Argus Partners, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM), Herbert Smith Freehills and IndusLaw have acted for parties involved in Goldman Sachs’ USD130 million acquisition of a majority stake in PeopleStrong Technologies.
IndusLaw acted as legal counsel to Plenty Private Equity and Multiples Private Equity, the controlling shareholders of PeopleStrong Technologies, along with certain other selling shareholders, in connection with the acquisition.
“The deal involved complex pre-deal restructuring, including international assets,” transaction team lead partner for IndusLaw Aakash Dasgupta told India Business Law Journal.
“Stakeholder interests had to be balanced such that the buyer was investing only in the relevant assets and the sellers were able to carve out the other assets, whilst ensuring deal certainty. It was an intense and demanding deal for the entire team, but very satisfying to finally see it over the line.”
Dasgupta received assistance from principal associate Tushar Gogoi, senior associate Aditya Kumar and associates Ravin Abhyankar, Anshul Bhuwalka, Ayushi Gupta and Khushi Vardhan. The transaction also involved the corporate secretarial team, while founding partner Kartik Ganapathy provided strategic input on certain aspects of the deal.
CAM advised Goldman Sachs as transaction counsel, with senior partner Ravindra Bandhakavi and partner Srabanee Ghosh leading the team. Principal associate Akshat Parmar, senior associate Sudarshan Srikanth, senior associate designate Aishwarya Dixit, and associate Aeruva Akash assisted. The due diligence, IT and IP teams also provided support.
Herbert Smith Freehills served as international legal counsel to Goldman Sachs.
Argus Partners acted for the founders and management team of PeopleStrong as well as its existing investor, HDFC Bank, in this transaction.
Partner Rachika Agrawal Sahay led the transaction team, with the assistance of principal associate Siddhant Satapathy, senior associate Mrinal Mishra and associate Govind Sharma.
The team advising HDFC Bank comprised partners Adity Chaudhury and Arka Majumdar, along with associates Pulkit Gera and Sakshi Mehta.
Partner Udit Mendiratta and associate Apeksha Singh advised PeopleStrong on data retention policy matters.
The transaction was structured as a secondary sale of shares, involving the transfer of ownership from existing shareholders to Goldman Sachs. The firm advised the selling shareholders on all aspects of the transaction, including the negotiation and finalisation of the share purchase agreement and ancillary documents.
PeopleStrong is a prominent HR technology company and SaaS provider headquartered in Gurugram. The company works on innovative digital HR products and platforms.
