Knowledge
Research and in-depth analysis - longer pieces that take a subject apart properly: the statute, the regulator's practice, the case law, and what a board should do about it.
Long Read
5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
Two overlapping international frameworks now mean that a bank account, investment, or trust interest an Indian-resident family member holds in almost any major financial centre is very likely being automatically reported to Indian tax authorities, without the…
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5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
The Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988, substantially strengthened by the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016, is generally associated in public discussion with large-scale tax evasion and money laundering. For private client…
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5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
Section 56(2)(x) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 - the provision taxing gifts as "income from other sources" unless a specific exemption applies - is, in principle, a straightforward anti-abuse rule: it exists to prevent income from being disguised as a tax-free…
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5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
As Indian family wealth grows and becomes more concentrated in fewer, larger estates, and as families become more geographically dispersed and less uniformly involved in an aging parent's later-life decisions, disputes over the validity of a will have become…
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5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
India's succession framework is built on personal law - a person's religion generally determines which statute governs their intestate succession, and to some extent constrains their testamentary freedom (most notably for Muslims, whose bequeathable estate is…
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6 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
Indian families formalising philanthropic giving - moving from ad hoc donations to a dedicated vehicle for sustained family philanthropy - face a genuine structural choice among three principal legal forms: a trust, a society, and a Section 8 company. Each…
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5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
The Income-tax Act, 2025 comes into effect from 1 April 2026, replacing the Income-tax Act, 1961 as the governing statute for direct taxation in India. For most taxpayers, this has been discussed primarily as a compliance and drafting exercise - renumbered…
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6 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
Few areas of Indian private client law generate as much recurring client confusion - and litigation - as the legal status of a "nominee." The doctrine has developed unevenly across statutes (the Insurance Act, 1938; the Companies Act, 1956 and 2013; the…
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4 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
India's family office landscape has expanded rapidly - from a few dozen formal structures a decade ago to several hundred today, driven by rising promoter wealth, the maturing of first-generation entrepreneurial fortunes, and an anticipated multi-generational…
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4 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
India's General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR), contained in Chapter X-A of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (and carried forward in substance into the Income-tax Act, 2025), gives tax authorities the power to disregard or recharacterise an "impermissible avoidance…
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4 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
Offshore trusts - settled in jurisdictions such as Singapore, Jersey, Guernsey, Mauritius, or the Cayman Islands - have long featured in the planning of Indian families with international business interests, children settled abroad, or wealth accumulated…
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4 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
For decades, the Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) was a default recommendation in Indian family tax and succession planning - a "free" additional taxable entity that could hold ancestral property and split income across an extra basic exemption slab. That default…
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5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
When an individual with assets, family, and legal ties spanning more than one country dies, more than one country's succession law can plausibly claim to govern the estate. Indian private international law resolves much of this through a relatively settled,…
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4 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 substituted Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, conferring on daughters coparcenary rights in joint family property by birth, on the same terms as sons - a foundational correction to a statute that had,…
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5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
A family constitution (sometimes called a family charter or family governance document) is a document a business-owning or wealth-holding family adopts to record shared values, governance principles, succession philosophy, and rules for family members'…
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5 minute read
Private Client & Family Wealth
On 25 October 2025 (delivered 1 August 2025, per the reported judgment date), the Madras High Court, in Rhutikumari v. Zanmai Labs Pvt. Ltd. & Ors. (O.A. No. 194 of 2025; neutral citation 2025:MHC:2437), delivered the first clear Indian judicial pronouncement…
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10 minute read
Policy Research & Legal Opinions
A concept note on structuring startup–investor discovery around graded confidentiality under Indian company, securities, contract and data protection law.
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12 min read
Corporate Governance & Board Advisory
The era of voluntary ESG disclosure has ended. With BRSR Core assurance reaching the top 1,000 listed entities by FY 2026-27, boards carry personal exposure for supply chain compliance and for every environmental claim they sign off.
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18 min read
Cross-Border, Fintech & Emerging Technology
What Indian boards must govern before the next hallucination, deepfake or training-data dispute - liability routes, the 2026 synthetic-content rules, training-data audits and a 90-day readiness plan.
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8 minute read
Private Equity & Venture Capital
A founder's field guide to who is actually on the cap table - angels, micro VCs, corporate venture arms, crowdfunding platforms and late-stage capital, and the governance that comes with each.
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9 minute read
Managing "governance concerns" in independent director resignations - what SEBI now expects, where the real exposure sits, and what the HDFC Bank episode taught every board.
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