About

Led by director of legal and chief legal officer Sandeep Kapoor, US-headquartered global venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has an Indian legal team of five lawyers in addition to a legal manager. Kapoor describes how the team has grown in recent years: ‘The legal team has expanded significantly over the last two years. The idea behind the expansion of the legal team, other than managing transactions efficiently, has been to focus on building internal systems and support systems for portfolio company support’. This has allowed the team to punch above its weight in terms of the amount of work completed, given that it is a relatively lean team. ‘The amount of work processed through the legal team is vast’, Kapoor explains, ‘given Sequoia’s prolific investments, for example, the last nine months have seen more than 75 transactions closed through the legal team – these include fresh investments, exits, and follow-on investments’. In order to achieve this, a closely-knit and collaborative team ethic has been developed within the team. ‘We strive to constantly expand the boundaries of our expertise, work hard and have each other’s backs at all times’, comments Kapoor. ‘Key to the legal team’s success within the organisation is that we view ourselves and are viewed as business partners to the investment team, and temper our legal analysis with practical guidance and solutions, which have helped the firm to avoid, in the past, potential mistakes’.