About

Spencer’s Retail is a chain of retail stores headquartered in Kolkata, West Bengal with presence in over 35 cities in India. Winning numerous industry awards, the widely-known retailer has many outlets through multiple formats for retailing food, apparel, fashion, electronics, lifestyle products, music and books. Leading its legal department, vice president legal and compliance, Srikkanth Gopishetty manages the team of nine lawyers and two non-lawyers for the overall legal function of Spencer’s and its subsidiaries. Unlike many other industries in the region, retail industry is extremely dynamic and involves more than 50 acts and compliance requirements. Gopishetty reveals that to stay abreast of this the ‘legal team need to keep a continuous vigil on the changing legal environment’. Some of their most significant cases involve working on a variety of legal matters including food adulteration, commercial contracts labour and legal metrology. Sharing out these cases amongst team members enables the team to reinforce competence in a multiplicity of areas: ‘Team members often change part of their roles so that everyone will get exposure to all the areas of law’. Taking pride in the unity of the legal function, the team culture has been established as ‘one team one goal’, a culture it uses to approach all day-to-day legal work.