Indian law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co has been mandated to assist Hexaware Technologies, an AI-focused tech company backed by Carlyle Group, on its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) in India, which is expected to raise $1.2 billion.

Latham & Watkins is acting as international counsel to the bookrunning lead managers, which include Kotak Mahindra Capital, Citigroup Global Markets, JPMorgan, HSBC, and IIFL Securities.

The IPO will consist entirely of an offer for sale (OFS) of shares by CA Mangum, an affiliate of Carlyle Group, which owns about 95 percent of Hexaware. Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas is also advising Carlyle Group on the OFS. 

Hexaware Technologies was one of six companies to receive a nod from the capital markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to launch their public issues. This indicates a strong pipeline of public offerings despite the recent downturn in the market. The other five companies are PEMA Solar Tech, Scoda Tubes, Ajax Engineering, Alltime Plastics, and Vikran Engineering.

The India regulator, on the other hand, had returned the offer documents of Anand Rathi Share and Stock Brokers, the brokerage arm of the financial services firm Anand Rathi Group, which had aimed to raise around $90 million through the IPO, ET NOW reported. 

The capital markets team at SAM was led by national practice head Prashant Gupta and partner Ruth Chenchiah, along with principal associate Sanjana Chowdhary and associates Megha Mehta, Shivang Aggarwal, and Apoorva Tyagi. 

SAM’s corporate team advising the Carlyle Group was led by partners Abhishek Guha and Tanya Uppal. 

The Latham team was led by partner  Rajiv Gupta and included partner Dominik Sklenar, and associates Esha Goel and Eunice Chan.