Team size: 14

What are the most significant cases, projects or transactions that you and your legal team have recently been involved in?  

My team and I have been occupied with multiple projects and transactions in the year. On the litigation front, we recently had a favourable outcome in a decision by the Supreme Court which annulled all antitrust proceedings launched against a Bayer group company. The judicial decision is a significant marker for patent holders who could otherwise be held to be dominant when markets are narrowly defined.

There have been multiple divestment projects across the crop science and pharmaceuticals divisions all successfully completed. The team is also involved in driving merger activities. On the sustainability front, a global partnership for carbon/ methane credits in rice growing is moving to scale up in India. The team is involved in advising on the legal structure in an evolving regulatory scenario.

The team is has worked on transition to new distribution structures to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship in the crop science division. There are innovative digital ventures that are being pioneered in India where the legal team is actively involved in negotiations as also evaluation of data privacy and data protection and drafting of licensing agreements.

The team has received various awards and acknowledgements both internal and external that is testimony to their talent, work ethic and focus on outcomes.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience? 

My approach is to be pragmatic and ensure we do not cross any red lines on compliance even if it comes at a cost to business. In crises, I have found that applying the ‘substance over form’ test is a useful guide to compliance. Sometimes, procedural aspects hold up things and one needs to take a calibrated risk. Example, during Covid, stamp papers were not available. I took a call to execute agreements on regular paper and have the agreements regularised once the situation returned to normal. This helped ensure business went on with minimal disruption.

AI has been taken seriously as a potentially revolutionary technological change in the legal world for a number of years now. Has it had a meaningful impact in how your legal team works in this time?

I believe we are still away from the tipping point for AI/ generative AI, agentic AI to truly automate decision making. Current versions of AI are helpful, though not too reliable in legal work much like an inexperienced law graduate. Complex reasoning tasks and interpretation, in my view, is still beyond most AI models. The gap between how humans interpret and apply creativity and how AI ‘reasons’ is manifested in hallucinations that makes it quite unreliable is such areas.

However, AI is amazing when it comes to crunching data and providing assessments. It can really cut down time during transactions by completing due diligence tasks in no time. As an efficiency tool, Copilot has taken the pain out of maintaining minutes even though privileged communications are still out of bounds for obvious reasons. Copilot is kept switched off for such discussions!

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?  

Three factors stand out: niche expertise, time factor and remoteness of locations. A judicious balance between quality and cost combined with speed of response is necessary to evaluate performance. Top notch advice that comes after the crisis is no help. Partners need to really move resources to tasks and drive closure. I like to work with firms that get this.

How does your team contribute to the overall business strategy of the company? Can you share an example of a recent legal-led initiative that had a significant impact?

The team is fully embedded in the business and for that reason, has a deep appreciation of business issues. Lawyers are often used as a sounding board by the commercial and other teams. Senior management also draws comfort from the legal oversight that ensures a higher level of scrutiny thanks to the attention to detail that is ingrained in lawyers by training. A playbook developed earlier this year by the legal team to guide business teams for frequent problems faced in the field was appreciated for the positive impact to the business.