About

Since taking over as group general counsel, chief data privacy officer and senior vice president at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Suprio Dasgupta has led a redesign of internal functions to create a global structure in the company that aligns and combines the legal, compliance and data privacy teams with geographies, businesses and practice areas for the very first time. Renamed as the global legal and compliance department (GLC), the current structure has a remit divided between various international regions led by a regional general counsel, while each business is now supported by a lead business general counsel. Dasgupta’s role in initiating this newly structured function demonstrates his business management skills and willingness to take on new challenges whilst his legal expertise remain unquestionable. One of Dasgupta’s other many successes has been the set-up, of a legal operations function entirely focused on building enhanced engagement with stakeholders. Dasgupta says that, ‘counsels need to devote time to priorities, and this is where the legal operations team steps in’. With the use of technology, this team supports counsels globally in non-legal and non-strategic matters, like creating and managing tools for digital contracts workflow management, contract performance and audit management, case management, trademark database, performance and audit management, notice management, document retention and archival management, and e-billing, to name the few. The legal operations team also manages costs, budgets, and legal metrics and provides project management support. In fact, the impact created by this team now has GLC operating in an almost paperless manner with more transparency and predictive performance management. Dasgupta identifies that, ‘the job of a GC is demanding and requires some solid personal traits apart from knowledge and skills. For instance, only legal expertise is not totally effective when it comes to leading cross-cultural teams or managing stakeholders with varying temperaments and expectations. From my personal experience, I would say that being resilient, perseverant, fairness and coming to work with a positive perspective are all immensely helpful’.