KBase - The NovoJuris Quarterly, June 2015

KBase - The NovoJuris Quarterly, June 2015

Making Your Money Work For You

If you have raised private equity, it usually is for executing the plan over a period of 12 to 18 months, unless the fund raise is to acquire another entity/business. While deployment is over a period of time, where would you park the money till the time it is deployed? Continue reading

Board Member Copying and Executing Your Plan?

Here’s an ugly side of having a strategic investor on board, which we would like to believe is perhaps just a random, one-off case. A strategic investor and a board member hears to the whole plan and then executes and pushes the product in the same market, 15 days immediately after the launch by the startup. It is exactly same product that was discussed in the Board meeting. It took a very short time for the large team of the investor to actually work on the product and launch. Investment agreements have covenants, mostly for the founders. While investors have the flexibility of selling the shares or invest in a competitor, the clause on “Confidentiality”, details that all the parties to the agreement will keep the company’s information confidential. If the product is launched and is in the market, then the information is in public domain and can be copied? Should then, the agreement have a clause on non-compete for strategic investor? Continue reading

Packaged Goods: Do Labels Tell The Truth?

[caption id=attachment_970 align=alignnone width=300] Image Credit: alanrowe.com[/caption] In the fast paced world we consume a wide range of packaged goods. Some brands we consume based on trust built on the brand rather than checking the labels. Even for being an “informed customer”, the labels don’t provide all the information including some of the basic information such as sugar, fat, nutritional value, freshness and purity, etc. Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006; which also establishes the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the chief regulatory authority for laying down scientific standards for articles of food and regulate manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import, to ensure availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption. Reading through the labels, it is hard to find any common style of presentation and in some cases the exact quantum of the contents. We just started reading through some ingredients. Continue reading

More from our blog:

1. Negotiable Instrument Act streamlines the issue of jurisdiction 
2. Licensing / Registration Requirements for Food Mobile Vans
3. Product's Dependability: A Celebrity's Worry?
4. Security Related Provisions in IPR Laws
5. Legal Framework on Acquisition of Immovable Property in India by Foreign Nationals / NRIs / PIOs
6. Alternative Dispute Resolution - The Real Alternate? (part one, two,three)
7. Summary of FAQs released by ICAI on Corporate Social Responsibility
8. Freedom of Speech
9. RBI to relax Two-Step Authentication Rule for NFC Enabled Small Card Transactions
10. Adoption of Indian Accounting Standards (Ind-AS)

Updates from our Twitter handle: 

1. Supreme Court upholds constitutionality of Nation Company Law Tribunal and the Appelate. Enforcement of corporate cases may become quicker.
2. Service tax will be 14% from 1st June 2015.
3. Companies Act amendment approved and effective today - no minimum capital of Rs. 1 lakh. Common Seal is not mandatory.
4. Certificate of Commencement of Business (after incorporation) is now not required. Ordinary resolution for related party transactions.
5. Auditor to report fraud to central government only if above a specified (yet to come) threshold. Below the threshold in Board Report.
6. Loans to subsidiary, permitted through notification, is now part of the Act.
7. Incorporation forms - DIN, Name of co, charter documents now rolled into one. Reduces time taken.

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