Khaitan & Co advised Balkrishna Industries Ltd (BKT) on their strategic agreement with Pirelli to capture opportunities in the Indian car tyre market. The partnership unites Pirelli’s high-end technological leadership with BKT’s local industrial positioning and strong presence.
The first phase is an off-take agreement through which BKT will produce, in one of its own newly constructed plants equipped with the most advanced technology, up to 800,000 Pirelli-branded tyres by 2030 with Pirelli’s specific technological and quality standards.
This agreement paves the way for a second phase which envisages, subject to conditions, the creation of a 50-50 joint venture and the construction of a production plant dedicated to High Value car tyres, both with the Pirelli brand and the BKT brand to serve India and other international markets. A joint venture term sheet was signed by both parties in relation to the same.
The deal was assisted by:
Dispute Resolution: Sanjeev Kapoor (Senior Partner);
Capital Markets: Sudhir Bassi (Executive Director);
Indirect Tax aspects: Sudipta Bhattacharjee (Partner);
Direct Tax: Rahul Jain (Partner) and Krishnal Agrawal (Associate);
Intellectual Property: Adheesh Nargolkar (Partner), Shailendra Bhandare (Partner), Janaksinh Jhala (Counsel) and Abhishek Kumar (Principal Associate);
Competition / Antitrust: Anshuman Sakle (Partner) and Alisha Mehra (Principal Associate);
Employment Labour & Benefits: Deepak Kumar (Partner);
Projects & Project Finance Atman Desai (Partner) and Vivan Jhaveri (Associate).
The core team consisted of Purti Minawala (Partner), Ayush Sinha (Principal Associate), Abhijeet Kamath (Principal Associate), Shanay Patrawala (Associate) and Manvi Talwar (Associate)