinav Kumar, left to join Talwar Thakore & Associates. 

Lahoty commented: “The coming together of two top teams on such a scale is unprecedented. I believe this will have a striking impact on the Indian capital markets fraternity – clients as well as lawyers. For our clients, the combined scale will offer an unmatched quality and availability, both key ingredients for large and complex deals. For our lawyers, this scale will offer unparalleled reputation and respect, and solid management and governance.” 

IndusLaw did not respond to a request for comment. 

Indian firms are looking to bolster their bench strength ahead of international firms setting up on the ground following the landmark decision by the Bar Council of India (BCI) in March 2023 to open up the country’s legal market to allow foreign law firms to set up permanent offices in the country for the first time.

In June JSA Advocates & Solicitors hired a team of 20 M&A lawyers from Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, which it followed up with a team of 25 competition lawyers from Trilegal last month. 

Over the past month CAM has also been hiring partners at pace across other practice areas, adding employment partner Sowmya Kumar from IndusLaw, corporate partner Jay Parikh from Luthra and Luthra and banking partner Pranav Sharma from Trilegal across its Indian offices. Meantime corporate partner Himanshu Chahar joined the Abu Dhabi office CAM launched in March from a UAE firm.