About

Priya Mehra Dewan started her career as a corporate lawyer with Ajay Bahl & Co. (now, AZB & Partners) in 2002 focusing on M&A, private equity and related transactions. In 2007, she moved to be part of the India team at Jones Day in Singapore working on IPO’s and qualifying as a UK solicitor before moving to Gibson Dunn. Dewan then moved in-house joining IndiGo in 2017 as general counsel. She had the task of building a “law-firm” within the organisation providing each department within the company with international quality advice and documents. The team had 10 lawyers and within a year of joining, she had transformed the department into a “mini law-firm” with 22 lawyers. She explains that her, ‘philosophy for the change [was] to make the department into thinking like a law-firm and treating each department of the company as a client’. Dewan adds that, ‘with this frame of mind, the quality of advice and documents being drafted is akin to an international law firm, incorporating what I have learnt from my time at law-firms in India and outside. Our dependency on outside counsel has reduced drastically and we tend to use them only for litigation matters and matters outside India’. Dewan identified that the purchase of the turboprop aircraft (the ATR) in mid-2017 by IndiGo was the one of the most exciting projects she have ever worked on in her career given her involvement in the project from negotiating the term sheet to actually seeing the first ATR land at the Delhi airport. Dewan adds that, ‘seeing this through from the beginning to end is something you would never get to experience in a law firm, i.e., the “reality” of the deal’. As general counsel, she is part of the compliance committee and chairs the sexual harassment committee. If that wasn’t enough Dewan is also part of IndiGo’s executive committee and sits-in at the board and its committee meetings. In addition, Dewan is credited for promoting the role of the legal department internally, as they are now involved in every large transaction that the company undertakes. She says, ‘there has been a change in working closely with departments to make a project or decision reach a logical conclusion. Working closely with all departments across the company ensures that decisions from the very beginning are within the parameters of the law’. Dewan talking about her enjoyment at IndiGo says that, ‘There is never a dull day at IndiGo. I believe that the recent changes that I have managed to implement have raised the “happiness quotient”’ amongst the legal department’.