Starting a venture is an uphill task which must be conquered in a step-by-step manner. The first step in establishing a successful venture, entrepreneurs suggest, is recognising the need of the clients and capturing the requirement as an opportunity. While practising in a corporate set up in Hyderabad, Raghu Babu Gunturu and Prashant Jain noticed that a lot of clients in Hyderabad were being serviced by the firms from Mumbai. This arrangement of working remotely had its own limitation in accessibility and pricing exposing a clear gap in the market. It opened an avenue for mid-segment law firms to come up where corporates could get good professional legal advice. This realisation led the duo to come up with their legal firm christened ‘Samisti’. The literal meaning of Samisti is United or together. Justifying the name, Raghu says, “Whatever we do would like to keep our interest aligned with that of other stakeholders could be a client or an employee who are our biggest stakeholders.”
The Founders
Raghu has over two decades of experience in corporate secretarial and legal services. He brings in strategic direction to the firm, mentors the team, challenges the status quo to better it, introduces new practice areas etc.,
Prashant Jain, an Advocate and a qualified CS, has over a decade of legal experience in niche areas of Corporate laws. He is a dynamic young professional, out-of-the-box thinker with vivid and thorough knowledge on the subject. He has extensively worked on matters relating to Corporate and commercial laws, Forex, start-up/angel funding, Private Equity/VC Transactions, acquisitions, structure debts, Joint ventures, mergers, de-mergers, representations in NCLTs for IBC matters, M&A and O&M matters, and all kinds of business re-structuring, cross border investments, and capital markets. He has been sharing knowledge and insights on his core practice areas through the numerous speaking engagements for which he is invited from time to time. He is supported by a team which consists of interdisciplinary professionals like advocates and company secretaries who together leverage their knowledge, expertise and experience in providing quality legal services.
Services across Sectors
The initial years were tough and were more towards laying a foundation. The subsequent years saw an exponential growth due to the good word recognised by clients and word of mouth publicity. The firm now renders its services not only to clients spread all over India but also to international clients engaged in diverse businesses. Samisti has a great client base of well-established companies, institutional funded emerging businesses and has also been servicing start-ups and incubation. It has been doing decent work in transaction advisory for capital raising, M&A, Insolvency &Bankruptcy, and General Corporate Advisory.
A few characteristics which set it apart are a hands-on approach, deep involvement with the clients to understand their commercial intent, thereby adding value to the transaction. Samisti also closely works with various overseas clients and has informal affiliations with overseas law and accounting firms. This has helped it to garner valuable insight into various legal and commercial needs of those clients.
Prepping for Challenges
The firm believes that the legal industry is quite fragmented with millions of firms and individuals practising and is facing many challenges. To sum them up:
- The democratisation of professional services and technology are disrupting corporate law firms.
- The traction gained by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to impact the paralegal area and can be a big differentiator.
- The pressure to rein in legal costs has forced law firms to diverge from the traditional billable-hours model.
- Onboarding talented lawyers with the right skill set and the right attitude to work is quite often a challenge.
- Given the overlap between accounting and law services, accounting firms are investing heavily in their legal service arms leading to increased competition.
Words of Wisdom
Samisti regularly works with start-ups, incubators and accelerators and charges very nominal costs. Prashant advises them to ensure that while focussing on their core business, they must give equal importance to the Legal and compliance needs. He says, “They must ensure that they avail Legal advice since the inception, make the right moves, have the legal documents in place in order to avoid any unforeseen complexities that may arise in future.”
Gearing Up!
In the coming years, increasingly sophisticated legal technology will become a baseline expectation for the clients, with automated due diligence already making an impact on deals. Samisti would be focusing on and investing more on this. It is prepared for radical changes in staffing profiles, recruitment, retention, graduate education and continuous development. The reality calls for a systematic approach to scan for potential developments and identify, embrace and pre-empt new entrants through collaboration and competition. The firm is all set to go a long way with a clear vision and a futuristic approach.
