Sarosh Zaiwalla, Founder and Senior Partner of Zaiwalla & Company Solicitors has launched the Ratanshaw Bomanjee Zaiwalla Scholarship in memory of his late father. Mr Zaiwalla senior was one of the first Indians to qualify as an English solicitor in 1925.

The Zaiwalla Scholarship will offer an ‘opportunity to young Indians wishing to study law at Oxford.’ 

Ms Shreya Prakash, who is the first recipient of the Zaiwalla Scholarship, is currently studying civil law (BCL) at Somerville College Oxford. Shreya is a graduate from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and has worked at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy in India assisting the Government of India with corporate and financial law reform. 

Talking about her passion for law Shreya Prakash said, “It is inspiring and, at the same time, humbling to be studying at the institution, which educated and empowered some of the greatest women of the 20th century including Indira Gandhi.” 

Delighted to honour his father Sarosh Zaiwalla said, “We live in the times of globalisation movement and, I hope, Shreya, in some ways, will join this movement by becoming one of India’s legal stars representing it with pride on the international arena. As it happens, my firm, which was established in 1982, was the first English Solicitors firm in the square mile started by a solicitor born and bred in India. At the time, it was revolutionary to say the least.”

For years, Zaiwalla & Co has been at the forefront of handling major cases from India and won for Indian Government its first case in the House of Lords concerning a shipping vessel called La Pintada. In acting for the Government of India, Zaiwalla & Co saved India over £50 million in foreign exchange at a time when the nation was facing an economic crisis and had limited foreign exchange. In those days, India was always on the losing side of the game, however, Mr Zaiwalla turned this around and India thereafter started winning its legal cases before the English Court.

Mr Zaiwalla and his dynamic award-winning team of legal experts have handled cases for clients including the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the office of the Ruler of Dubai as well as the Government of the Russian Federation. The firm was also involved in handling the cases of high profile clients before the UK Supreme Court and EU Courts surrounding the Iran nuclear programme sanctions imposed by the EU and UK on behalf of their clients, Bank Mellat, Iran’s largest privately held bank. The firm represented the bank in its $4 billion USD damages claim, and has successfully got the UK Supreme Court to overturn the sanctions imposed on the bank by the UK Government.