The founder and Senior Partner, Dhiren Shah, is a diligent and ambitious personality. In his younger days, Dhiren Shah was always fond of sports and entertainment and was a mediocre student. Never in his dreams did he think that he would be taking up a challenging and complex profession of chartered accountancy. But, after pursuing a degree in commerce, he joined a chartered accountant course and in the succeeding years he became a chartered accountant.

Though in the beginning, he joined his family business but decided to quit it together with the comforts of the fortune to be inherited as he wanted to discover new paths to excellence. Henceforth, he entered the chartered accountant profession in the year 1986 influenced by the mantra of “Be on your own” without seeking any family support and without penny in his pocket or work exposure with any chartered accountant firm or tax consultancy firm. Being an ardent believer of self-learning, Dhiren Shah drew inspiration from philosophical genesis of Arjuna, Dronacharya and Karna to resolve his challenges in the initial days of his career.

He started his practice believing in his ideology of the 3D’s which are determination, devotion and discipline along with hard work to achieve his aims.

Dhiren Shah & Company made its humble beginning with a small office and a small team but within a span of less than ten years Dhiren Shah built an office of 7000 sq. ft. in the heart of the City of Ahmedabad and in 2015 December a three storied office space to his credit measuring 18000 sq. feet. With the latest infrastructure and updated technology, he also incorporated one of the best libraries of its kind in his office.

Dhiren Shah always values inputs given by his senior associates. The contribution of Bhavesh Shah, CA, a senior associate of the firm is highly admired. He is an expert in the areas of audit and taxation and has a rich experience of the same. P.P. Rawat, an advocate and another stalwart, has a wealth of experience in the field of corporate laws. His skilled legal advice is truly appreciated by the firm. The co-operation of the valued senior team is thus of paramount importance in the success of the firm.

An Excellent Service Provider

The firm located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, has associations in Vadodara, Rajkot and Anand, as well as PAN India with other associated firms at Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai and Pune. Instead of practicing traditional methodology of auditing and taxation, the firm provides strategic, tax and legal specialized services to diverse sectors. The firm offers tax planning and advisory services, international taxation resolving multiple issues associated with it including but not limited to cross border transactions and transfer pricing, Inbound and outbound Investment Advisory, Foreign Direct Investment Policy, FEMA & RBI Guidelines, M&A advisory, Business Restructuring, Business Valuation, Statutory Audit, Management Audit, Internal Audit, Forensic Audit, Ind-AS Implementation, Succession Planning and Private Trust creation. The firm has also spread its wings in the field of litigation under direct tax laws, delivering litigation services for tax affairs before the CIT (Appeals), ITAT and Settlement Commission,High Court and Supreme Court and company law issues before NCLT High courts and the Supreme Court.

The firm has been rendering professional services to its clients for indirect tax matters right from the beginning and continues with the introduction of Goods & Service Tax (GST) in India. From July 2017, Karan is actively involved with the GST ranging from advisory to attending the litigations before the concerned authorities.

In the field of real estate matters, the firm provides consultancy in land revenue laws, Transfer of Property Act, The Prohibition of Benami Property Transaction Act and also in The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, structuring of real estate projects and drafting of commercial documents for the real estate projects including joint venture and development agreements.

The firm also caters to in the field of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, Arbitration matters as well as matters under the enforcement directorate. In the field of company law, the firm provides services from the stage of incorporation to liquidation as well as legal due diligence of the company and LLP.The firm specializes in Mergers and Acquisitions, Demerger, Takeover, Public Issue of shares (IPO) and also appears before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for the matters of company law and Insolvency Bankruptcy Code and litigation before the High Courts and Supreme Court through a team of advocates having profound knowledge and competence of the subject.

Earning Prestigious Honors

Dhiren Shah’s sheer contribution and principled work ethics has earned him the highest appreciation from the upper echelons of the Indian tax law practitioners. He has written papers and articles for various seminars and conferences held by the chartered accountants association of India.

He has also been invited as a speaker to deliver a lecture on “Do’s & Don’ts for the Income Tax Settlement Commission Practice: Skill Development for the Chartered Accountant Association Fraternity” in a seminar.

He has shared his insights during his various talks on search and survey matters for direct tax and indirect tax for the different professional forums. He believes that awards and felicitation cannot be counted as benchmarks to measure professional success. Dhiren Shah firmly trusts that the true benchmark of professional success is achieving excellence in the practice and earning recognition from the clients, business communities and the professional fraternity. The professional gratification that has flown from this recognition has helped him establish a successful career of more than three decades. The firm feels honored and takes pride in having achieved proficiency across diverse service lines which includes banking and finance, capital markets, corporate and commercial dispute resolutions, FDI, investments funds, mergers and acquisitions, private clients, real estate, restructuring and insolvency and tax.

“Our commitment to our clients and work, attention to details, transparent approach and formidable expertise in various areas of taxation, accounting and auditing has not only won us recognition but also earned respect in the sector we serve” adds Dhiren Shah.

Tackling Hurdles Effectively

Initially, as Dhiren Shah had no professional experience in any chartered accountancy firm, he had to deal with the competition of the Indian as well as international players. Toiling for 14 to 16 long hours a day he shaped his career and established his firm as one of the top reputed firms. Over the years, he has successfully steered through stiff competition from top players of accountancy and tax firms. In the year 2000, as multinational firms started showing up in India, he adopted a principle of customizing his services to the clients in a personalized manner. He applied the technique of giving personal attention to solve problems of the clients in different sectors by offering a one-stop solution to the clients.

Right from the beginning of his career, Dhiren Shah was always passionate to resolve the most complicated and complex cases under the Direct Tax laws. When he became aware of the fact that the Income Tax Settlement Commission was a forum where the most complex and high value challenging transaction matters were settled, this interested him the most and he started his practice at the Settlement Commission in the year 1994 and ventured to be the first Chartered Accountant ever from the State of Gujarat to appear before the Hon’ble Settlement Commission.

Keeping Pace with Existing Times

Dhiren Shah and the professionals at the firm believe in gearing themselves up by developing their deep understanding of the potential taxes and the consequent accounting and legal aspects, new reforms of the emerging global economy and their implications for clients so that before they face any issue the firm is ready with deep reading of the law / provisions and expertise to deliver the first mover advantage. The firm believes in updating their knowledge in GST and International Taxation, Transfer Pricing, Cross Border Transaction, GAAR, Double Taxation Treaties and Ind-AS Implementation entered by India.

The Key Mantra

Dhiren Shah & Co. believes that values and ideals are more important than success. The firm’s main strength has been its dedicated attitude, innovative style and always ahead of time approach, which creates comfort and confidence amongst their clients.

“Discipline, Trust, Transparency, hard work and perfection are five pillars of profession. These traits with ethical work standards are of utmost importance as only intellectual ability will not serve in the long run and so if you honestly work with the key objective of securing the best results for your clients, success will not elude you”, says Dhiren Shah. This has been a key mantra that has driven the firm for the past three decades.

Fast-tracking with Time

Since the very beginning, as Dhiren Shah didn’t have any experience in law but he still handled cases pertaining to various laws. With every step he explored the field of audit and taxation and didn’t restrict his area of practice to the traditional methods. Moving ahead, siblings Karan and Nupur Shah are furthering their father’s legacy by setting up the infrastructure of legal division with a talent pool of professionals under the able guidance of Dhiren Shah, Bhavesh Shah and PP Rawat.

With the new reforms and changing laws the firm -a remarkable future awaits in the areas of accountancy, taxation and other laws of the country. The firm provides top- notch services to the clients with utmost transparency, breadth of experience, in-depth knowledge of the subject and qualitative performance maintaining professional integrity and dignity.

The firm keeps up with the current happenings and is prepared to face challenges that the market and new law reforms may hurt. It knows that the chartered accountancy profession in India is evolving with worldwide firms aiming to become a reputed name. But, this never became a problem for the firm, due to their expertise in the profession and for providing a ‘one- stop solution’ for all the problems to the clients.