Anant Merathia & Associates (AMA) is a young boutique law firm established in 2017. Drawing on his unique experience of having exposure to the legal practice in Singapore and in India for more than a decade, Anant embarked on the establishment of his firm, AMA, which initially started with just 3 members and now consists of 11 dedicated members, including 9 lawyers. Moreover, the firm services clients across borders through its ASEAN Plus partner law firms.
AMA focuses on corporate advisory, contractual disputes, corporate insolvency & commercial disputes before the NCLT, NCLAT & High Courts. Apart from this, the firm is actively engaged in commercial arbitrations & mediations, cases before the RERA, REAT, DRT, DRAT & NGT. The firm celebrates diversity as it boasts of clientele from the steel, building & real estate, logistics, energy, coal, food industry, artificial intelligence, technology, sports, finance sectors, and the Big Four firms amongst others.
AMA has advised multiple distressed companies and successfully restructured and resuscitated some of them from the clutches of corporate death and veered them towards stability. In the last 2 years, AMA has ventured into advisory on cleantech, IP and fintech practices.
Role In Aiding SMEs
As a lawyer with about 17 years of experience, Anant observed that in India decent sized companies be it public or private, whether family run or managed by close aides, having turnovers to the tune of about INR 500 to 750 crores, the spotlight is always on expansion and growth of the business. AMA is cognizant of the bandwidth challenges faced by these companies and has been advising them on and handling corporate and legal issues ranging across spectrums be it restructuring, distress management, shareholder & board issues, compliance checks, protection of rights, financial recoveries etc in an end-to-end manner and providing holistic solutions.
Litigation entails incurring costs & losing time which AMA believes will be significantly prejudicial to a growing business; hence AMA’s approach is to consciously avoid adversarial litigation unless it is inevitable. AMA has always kept the bigger picture in sight and strived to ensure that ADR mechanisms especially mediation and supervised negotiations are relied upon in case of internal disputes, i.e., between business counterparts, partners & stakeholders etcetera and turning to litigation only as a last resort. Catering to the client’s requirements by keeping their interests, brand image, enterprise value & peace of mind in the forefront is another trait of AMA.
Pandemic – A Pivoting Period!
The major learning curve for Anant and his team was during the pandemic when they learnt the art of survival, coordinating and working with members using new technology and embracing the remote working mechanism with all its lessons of patience, perseverance and persistence. The global black swan event taught the members of the firm to try and keep their morale’s high and always look for the silver lining.
Ama’s Vision Of Grooming Young Legal Eagles
Anant’s areas of responsibilities include leading strategy discussions with clients, advising them on complex legal issues and representing their interests in courts of law and tribunals, in addition to guiding the team on various litigations they handle.
Anant is a huge believer of teamwork and is hopeful that his core team of budding lawyers will take the baton forward in the coming years. While the team is young and the median age has been around 27, each member is entrenched into the practice with a few years of experience under their belts and strives to run and handle their own clients, briefs and files which according to Anant is a key contributing factor to the growth of AMA.
