Legal & Corporate Compliance

A founder agreement records what each founder contributes, owns and is responsible for, and what happens if one of them leaves. It is the document a first-time or early-stage team most needs and most often postpones. Putting it in place while founders are aligned prevents the equity and exit disputes that otherwise surface years later, usually just as you are trying to raise money.

A co-founder agreement goes deeper into the working relationship between two or more co-founders: equity splits, vesting schedules, decision rights, roles, and the consequences of a departure or a deadlock. Vesting in particular protects the company from a co-founder walking away early with a large, permanent stake. For any team with more than one founder, this is foundational rather than optional.

A shareholders agreement (SHA) governs the relationship between all shareholders, including promoters and investors: transfer restrictions, tag-along and drag-along rights, board composition, reserved matters, and exit provisions. It becomes essential the moment you take on outside investment, and investor counsel will expect a properly drafted one. A clean SHA aligned with your articles of association is central to any Indian fundraise.

Employment contracts define the terms of engagement with your team, but for a startup their most critical function is assigning intellectual property created by employees back to the company and binding confidentiality. Without this, the code, designs and work product your team produces may not clearly belong to the business. Every hire, from the first employee onward, should be engaged on a contract drafted for Indian employment law.

Vendor agreements govern your relationships with suppliers, service providers and contractors, covering scope, payment, liability, indemnity, confidentiality and termination. Founders frequently sign whatever the vendor puts in front of them, inheriting one-sided indemnities and obligations they never negotiated. Reviewing and drafting these on your terms controls a category of risk that is easy to ignore until a dispute makes it expensive.

A non-disclosure agreement protects confidential information you share with prospective partners, investors, employees or vendors before a fuller relationship is formalised. It matters most when you are discussing your product, technology or business model with parties who could use or leak it. A well-drafted, mutual or one-way NDA appropriate to the situation is a low-cost first line of defence for early-stage information.

A privacy policy explains how your business collects, uses, stores and shares personal data, and is now a legal necessity for any website or app handling user information, especially under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. It is not boilerplate to be copied from a competitor; it must reflect what your product actually does with data. A mismatch between your stated policy and your real practice is itself a liability.

Terms and conditions form the contract between your business and its users, setting out acceptable use, liability limits, payment terms, dispute resolution and governing law. Every customer-facing website, app or platform needs them, and they should be drafted for your specific offering rather than lifted from a template. Well-drafted terms are what you rely on when a user, customer or counterparty disputes something.

This is the full legal stack a live website or app requires, typically the privacy policy, terms and conditions, cookie and refund or return policies, and any disclaimers specific to your sector. Assembled together and kept consistent, they protect the business at its most exposed public surface. For any company transacting or collecting data online, this documentation is a baseline requirement, not an enhancement.

Trademark registration under the Trade Marks Act secures exclusive rights to your brand name and logo in the relevant classes of goods and services. For most startups the brand is a core asset, and while registration gives you strong statutory rights, Indian law also protects prior use, so filing early still matters to establish your position and avoid disputes. Correct class selection and a prior-mark search before filing are where experience prevents costly mistakes and oppositions.

Copyright protects original creative and literary works, including software code, written content, designs and artistic material. Protection exists on creation, but registration provides strong documentary evidence of ownership that is valuable in a dispute or during due diligence. For startups whose value sits in original content or code, registration is a practical step that strengthens an otherwise hard-to-prove claim.

Patent assistance supports founders with genuinely novel and non-obvious inventions in securing exclusive rights, from a prior-art search and drafting the specification to filing and prosecution before the Indian Patent Office. Patents are relevant to a minority of startups, typically in deep tech, hardware or process innovation, and the process is long and technical. Early, honest guidance on whether your invention is patentable saves significant time and cost.

Design registration under the Designs Act protects the visual appearance, shape, configuration or ornamentation of a product, as distinct from its function. It matters for businesses whose products have a distinctive look worth protecting from imitation. Because protection can be lost if the design is publicly disclosed before filing, registering before launch or public display is important, and timing is often where founders slip.

Annual ROC compliance covers the mandatory yearly filings every company must submit to the Registrar of Companies with the MCA, including financial statements and annual returns within their statutory deadlines. Missing these carries per-day penalties and can lead to strike-off and director disqualification under the Companies Act 2013. Keeping these filings current is the baseline obligation that keeps your company legally alive and in good standing.

Secretarial compliance covers the ongoing corporate housekeeping required under the Companies Act 2013: board and general meetings, minutes, statutory registers, resolutions and event-based filings. These obligations run continuously in the background and are easy to neglect when no one owns them. Maintained properly, they produce the clean corporate record that investors and acquirers examine first during due diligence.

Labour law compliance covers your obligations as an employer across central and state legislation, including Provident Fund, ESIC, professional tax and shops and establishment registrations, which are triggered as your headcount and payroll grow. Getting registered at the right thresholds and filing correctly avoids penalties and protects both the company and its employees. For a scaling startup, staying ahead of these thresholds prevents an accumulating and often overlooked liability.

POSH compliance addresses the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, which requires organisations of the requisite size to constitute an Internal Committee, adopt a policy, conduct awareness and file annual reports. It is a legal obligation, not a discretionary HR nicety, and non-compliance carries penalties. Establishing it correctly protects your people and your company, and it is frequently overlooked by young teams.

Legal advisory is ongoing counsel on the questions a growing business runs into: how to structure a deal, whether a clause is enforceable, how to respond to a notice, what a new regulation means for you. It matters because most legal decisions are made in the flow of business, not in a formal engagement, and having someone who already knows your company to ask changes the quality of those decisions. It is the difference between reacting to problems and preventing them.

Due diligence is the structured review of a company's legal, corporate and compliance position, whether you are preparing to raise funds, being examined by an investor, or assessing a company you intend to acquire or partner with. On the sell side, it means getting your house in order before someone else inspects it; on the buy side, it means knowing exactly what you are taking on. Thorough diligence protects valuation and prevents inherited liabilities.

Contract drafting is the bespoke preparation of any agreement your business needs beyond the standard set, drafted for your specific commercial situation rather than adapted from a generic template. Precise drafting is what determines whether an agreement protects you or exposes you when it is tested. Whenever the stakes or the structure are non-standard, a purpose-drafted contract is far safer than a repurposed one.

A pre-filing search across the Trade Marks Registry and common-law use to check whether your proposed name or logo is already taken in the relevant classes. Running this before you file — and before you print signage or build the website — is the cheapest way to avoid an objection, an opposition or a forced rebrand later.

If the Registry raises an examination objection, or a third party opposes your mark after advertisement, a well-argued written reply within the deadline keeps the application alive. We draft the response, establish distinctiveness and prior use, and represent your position through to a hearing where required.

When someone copies your registered brand, content or design, a firm cease-and-desist notice is usually the fastest, lowest-cost way to stop it. Where a notice is ignored, we advise on and support infringement and passing-off action to protect the asset you have built.

When the Copyright Office raises a discrepancy or a third party objects to your application, a timely, evidence-backed reply resolves it and moves the registration forward. We prepare the response and supporting documents so your ownership record stays clean.

A formal legal notice is often the quickest, lowest-cost way to enforce a right — unpaid dues, breach of contract, defamation or IP misuse — before it escalates to court. We draft and issue notices that are precise, well-grounded and taken seriously.

A clear sale-of-goods or buyer–seller agreement sets out price, delivery, warranties, risk, payment terms and dispute resolution, so routine commercial transactions never turn into disputes. We tailor each one to your product, margins and real-world risk.

Appointing or removing a director involves board and shareholder approvals, DIR-12 filing with the MCA and updates to your statutory registers — all within strict timelines. We handle the resolutions, forms and records so the change is valid and clean on the register.

When a company has served its purpose or lies dormant, an orderly closure — strike-off or winding up — ends ongoing compliance and liability instead of letting penalties quietly accrue. We advise the right route and manage the filings end to end.

Every LLP must file Form 11 (annual return) and Form 8 (statement of accounts and solvency) each year, plus its income-tax return, regardless of turnover or activity. We track the calendar and file on time so a dormant LLP never builds up avoidable penalties.

Closing an LLP you no longer need through Form 24 strike-off stops the recurring annual filings and the penalties that accrue on a defunct entity. We confirm eligibility, clear pending filings and manage the application through to closure.

Issuing, transferring or restructuring shares — onboarding an investor, buying out a co-founder, updating the cap table — needs the right instruments, approvals and MCA filings to be valid. We execute the paperwork so your ownership record and cap table stay accurate and diligence-ready.