About

After completing his graduation in law from the University of Pune in 1989, Girish Gadgil practiced law for about four years in civil and labour industrial courts before moving into the public sector with Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) in 1994. After 13 years in different legal department management positions across India, Gadgil moved to the commercial sector first with Larsen & Toubro, and then JSW Steel. He joined Mahindra & Mahindra as general manager of corporate legal in April 2011, at a time when there were only three verticals in its corporate legal department, including the company’s auto sector. Following a company restructuring in 2015, Gadgil took on responsibility for litigation, M&A and compliance by becoming senior general manager and group legal head of the auto-sector. Gadgil was responsible for getting Mahindra’s corporate legal department, independently certified under ISO Certification in 2014 and started a practice of sending detailed replies to all legal notices received from customers. This has helped the department to bring down the number of legal notices that convert into consumer complaints filed in different consumer forums all over India. Gadgil led the creation of a portal for the group legal department called “MLexOasis”, which contains legal opinions, knowledge management alerts, a tab for responding to the personal legal queries of employees, profiles of the members of group legal department, directory of lawyers and law firms in India and abroad and standard formats for various agreements among other capabilities. Other major achievements for Gadgil include the handling of US$100m in settlements of suits through mediation in the US, and a successful challenge to the ban on diesel fuelled cars in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) at the Supreme Court of India.