About

Ashok Kumar Maheshwary has worked at various large companies over the course an in-house career that spans over 30 years. The ‘real game changer’ according to Maheshwary came after joining SpiceJet, India’s second no-frill airline in 2001. He was part of the core team which launched this airline and left it after 11 years as its vice president – legal and company secretary. While there he also handled domestic and international airport related work at GMR Group as its general counsel – airport vertical. Since March 2017, he has been vice president and group head – legal at KCT Group, which has diversified his interest in power logistics, renewable energy, manufacturing, and commercial real-estate. In terms of restructuring he has introduced the “business partner concept” to the company wherein each business vertical of KCT Group has been allocated dedicated legal resource with the overarching corporate team. This, he says, ‘will help create legal resources who will be industry experts in the legal domain over a period through their exposure which will help improve delivery process and deliverables’. Maheshwary has worked on important transactions and litigations during last three years, which partly covers his GMR as well as his KCT tenures. These include a litigation for airport and wind energy tariff fixation and other regulatory issues; a private equity investor dispute over the conversion of convertible instruments; a service tax demand on airport operators under airport concessions granted by the Airports Authority of India; numerous airport biddings – domestic and international; divestment of a renewable power project; and recovery cases under the insolvency and bankruptcy code. Maheshwary describes his role as an in-house counsel as, ‘as much a business function as any other corporate function who should know how to apply legal principles to business situations for desired corporate objectives’.