Arvind Gurumurthy

Joint Managing Partner (South Region)

Arvind leads the South India Practice from Bengaluru, Karnataka, across Private Equity, Venture, Capital, M&A, General Corporate, and Intellectual Property & Technology, while co-heading the Labour & Employment and Real Estate verticals. With nearly 20 years of experience, he has advised on several complex domestic and cross-border investments, M&A, joint venture and strategic acquisitions.

Arvind also supports several small to large corporates on regulatory compliances, commercial contracts, real estate transactions. Arvind is also intrinsically entrenched in the startups ecosystem having advised several startups on their fundraising, corporate governance, stock options, internal policies & employment related documentation in addition to collaborating with several startup accelerators to conduct mentoring sessions and workshops for emerging entrepreneurs.

He holds a law degree from Bangalore University and a Master’s from UCLA and is admitted to the Bar Council of India and the New York Bar. His expertise is reflected in thought leadership pieces published in Mondaq, IVCA Magazine, and Jus Laboris Network.

Indicative Experience

Corporate Advisory

Regular advisor to several large MNCs and domestic companies on various areas such as general corporate, regulatory, IP, Data Privacy, Labour & Employment, Real Estate (sale & acquisition), Setting up operations (including factory, warehouse), Licenses & Registrations etc.
Drafting and advice on numerous types of business and commercial contracts, technical collaboration & IP ownership contracts, Asset Sale agreements, IP license and assignment agreements, Confidentiality & Non-disclosure agreements etc. and advice & assistance on making IP Ownership claims.

Mergers & Acquisition

Involved in advising on several cross-border acquisitions transactions with ticket size ranging from $5 – $100 Mn representing globally reputed companies such as ALS Global, SHAREit Technologies, Borzo Delivery, Corning, etc. and also been involved in advising Indian companies being acquired by global companies.
Involved in advising on the India leg of global acquisitions which involves complexities pertaining to transfer of movable & immovable assets, IP, employees, contracts etc.
Involved in advising on several cross border and domestic joint venture & strategic collaboration arrangements of varied ticket sizes.

Investment

Involved in advising numerous venture capital investment transactions by reputed venture capital investors (such as Oiko Credit, Cabra VC, Rebright Partners, Omnivore Partners, Accel India, Kalaari Capital etc.) which has included conducting due diligence, drafting & negotiations on transaction & closing documentation.
Recently advised a well reputed startup on Series C funding of USD 20 Mn from marquee offshore investors. Similarly, have advised numerous early to growth stage companies in varied sectors such as agri-tech, fintech, health tech, machine learning & artificial intelligence, automotive, consumer products etc. on fund raise transactions of ticket size ranging from USD 2 Mn to USD 25 Mn.
Advised on ODI investments by Indian entities into coal, gold, IT, oil & infrastructure companies in countries outside India such as US, Ghana, Columbia etc.
Advised on restructuring the shareholding of companies from India to Singapore, US and re-domiciling holding entities outside India into India.
Advised on several debt related transactions – including venture debts, syndicated loans from banking consortium, hire-purchase agreements etc. which has included preparing all the necessary documentation related to such transactions.

Cyber Security & data Protection

Advise on data privacy & cyber security related issues – ranging from advising on data collection, processing, storage/retention, purging etc. based on applicable regulations which includes Indian data privacy laws, GDPR etc. in collaboration with cross border experts for providing such advice.

Labour & Employment

Advised and assisted on several employment related issues such as drafting various employment agreements and policies, employee severance, structuring of compensation and benefits, consulting and secondment arrangements, resolving employee-employer disputes (including labour union issues before labour tribunal), carrying out internal legal audit enlisting external experts specializing in labour related filings etc.;
Collaborating with industry experts to advice & assist with drafting of necessary policy/framework document required under the POSH, external member in Internal Complaints Committee (required under POSH), conducting regular POSH training sessions etc.

Real Estate

Advised several large companies on lease, sale, acquisition of real estate property, which includes conducting property title diligence, drafting, negotiation and finalisation of Sale Agreements, Lease agreements, Loan and mortgage related agreements etc. Also involved in advising landowners on high value Joint Development & Construction Agreements, cross border investments in construction & real estate projects in India & repatriation of proceeds.