About the Founder
Hussain Dholkawala is the Founder of the Firm. He is a member of the State Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa and a qualified Company Secretary. He has an overall working experience of 8 years.
He began his career working with a Practicing Company Secretary and was assigned the task to look after day to day compliance's of Companies, LLP's, and Partnership Firms. During his tenure with the Practicing Company Secretary, he was extensively involved in looking after Compliance's of Listed Companies with respect to erstwhile Listing Agreements, FEMA Regulations, SEBI Takeover Code Compliance, Insider Trading Regulation, and Registrar of Companies (“ROC”) filing matters. He had an opportunity to lead a team and conduct Secretarial Audits under the Companies Act 2013 of India’s biggest corporate houses and Nifty50 companies.
He attended matters for Oppression and Mismanagement before the Company Law Board (“CLB”) and handled Merger and Amalgamation Petitions before the Hon’ble Bombay High Court, which led him discover his inclination and fondness for legal practice.
After an extensive and robust experience in Secretarial and Corporate Compliance, he choose to turn towards legal practice and enrolled himself as an Advocate in the State Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa.
Before founding H.D. Law, he was working with a law firm and has appeared in various courts, tribunals and quasi-judicial bodies. He has been regularly appearing before the NCLT, Mumbai and the Hon’ble Bombay High Court. During his tenure with the Law firm he has been part of matters where propositions of law were settled and reported by Courts and Tribunal. As for instance, a matter before Securities Appellate Tribunal (2019 SCC OnLine SAT 169) where the Appellate Tribunal held that a delay of 8 years in issuing Show Cause Notice (“SCN”) and imposing penalty will attract law of limitation and therefore quashed and set aside the SCN issued by SEBI on the grounds of limitation.
He has was part of a reported Judgment of the Hon’ble Bombay High Court delivered by Hon’ble Justice R.D. Dhanuka, where two leading film production houses of the country were disputing contractual terms. The Hon’ble High Court set aside the Award of Arbitral Tribunal in a Petition filed under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 inter-alia stating that the award shows total perversity and patent illegality as the Tribunal has failed to appreciate the evidences placed on record during arbitral proceedings. In a slightly different case from his forte, he was part of a matter involving admiralty jurisdiction, where the Hon’ble Bombay High Court in 2018 SCC Online Bom 86 held that arrest of vessel is sine qua non (essential condition) for attracting admiralty jurisdiction and thus only arrest of cargo without vessel was held to be beyond the scope of admiralty jurisdiction.
Besides litigation and dispute resolution, he has extensive experience in handling transaction matters and has done various Private Equity Transactions, M&A Transactions, Corporate Restructuring, Joint Ventures, Negotiations and Drafting of various Agreements and Contracts including NDA’s and Service Level Agreements for IT Companies, EPC Contracts, Technology Transfer Agreement, Shareholders Agreement, drafting and formulating ESOP scheme, vetting an Employee Handbook for an IT Company. He has been regularly assisting, advising and representing the ‘Insolvency Professionals’ on various aspects of an evolving law, ‘Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016’.
He is a business enthusiast and loves to meet and assist people having different business ideas and aspirations. The proud moment in his career was to assist a 63 year old 'Young Entrepreneur' to incorporate his first company and start his own business. When he is not analyzing the legal issues you can find him exploring new places, gardening and reading.