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As the general counsel of Wipro, Tejal Patil leads the legal, compliance, data privacy, intellectual property, and government affairs functions and is a member of the Wipro Executive Council. Tejal worked at General Electric (GE) for over 18 years across the Asia Pacific as general counsel for its consumer, industrial, aircraft engine services, and healthcare businesses and as group general counsel for GE South Asia.  
 
Tejal was a senior legal advisor, INSEA, at OYO and a member of its global leadership team. A qualified solicitor of the Bombay Incorporated Law Society, the Law Society of England and Wales, and a certified Six Sigma Green Belt, Tejal has been a member of the CII Sub-Committee on Integrity and Transparency in Governance, FICCI Corporate Laws Committee, and the Executive Committee of NASSCOM. Furthermore, she is a founding member of the General Counsel Association of India.  
 
We have a global workforce of over 250,000, serving clients across 66 countries. The company has also internally announced its continued pivot toward strategic bet areas and its focus on leveraging the power of ‘One Wipro‘ to deliver on clients’ entire spectrum of business and technology transformation goals. With external changes and an internal transformation journey, it has been imperative to stay on top of all legal and compliance aspects. Reliance on legal tech is critical for the function. From contract drafting to obligation management, embedding data privacy principles in all processes, litigation management, and regulatory compliance, we have been using and improving automated tools to enable productivity, efficiency, and quality in the function. Multiple opportunities will emerge with Artificial Intelligence, which is still in its fledgling stage in the legal world.  
 
We believe that the success of an in-house legal function lies in the prevention of litigation and the assessment of risk. In this spirit, we have closed several significant cases for the company across many jurisdictions. We have also made many investments in early- to mid-stage enterprise software companies to bridge the gap between emerging startups and enterprise customers. An important initiative last year was to track and comply with data privacy legislation across the globe, with over 137 countries having their own versions. Creating a “culture of compliance” and a “culture of privacy” has been the focus of our employee database. The legal team has been at the forefront, leading with Responsible AI policies and training.