We’re mindful that not all competition law issues can be addressed through compliance alone, and that our clients will require effective litigation and enforcement strategies to serve their commercial interests. We are perfectly positioned to provide holistic advice even in complex competition litigation, with our experience of representing the CCI, informants, and opposite parties in a number of cases from the earliest days of competition law enforcement in India.

• We provide a full suite of litigation, litigation support, strategy, and competition law enforcement support before the CCI, appellate courts, and various high courts exercising their writ jurisdiction.
• We act for both informants/plaintiffs as well as opposite parties/defendants in competition enforcement proceedings across India. Our team members enjoy rights of audience before all Indian courts, tribunals, and regulatory agencies. We are equally adept at engaging with senior counsel and local counsel in various locations to present our client’s case most effectively.
• We also work as sounding boards to our clients’ senior management or general counsel when developing a competition litigation strategy.

Recent work highlights

• Successfully represented Tata Motors Limited before the CCI, resulting in the closure of an inquiry into alleged abuse of dominance and anti-competitive vertical restraints.
• Representing F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG and its subsidiary in proceedings before the Delhi High Court arising from a CCI investigation into alleged abuse of dominance and vertical restraints, having successfully obtained an interim stay of CCI proceedings.
• Advising and representing a technology company across a range of competition law matters, including an ongoing investigation at the CCI.
• Representing Super Cassettes Industries Pvt. Ltd. in its appeal against the CCI’s order holding its revenue share terms with H.T. Media to licence copyright protected content as abusive before the statutory appeals body, the NCLAT.
• Representing digital movie equipment manufacturers, UFO Moviez and Scrabble Digital in an ongoing inquiry involving alleged tie-in agreements in supply of projection systems and cinematic content in India.
• Providing strategic advice on and filing leniency applications before the CCI for global companies, as part of a multi-jurisdictional process.

• We work closely with our clients to understand whether a transaction – from its conception to its implementation – is likely to require competition approvals or raise competition concerns and how such concerns can be best addressed.
• We work with the client’s internal business and strategy teams as well as internal and external legal counsel to arrive at pragmatic and well-considered views on deal structure and implementation. If the transaction requires notification, we help prepare the merger filing, and engage with the CCI officers to secure approval.
• We also advise our clients on how to avoid and mitigate process risks – such as gun-jumping – through advocacy, planning, and, where required, litigation.
• We advise, where a transaction involves divestitures or be challenged in court, our team works seamlessly with senior business leadership, internal and external counsel, and the CCI and its monitoring trustees to develop a reasonable divestiture or litigation strategy depending on what is needed.

Recent work highlights

• Successfully represented a global technology company in avoiding gun jumping proceedings before the CCI.
• Represented the exiting promoters in securing unconditional Phase I CCI approval for the sale of their 27.18% stake in Caratlane Trading Private Limited to Titan Company Limited.
• Represented LANXESS Deutschland GmbH and obtained unconditional Phase I approval for the creation of a global joint venture with Advent comprising its high performance materials business.

• We work with our clients and their internal and external advisors to ensure that they receive thoughtful and constructive advice that is best suited to their business.
• We help them calibrate their commercial decisions and understand their competition law implications.
  • design customised competition compliance programmes
  • create policies and practices that reduce infringement risk while achieving business goals
  • review their business model(s) and address competition law issues that the in-house legal team and management can rectify
  • create awareness and training around competition law, its risks and consequences, and to increase preparedness to deal with competition investigations or ‘dawn’ raids. We work closely with them to:

Recent work highlights

• Conducting a bespoke competition compliance exercise on a product-specific basis for a leading global pharmaceutical company.
• Conducting a comprehensive competition compliance program for a global motorcycle manufacturer, including a review of its dealership and distribution network and contractual terms.
• Advising a global automotive company on the competition compliance aspects of its ongoing collaboration to develop new products for the Indian market.
• Regularly advising clients, including a global confectionery manufacturer, a global beverages manufacturer and several Indian FMCG companies on competition compliance issues by working with business, product, and commercial teams to propose bespoke solutions, including dawn raid protocols and redesigning agency, distribution, and franchise models.

• We believe that a good legal practitioner not only applies the law as it is, but also imagines the law as it ought to be. We use our diverse experience in law, economics, policy making and design to craft policy solutions that are evidence-based, impactful and practical.
• We’re excited by the growing interface between competition law and other areas of law, such as privacy, data protection, e-commerce, platform markets and intellectual property rights.
• We author papers, research studies, and offer policy recommendations, as a firm and in collaboration with industry associations or clients.

Recent work highlights

• Partner and co-founder Rahul Rai is a member of the Committee for Digital Competition Law, set up by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India, which was tasked with evaluating the need for and creating a new ‘ex ante’ law to address competition issues in the digital economy.
• Partner and co-founder Samir R Gandhi was a special invitee to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Finance in January 2023 to provide feedback on the proposed amendments to the Competition Act, 2002.
• Regularly advising global and Indian technology companies on emerging issues in Indian competition policy.
• Providing comments on a series of draft regulations issued for public consultation by the CCI, as part of the recent overhaul of the Competition Act in early 2023. These included comments on a proposed settlements & commitments regime, substantial revisions to the Indian merger control regime (including the introduction of a deal value notification threshold) and the introduction of a “leniency plus” mechanism for cartel enforcement.

• We understand that access to legal recourse is often limited by financial considerations and information asymmetry. Not all our clients possess the means or the capacity to participate and adequately defend themselves in competition proceedings, or seek redressal for anti-competitive conduct that they have had to suffer.
• We are committed to spending a third of all our time acting for such clients in competition law proceedings or advising them on the basis of the fee that they are able to pay, if any.
• We are also committed to spending some of our time contributing to academic thought and writing outside of client mandates, through which we hope to address the existing information asymmetry.