What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have been involved in over the past year?

The past year has been busy for us on multiple fronts and wide-ranging spectrum of activities right from making seed stage investments to some of our portfolio companies going public or prepping to do so and everything in between.

We continue to be grateful for the exposure to innovative transaction structures and business models and the ability to navigate an ever changing legal, regulatory and tax framework.

Based on your experience, what is the key to collaborating successfully with business partners?

Success with business partners begins with being able to understand and appreciate their objectives and to also understand intangible or softer considerations and to give them comfort that we all on the same side. The legal team can be a trusted advisor and provide holistic counsel to business only if they are able to view and assess legal ramifications in this context with a facilitative approach. It is crucial for legal teams like ours to constantly remind ourselves to not solely view ourselves simply as risk managers but rather providers of tailored solutions and to that end adopting strong filters for assessing practical implications is of paramount importance. This fundamental mindset shift has reaped immense rewards in working with business partners and them valuing the legal team’s input.

How do you motivate and manage the other members of your legal team well?

You will have to ask my team what they really think!

From my perspective, there is a constant endeavour to providing each member exposure to a diverse set of matters and gradually exposing them to matters of increasing complexity and sensitivity. I’m also cognizant of strengths and weaknesses and helping each of them build specialised knowledge and practices within the team.

Another principle which I try to respect is giving them as much autonomy as possible once you have developed trust in the working relationship. While it comes with burden of responsibility providing a strong sense of ownership and leadership can be a great motivator for some.

We also operate as a flat and transparent unit with every member being aware of what the other person is doing and constantly communicating with each other to ensure that there is a solid knowledge bank for the entire team to be able to draw from.

I’d also like to use this opportunity to thank them for all their efforts over the past year. This award belongs to each one of them as much as it does to me!