  Algebraic Branching Programs(ABPs) are standard models for computing
polynomials. Syntactic multilinear ABPs (smABPs) are restrictions of ABPs where
every variable is allowed to occur at most once in every path from the start to
the terminal node. Proving lower bounds against syntactic multilinear ABPs
remains a challenging open question in Algebraic Complexity Theory. The current
best known bound is only quadratic [Alon-Kumar-Volk, ECCC 2017]. In this
article we develop a new approach upper bounding the rank of the partial
derivative matrix of syntactic multlinear ABPs: Convert the ABP to a syntactic
mulilinear formula with a super polynomial blow up in the size and then exploit
the structural limitations of resulting formula to obtain a rank upper bound.
Using this approach, we prove exponential lower bounds for special cases of
smABPs and circuits - namely sum of Oblivious Read-Once ABPs, r-pass
mulitlinear ABPs and sparse ROABPs. En route, we also prove super-polynomial
lower bound for a special class of syntactic multilinear arithmetic circuits.
