About

In 2008 Vijay Kamath joined Volkswagen Group Sales India, as head of legal and company secretary after previous private practice experience and in-house roles at Fiat, Blue Dark Express (part of DHL) and Uhde India (now part of ThyssenKrupp Group). In 2011, he took over additional functions of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) which is now fully integrated with the legal functions. Being the first to join Volkswagen’s legal department, he had the unique opportunity of building up the legal department from scratch. To Kamath, legal is not only a risk and advisory function but is also looked at by the business as a strategic business partner and a trusted advisor to the managing director and the Board. Kamath works very closely with the business in strategizing business policies, pricing mechanisms, network plans, and has succeeded in achieving the required business objectives. He has trained his team to embrace the “business first policy” and as such solutions are tailor-made to keep the end customer in mind and work in tandem with dealers and distributors. Kamath has also worked to save the company money on external legal fees by renegotiating rates and moving more of the legal work in-house. Kamath has also developed contract templates, litigation MIS, contract reports, information summaries to management, contract lifecycle management system, regulatory compliance framework and a litigation landscape among others. The contracts management system which also acts as a repository is built in-house in a simple spreadsheet format which provides prompts for contracts nearing expiry and is also hyperlinked to scanned copies of contracts. The present system monitors over 2,000 contracts and is even being replicated in other group companies. Kamath’s team is involved with the business teams’ right at the beginning rather than at the end of the projects and is an integral part of the business’ strategies. Kamath has been successful in mitigating the risks arising out of dealer closures by getting involved with the business well ahead in time before the actual decision to part ways is made. His team is involved in managing critical communication and documenting meetings with the said business partners and helps the business teams in carving out every strategy to stay ahead, should any litigation take place. On his in-house career Kamath says that, ‘Volkswagen has been my best experience so far and it has contributed a lot in chiselling out a multifaceted professional out of me. It is true that the 10 years that I have spent in Volkswagen have moulded me into an astute legal professional’.