THE PROFESSIONAL YOU

Briefly, tell us about your role in the organization and the mandates you handle?

As Head of Legal & Compliance for Volvo Car India, I am supporting Volvo’s India business towards their strategic projects along with legal support towards general corporate matters, litigation matters and day to day business operations.

Tell us something about your journey so far as a General Counsel in India?

I have been quite fortunate to be part of great organisations and working on key projects which have helped enhancing my learning curve. My Inhouse Counsel journey started off with PepsiCo India where I was responsible for handling legal matters for both beverage and foods division. Being in the FMCG space makes you act and think in a fast-paced environment with numerous regulatory challenges and managing high stake complex litigations. I joined Volvo Cars India in September last year and so far, my journey has been quiet fascinating. The automobile industry is currently going through a lot of change towards transformation journey of diesel/ petrol engine cars to electrification. This would need lot of strategic support along with agile ways of working to cater business needs. I am very excited to be part of this transformation journey and supporting key initiatives of the business and ensuring legal compliance.

Do you feel that the role of General Counsels is evolving in today’s business scenario? And if so, how? What are the key challenges that General Counsels have to deal with on a regular basis, irrespective of the industry sector?

Yes of course! the role of General Counsel has evolved and has shifted to large extent towards being a Business Enabler to enable the company in meeting its business needs and parallelly ensuring legal compliance. This has led to our roles being very challenging where we are supposed to wear multiple hats of not only letting the business know about key legal risks but also providing optimum solutions to get the business going.

What are your thoughts on improving synergies between Law Firms and corporate In-House Legal teams?

Both law firms and in-house teams don’t anymore have an attorney- client relationship but are in a business partner relationship to support each other as they both contribute equally in providing correct and effective legal advice to business. This would be largely dependent on the law firms trying to be flexible and open minded with the needs of corporate to weigh the long term and short-term goals within the legal framework.

What are some of the key tools that General Counsels can use for Continued Learning Education (CLE)?

For general counsels and in-house counsels on-the-job learning plays a key role in their self-development. Hence, it is very important to be part of projects at the company where we get involved not only to give legal inputs but also trying to understand what the business needs to provide them with a workable solution. This is duly supported by understanding the industry practices which is no more restricted to within one industry anymore. I have in fact brought in inputs working in an FMCG industry into an automobile industry. With passage of time, it would be width of industry experience and dealing with many complexities which would contribute a lot towards development of an effective General Counsel.

Any advice for someone exploring a legal career as an In-House Counsel?

As I look back, I would advise all budding lawyers to have a clear focus in their mind before choosing this profession is to be prepared for lot of competition, agile way of thinking and being above the edge to survive and being the best.

THE CASUAL YOU

Favourite Gadget – My iPhone Favourite App – Aarogya Setu App, these days Favourite Automobile Brand – Volvo, ofcourse Favourite Holiday Destination – Canada Favourite Cuisine – Indian and Chinese

“GC’s Role has Evolved towards being a Business Enabler”- Payal Khanna, Head Legal & Compliance, Volvo Cars India

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