Corporate Law Expertise
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Corporate Law Expertise: Our practice group is well versed in advising businesses on entity formation, India-entry strategy, company and contract law compliance, mergers and acquisitions, joint arrangements, private equity transactions, and corporate governance. Our specialist lawyers handle drafting, reviewing and negotiation of commercial and technology-based agreements including SaaS, software licensing, and shareholder agreements. We also provide regulatory compliance advice and conduct statutory filings, and assist with dispute resolution including litigation and arbitration to ensure seamless business operations and strong risk management. We are the preferred law firm for startups as we serve as strategic partners helping startups with fundraising strategies, compliance with relevant financial regulations, pitch deck vetting and legal documentation thereby ensuring investor readiness while also optimizing their growth potential to ensure they have the best chance to secure funding and build long lasting relationships with investors.
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Building Businesses. Protecting Growth. Reducing Legal Risk.
Every business decision is legal in nature. Some business persons realize it during the process of incorporation. However, some realize it the hard way because one ill-framed clause leads to loss of partners or due diligence at the time of a funding round closing which reveals compliance issues that lead to loss of partnerships. Both situations have happened countless times, and many businesses even today face the same challenges day in and day out. This is where the need for implementing relevant safeguards comes into place which not only tackles present problems but also future concerns.
Corrida Legal has come into existence because we have witnessed many businesses falling prey to such recurring legal and operational issues that were entirely avoidable. Indeed, we are a corporate law firm, but our services go beyond that. Our role is to serve as a virtual legal department for businesses which require solid legal infrastructure without bearing huge costs involved in putting an in-house legal department together. This approach ensures that we are not only catering to your legal compliance but also looking at every decision from an operational perspective as well.
From inception till winding up, we provide all sorts of legal services related to the business. We have assisted first-time business owners with the formation of the correct entity structure as well as registrations required for setting up a business in India or even abroad in another jurisdiction. We have also helped multinationals enter India when they failed to distinguish between Liaison Office and Branch Office. We’ve sat face-to-face with investors negotiating term sheets past 2 AM, and we’ve argued cases before the NCLT on behalf of our clients in the millions. The scale might vary, but the methodology remains constant; understand the business, then apply the law and derive the best interest for our clients.
The distinguishing factor of this law firm Corrida Legal is not its legal knowledge alone, as any competent lawyer would have sufficient knowledge of the Companies Act or any other law relevant. What is different is the commercial perspective. In reviewing a shareholder’s agreement, it is not only the legal enforceability that we consider. We anticipate the disputes that may occur between the co-founders after three years. In drafting vendor agreements, we envisage the problems that typically crop up; delayed payments, scope creep, IP ownership issues. We understand that certain legal nuances are daunting for new founders and thereby we ensure to not only simplify the compliances but to also provide alternative mechanisms which are more suited to the operational requirements. This perspective has been shaped through experience of working with around 300 clients across sectors including fintech, e-commerce, FMCG, healthcare, aviation, and real estate. This has been shaped by the experience of our managing partner who spent nearly 15 years as an associate at firms such as Nomura, Emaar, and Kochhar & Co before setting up his practice here at Corrida Legal. Your business requires legal advice which does not lose sight of commercial realities.
How Corrida Legal Is Different in Its Approach?
Most legal firms would say that they are “client-centered” – that is one of those statements that don’t mean anything anymore since everybody says that. But at least we could show you what a client-centered approach actually looks like. The problem with corporate law is that it influences not only the inception of your organisation but also all of your processes. Binding corporate contracts determine your capacity to maintain trade secrets, data privacy policies affect your fundraising opportunities since today, investors do their DPDP audit, and vendor contracts influence your operational risks that only become evident in case of huge financial losses from disputed lawsuits. These are not separate legal documents located in separate folders. They are integral parts of your corporate architecture, and we approach them exactly in this way. This is where our approach to not only review each document comprehensively but to also review its impact on the other processes comes into play.
When a new client approaches us, we don’t use templates first. We start asking questions. Could you describe your system of income generation? Who are the key stakeholders? Where do you think will be the source of regulatory risks for the next 18 months? What is your exit strategy? Are there any plans to raise funds, if yes, when? Those aren’t things that most lawyers are concerned about. But they’re precisely the sort of questions that help decide whether the legal framework that we design is going to help the company or just sit around gathering dust until some emergency makes multi-billion-dollar businesses pull it out. This approach also allows us to provide new founders with potential alternative operational structures which we have witnessed from our years of experience that may assist them to meet their business objectives.
We have designed Corrida Legal based on the principle we call “protection with courage”. We don’t just defend our clients; we design agreements that allow our clients to negotiate from strength. We design options into our agreements, not obstacles for people. Compliance is something that we design in order to help our clients grow, not prevent them from moving forward. Far too many companies treat legal as just another cost-centre, something they only get involved with when put in an uncomfortable situation because of uninvited lawsuits. We help our clients because we really do what we claim we do. Our approach is to be with our clients throughout the entire process and to ensure that they don’t face financial risk from missed compliance or a missed clause during the document review.
It’s not just the team’s experience that counts, but also our team composition. Pushkar Thakur, who leads our practice, has managed legal teams at Fortune 500 companies and at leading law firms. We have been through those situations where the board expects quickness and the regulator insists on precision. It comes as no surprise, but we have the know-how and expertise to blend the business need with the legal rigour.
We also do not subscribe to that “one-size-fits-all” mentality that characterizes this industry. The legal requirements of a SaaS start-up going through the Series A round of financing are entirely different from an FMCG company trying to acquire its competitor or a manufacturing business trying to set up shop in a new state. We tailor our solution every single time not only from the legal perspective but also to the client’s operational and financial requirements. And, that is what makes us the best corporate law firm in India.
STARTUPS: SETUP & INVESTOR READINESS
We partner with founders from the very beginning. Entity structuring, incorporation, and all the necessary regulatory filings, founder agreements, and ESOP pools. The whole periphery is taken care of. But here’s the truth; that’s where we truly deliver value – by helping companies become investment-ready. We prep companies for investor due diligence long before the investors themselves even come into the picture. Clear capitalization tables. Properly drafted board resolutions. Regulatory filings without any loopholes. Investment documents that stand up against the scrutiny of the VC lawyer. We have walked startups through their seed rounds all the way up to Series B and further. We know exactly what institutional investors need right out of the gate.
COMMERCIAL & OPERATIONAL CONTRACTS
It is here that business becomes more than handshakes and enters the area of enforceability. We draft and negotiate joint ventures, franchises, software as a service agreement, master services agreements, reseller agreements, distribution agreements, and virtually any agreement between two parties you can think of. What do we spend most of our time doing? Looking at those clauses that no one pays attention to until something goes wrong. Indemnity. Termination events. Scope of non-competition. Force majeure. Dispute resolution procedures. Those are the clauses that dictate how things will go down when things start going wrong. And they will start going wrong. This isn’t pessimism. It’s reality. We also review such contracts from the perspective of operational reporting and the method to reduce the same. This approach ensures that the operations are seamless, financially less constraining and contain the fewest hurdles for our client.
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (M&A)
Mergers and acquisitions are not jokes, and we handle them accordingly. We handle our clients’ transactions end-to-end. From structuring to due diligence of organizational papers, financial statements, intellectual property rights, material agreements, taxes, and risk of litigation. To drafting SPAs, stock subscription agreements along with necessary protections like representations, warranties, indemnities, and conditions precedent. Filing with CCI and sectoral regulators. Post transaction compliance. We have dealt with buyers and sellers alike. We understand that each one is unique. We don’t just conduct the due diligence; we quantify each point of concern and how it will impact the deal. We implement the necessary provisions in the documents to ensure that our client is protected against future risks.
INDIA ENTRY & FOREIGN INVESTMENTS
Regulatory framework is an area that international enterprises must navigate while assessing India as a market and can be rather challenging if not for proper legal assistance. We offer consultation on choice of organizational structure. Wholly owned subsidiary, branch office, liaison office, project office, or joint venture. It all depends on the industry, amount of investment, and your long-term goals. We deal with FDI regulations, sector caps, pricing policies, instruments for investment, FEMA applications, and RBI clearances. From greenfield to brownfield projects, we have experience with both types and know the regulatory hurdles ahead so we can help you navigate your path. We review your operational structure and help to strategize operational mechanisms to protect you against the uncertainty of whether the foreign investment requires government approval or not.
CORPORATE LAWS ADVISORY, COMPLIANCES & TAXATION
Nobody cares much about corporate governance, but neglect it, and you will learn quickly what it means. We deal with board composition, duties of directors, related party transactions, oppression and mismanagement issues, CSR responsibilities, and all necessary annual compliance activities. ROC filings, board resolutions, shareholder resolutions, statutory registers – all of that and more. As for taxes, our focus is on ensuring the efficiency of your operations, without crossing the line into anything too aggressive. Direct taxes, GST on transactions, TDS provisions, transfer pricing if needed – everything you need to know about taxes.
FUNDRAISING ADVISORY & DOCUMENTATION
From angel investment through to Series C fundraising from a major PE investor, we work on structuring deals and preparing all the required documentation. Term sheets. Shareholders’ agreement. Share Subscription agreement. SPAs. Convertible notes. Board approval. Shareholder approval. We negotiate those terms that matter in such transactions: anti-dilution clause, liquidation preference clause, tag along and drag along clause, reserved matters and exit strategy. We have worked for both founders and investors and know very well what the important terms are for each party. The opportunity to work with both sides has enabled us to ensure that whilst advising on the fundraising, we focus on protecting the interests of the parties whilst ensuring that the document focuses on long term growth and is executed in a timely manner.
LAWS ON FINTECH AND E-COMMERCE
If you are operating in this digital domain, you are operating in a complex regulatory environment that is always in flux. Guidelines issued by RBI for payment aggregators and NBFCs, e-commerce rules 2020 under Consumer Protection E-Commerce Rules, liability of intermediaries under IT Act and now DPDPA on top of all that. We assist our clients with respect to fintech and e-commerce businesses in licensing, intermediary liability, terms of service and payment structures among others. Contract-wise, we draft marketplace agreements, seller on-boarding documents and terms that require careful legal scrutiny without deterring the consumer.
DPDPA READINESS AND DATA PROTECTION
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act is now in place. Non-compliance comes at a cost and non-compliance will cost dearly. We do data mapping to understand your data footprint: what personal data you collect, where it is stored and who accesses it. Next comes the structure: privacy policy, consent mechanism, data processing agreement, modification of vendor agreements, and governance framework. As far as cross-border movement of data is concerned, we can help you deal with GDPR issues, standard contractual clauses, record of processing, and breach notification. And finally, we can assist you in dealing with data vault requirements and employee data protection policy that will really comply with the present-day laws. We ensure that we review your entire data collection mechanism and provide you with our opinion on how the operational model can be shifted to privacy by design. We also provide DPDP Act training to our clients to ensure that each stakeholder is well versed with the provisions of the law.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION
IP management throughout its entire life cycle – search, filing, prosecution, and opposition procedures at the Registry; patent-related services include prior art search, novelty analysis, drafting of specifications, and successful application prosecution until grant; if you suspect any infringement of your intellectual property rights, then we have solutions for you: cease and desist letters, infringement lawsuits, passing off suits, and injunctions. Additionally, we audit business agreements in terms of their failure to protect IP properly. We also assist our clients by conducting due diligence of the intellect property and structuring of deals based on our evaluation of the same.
DISPUTE RESOLUTION
Disagreements arise. And even with the most solid agreements and the best intentions, some of you might find yourself in legal battles. This is when we assist our clients to appear before the Supreme Court, High Courts, NCLT, Debt Recovery Tribunals, RERA, consumer forums and district courts in India requiring civil recovery as a result of disputes arising out of the contract. Insolvency under the IBC 2016. Property related cases. Criminal white collar cases including EOW. Labour issues relating to termination and non-compete clause. Consumer issues. Additionally, we provide legal assistance for both national and international arbitrations, mainly in construction, EPC and commercial agreements. We always prefer settling when it makes sense. But when it doesn’t, we help you fight the right battle at the right time.
Conclusion
Corporate law is not just another practice area. Corporate law is the backbone of all your business decisions. Recruitment. Financing. Growth. M&A. This is the field that defines your operational structure and the defence of what you have created.
At Corrida Legal, we consolidate this broad scope of expertise across our multiple office locations. No scattered guidance from five different firms. No competing opinions. A firm with one ideology which sees the bigger picture and provides its recommendations accordingly. This ensures that our service provides you with clarity and allows you to focus on what is important.
Be it a startup entrepreneur struggling with the initial shareholding agreement, an in-house lawyer looking for some help in handling a complicated international transaction, or an investor who has to perform due diligence properly and promptly, we have been there and done that multiple times. Most likely, several times. And this time we will put the same energy into solving your problem.
Our approach is simple. Legal strategies to protect your business and enable its growth. Simple, no-nonsense legal advice. Nothing extra and nothing complicated. We offer clear, commercially minded legal advice from people who understand the implications of signing on the dotted line. Additionally, we aim not only to provide you with legal advice, but also to assist you with each operational aspect arising out of that advice.
If your business needs a dedicated corporate lawyer in India who looks past the list of compliance tasks, who understands not just the legal risks, but also the commercial consequences, then we need to talk. Contact Corrida Legal to schedule a meeting now.