About

Having worked at law firms Fox Mandal Little and Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan between 2002 and 2012, Ugen Bhutia gained litigation experience in banking and debt recovery laws by advising on a wide range of legal issues. After this exposure, in 2012 Bhutia joined SBI Card, a payment solutions provider created as part of a joint venture between State Bank of India and GE Capital, as general counsel and executive vice president of legal to provide transactional support as well as manage retail litigation across the country. He has been commended for managing the company’s litigation workload, with the help of his team of 16, through strategic changes and technological support, significantly reducing the total inflow of claims and costs in compensatory awards as a result. As part of the senior management team and directly reporting to the CEO, Bhutia has worked tirelessly to overcome negative internal perceptions about the legal function and building its internal brand as a true business enabler. Describing the shift in attitude Bhutia says: ‘Whenever the business encounters a regulatory blockade, the legal team is now looked upon as a problem solver’. Bhutia has advised on some of the most important changes in the payment industry, covering heightened regulation around security measures, introduced by the Reserve Bank of India, for second factor authentication on chip and pin cards and 3D secure online transactions among others. Apart from being the general counsel for SBI Card, Bhutia has also taken additional responsibilities in the international projects of GE Capital, involving issues on data privacy, battle of forms, standardisation of intra-affiliate templates and document management.