Team size: 12 – 15
  
  
What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

Over the past year, my organisation has undergone one of the most strategically significant phases in its history, with the legal function at the heart of this transformation. We navigated a uniquely demanding combination of inorganic expansion, investment activity, and business-as-usual commercial growth, all unfolding simultaneously across multiple jurisdictions and time zones.

A key highlight has been our continued focus on inorganic growth, where we executed a series of acquisitions that expanded our operational footprint and strengthened our capabilities in core service lines. Each transaction required a sophisticated balance of legal rigour and commercial pragmatism, encompassing due diligence, structuring, negotiation, regulatory assessment, and post-acquisition integration. Given our global presence, no two deals were alike; each demanded customised risk modelling, compliance mapping, and careful cultural alignment to ensure that the acquired entities could be seamlessly absorbed into our operational ecosystem.

At the same time, we completed a milestone in our corporate journey by welcoming our first institutional investor. This investment round was more than a capital infusion; it represented external validation of our governance, scalability, and readiness for the future. From a legal perspective, it required deep cross-functional collaboration, rapid decision-making, and precise coordination with international counsel and advisors. My team led the exercise end-to-end, ensuring that the investment structure aligned with long-term business strategy, shareholder expectations, and evolving regulatory requirements across jurisdictions.

All of this occurred while the team continued to support the company’s organic growth. We closed an unprecedented volume of commercial contracts over the year, including client agreements, renewals, complex MSAs, SOW frameworks, technology partnerships, data-processing arrangements, and compliance-driven contractual updates. Despite the intensity of the transactional pipeline, we consistently met – and often exceeded – turnaround expectations, maintaining high standards of accuracy, governance, and risk mitigation.

What made this year particularly meaningful was not just the scale of work but the maturity of the legal function as a strategic partner. We operated across India, EMEA, the US, and other time zones with equal agility, functioning effectively as a globally distributed legal centre. The team demonstrated remarkable resilience, adaptability, and cohesion, delivering more than 100 per cent of our commitments without compromising on quality or compliance.

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

Periods of instability – whether driven by geopolitical shifts, regulatory uncertainty, or market disruption – demand that the legal function evolve from a support role into a stabilising force for the organisation. My approach is built on three pillars: proactive foresight, structured decision-making, and cross-functional alignment.

First, I prioritise anticipatory risk management. This involves continuously monitoring legal and regulatory developments across jurisdictions, modelling potential business impacts, and preparing scenario-based playbooks. Rather than reacting to external shocks, the objective is to position the organisation to respond with clarity and speed the moment volatility arises.

Second, during any crisis, I anchor decision-making in structured governance. This entails centralising critical information, ensuring rapid yet well-reasoned assessments, and maintaining transparent communication with leadership teams. Legal guidance in such periods must be both protective and enabling, balancing risk mitigation with the operational agility the business requires to remain competitive.

Third, resilience is ultimately a cross-functional outcome. Legal, compliance, finance, technology, and operations teams must operate in synchrony. My role is often to bridge these functions, harmonise perspectives, and ensure that the organisation’s responses remain consistent with long-term strategy, contractual obligations, and regulatory expectations.

Whether navigating acquisitions, investor commitments, or global uncertainties, I have found that resilience is built not during the crisis itself but through the systems, culture, and discipline established beforehand. A well-prepared legal function becomes both the guardrail and the backbone of organisational stability.
     
What strategies do you employ to ensure the successful digital transformation of a legal department while maintaining compliance with your country’s data protection laws?

Digital transformation in the legal function must balance efficiency with responsible governance. My approach is guided by three principles: process clarity, controlled automation, and compliance by design. We begin by mapping core workflows and identifying areas where technology can meaningfully enhance speed or consistency – contract lifecycle tools, compliance trackers, and policy management systems are prime examples. Every digital intervention is assessed through the lens of data privacy, security protocols, business adoption, and cross-jurisdictional regulatory requirements, particularly where client or employee data is involved.

We work closely with Data Privacy, IT, and InfoSec teams to embed privacy controls at the architecture level, ensuring encryption, access governance, audit trails, and vendor due diligence form non-negotiable foundations. Training is equally critical; the team must understand not only how tools operate, but also the compliance implications of their use. The result is a legal department that is digitally agile while fully aligned with evolving data protection frameworks, enhancing both operational capability and organisational trust.

Given the current geopolitical shifts and growing uncertainties around international free trade, has your company’s risk profile evolved, and are you taking measures to address these challenges?

Our risk profile has naturally evolved as global dynamics shape regulatory requirements, client expectations, and cross-border operational frameworks. We have responded by strengthening scenario-based risk assessments, recalibrating contractual protections, and tightening our compliance posture across regions where regulatory volatility is higher.

We proactively monitor geopolitical developments that may affect data flows, supply chains, sanctions exposure, and labour frameworks. This intelligence informs our contracting strategies, mitigation plans, and stakeholder advisories. Additionally, we have enhanced governance structures – covering ESG alignment, third-party due diligence, and data residency assessments—to ensure resilience regardless of external shifts.

Crucially, we foster cross-functional preparedness, ensuring that legal, compliance, finance, and operations act cohesively. By embedding agility into decision-making and building buffers into our contractual and operational models, the organisation remains both protected and well-positioned to adapt in a fast-changing global environment.
    
 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?
   
We rely on a balanced, fit-for-purpose model. Matters requiring specialised expertise, multi-jurisdictional insight, or high-stakes negotiation are typically referred to external counsel, particularly where local regulatory nuance or time-critical execution is essential. Conversely, recurring commercial work, compliance advisory, and strategic internal initiatives are handled by in-house teams, who are best placed to understand the business context.

External counsel are evaluated on the quality of their advice, commerciality, responsiveness, understanding of risk, and alignment with our organisational values. While cost discipline is important, value creation – not billing rates – is the true measure. Our in-house team’s decisions are guided by efficiency, risk appetite, and the strategic significance of each matter.

This approach enables us to maintain a lean, capable internal function while leveraging external advisors as specialised extensions of our legal ecosystem, ensuring the organisation receives the right expertise at the right time.