About

Naveen Raju, currently the group general counsel and senior vice president (group legal) of automobile conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra, can look back on a career in the legal business world spanning two decades. Always engaged as an in-house lawyer, Raju’s career began in earnest upon moving to Reliance Industries in 2000. Raju spent 14 years there, during which time he was heavily involved in the growth of its oil and gas division from a new business venture to one of the core elements of the company. During this time Raju developed a wealth of expertise in oil and gas law through involvement in a number of large transnational deals and projects. In 2014, however, in what he describes as an ‘opportunity not to be missed’, Raju moved out of the oil and gas sector and on to a more general legal function role at Mahindra & Mahindra. Here, Raju was afforded a chance to put ‘theory into practice’ and develop a department based around his own concept of what a quality legal team should look and act like. To achieve this, Raju made a number of organisational and process changes to the legal department at Mahindra & Mahindra. Raju explains that prior to his involvement, the legal team was a ‘business-driven’ organisation, whereby legal teams were attached to the specific group companies that they represented. He shifted this to a ‘hybrid’ legal system, where some functions are retained with the specific businesses, but a section of legal staff are retained at group level to deal with operational matters such as litigation and M&A work. Raju believes this new structure is paying dividends in efficiency gains across the group. Describing the in-house function in general, Raju says it is necessary to ‘think outside the box in a global world’. Legal professionals, he advises, should not necessarily limit themselves to operating in one in-house legal area, because the skills learned from other business units and practice areas are immensely important. Raju believes that many skills are transferable ‘irrespective of sector’ and that correct ‘application to legal strategies’ can allow an individual to be successful in a range of legal areas.