Poovayya & Co increases footprint to Mumbai with Alliance Legal co-founder Vishnu Jerome Poovayya also initiates re-branding exercise

Poovayya & Co., which has offices in Bangalore, Chennai, and Delhi, has recently expanded its footprint to Mumbai, with Alliance Legal co-founder Vishnu Jerome, merging his practice with the firm. Vishnu will have equity in the new firm. This takes the total number of partners at the firm to 6.

Poovayya & Co. has also initiated a re-branding exercise, including changing the firm’s logo to P&C Legal, which will be completed over a period of time.

Talking about the firm’s rebranding, Sajan Poovayya said, “Poovayya & Co will go through a process where P&C Legal will be used as the firm’s logo and over a period of time, the firm will undergo a transition”.

Speaking to Bar & Bench on Vishnu’s joining, Sajan said, “With Vishnu coming on board along with his team, we now have a total strength of 75 people including lawyers, other professionals and staff members. It is a good number to have in terms of the bandwidth. We had a footprint in all the major cities except the financial capital which is Mumbai”.

“Vishnu is somebody I have worked with for many years and who I know absolutely well, [and this] has made this merger even easier and our services even more seamless”, added Sajan.

The Mumbai office has been operational since the second week of January this year. There are five lawyers currently working with Vishnu with plans to expand. The Mumbai office is located at Embassy Centre, Nariman Point.

Speaking to Bar & Bench, Vishnu Jerome said that the new office would focus on general corporate work while also looking to expand the firm’s litigation and real estate practice. On his decision to partner with Poovayya, Vishnu said that the move was backed by three, important considerations: the opportunity to extend the firm’s practice area, tapping the pan-Indian presence enjoyed by Poovayya & Co, and the fact that he has a strong relationship with Poovayya’s founding partner, Sajan Poovayya. “We go back a long way”, said Vishnu, “so there is complete trust between us.”

Vishnu Jerome graduated from National Law School of India University, Bangalore in 2002, and worked with Poovayya & Co’s Bangalore office for close to two years before moving to AZB & Partners where he was made Partner in 2008. In June 2011, Vishnu resigned from AZB to form Alliance Legal. Vishnu has built his specialization in M&A, Banking Finance and Private Equity working on big ticket deals including Jacob Ballas’s Rs.100 crore investment in DBM Geotechnics.

Vishnu declined to comment on the dissolution of Alliance Legal, a firm he co-founded in 2011 with TTA’s Ravi Kumar and JSA’s Priyanka Roy, who has recently joined the Mumbai office of IndusLaw as equity partner.