ASM ORIGIN STORY

ASM Law Offices is the brainchild of Shikha Sachdeva, who currently serves as the firm’s Managing Partner.

Shikha started her career working in a highly prestigious law dealing in IPR (Intellectual Property Rights). While the job was lucrative, it involved long days, and thankless hours. Reaching her breaking point, Shikha decided to leave the job in June 2008, to take a break and get in touch with why she got into law in the first place.  Over the next few months, she spent a lot of time in her favourite place- the Delhi High Court canteen meeting old friends! It was through one of her friends, Viraj, that the beginnings of ASM started to take shape. 

Viraj gave Shikha a reality check and put her back on her path to her one true calling- law. His advice was that she needed to start her own practice, and while Shikha had many reservations, as a woman in a male dominated industry and with no connections in the industry, but she agreed to take a small space in his office and work out of it for the time being. 

This was her first office- a small table and chair set up at Viraj’s office, with no work at hand. However, through sheer tenacity and thanks to Viraj’s guidance, Shikha met her soon to be first client, in 2009, which would lead to her being the custodian of one of the biggest hospitality brands in the country. Working diligently, with no employees at the time, she soon landed another client who is still with the firm to date. 

After an arduous few months, Shikha hired her first employee in April 2009, Surender, her office boy. At the end of 2009, she decided to shift the practice- to her grandmother’s outhouse, complete with leaky roofs! Her apprehension grew, but so did her clientele, and in the next five years she grew her practice exponentially, finally moving to her current office in South Extension in 2014.

While the path was tough and involved a lot of transitions- from plush offices to outhouses and from earning comfortably to scraping to pay employees, the end result was a well-established and well-versed IPR firm with clients who have stuck it out and believed in what ASM brings to the table. 

The major turning point for ASM was when they landed the Indian portfolio of a major international client in 2012- after that there was no looking back. Now with over 10 full time employees, a plush South Extension office and the Rising Star Award from the Indian Business Law Journal in 2019 (an award that took Shikha by surprise since she hadn’t even applied), ASM has proved what grit, determination, friendship and expertise can accomplish for a single woman in a male led industry- the sky is the limit!