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An Indian wind energy business with ambitious plans with regards to its renewable energy projects, Ostro Energy is currently ‘working closely with most of the prominent wind power producers in a dispute against the state utilities in the State of Rajasthan for frequent curtailment of power being generated from the wind power projects. Such curtailment has led to losses of millions for the wind power producers and if continued could make these projects commercially unviable’, explains the most senior lawyer within the company, general counsel Rachika Agrawal Sahay. She leads a function of three lawyers with over two decades of combined experience in high level law firms and in-house roles. Mirroring the growth of the company’s business, the team was setup in 2015 at a time when the company had no operational power projects, and legal was instrumental in the negotiation of many contracts from inception – since culminating into closing contracts for 14 projects, making certain acquisitions and forming five joint ventures – one of the fastest growing and leading renewable energy companies in India with more than 650 MW operating and 450 MW under construction. A multidisciplinary function, the team is actively involved in business discussions by virtue of its standing within the company, which has been developed in the last two years by providing “out of the box” and real time solutions. Sahay states that in addition to abetting this massive growth in business, the team has also spent time establishing ‘strong and sustainable processes in the areas of compliance, documentation and litigation management’. When asked to summarise the most important transactions in the team’s recent past, Sahay names the ‘attempt to lower the tariff of electricity under the PPAs executed between the wind power producers and the government utilities, the government appointed power purchaser filed a petition before the Honourable Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission, requesting it to allow the benefit of generation based incentives to be made available to the distribution companies. Ostro’s legal team has been involved in defending this matter as well in a bid to keep the benefit within the company’. Ostro’s legal team has been instrumental in concluding contracts for setting up 270 MW of wind and solar power projects to be commissioned in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana State. These solar projects also involved structuring transactions and finalising acquisition related documents. As Sahay puts it: ‘Ostro is a fast paced company with ambitious targets. And the legal team matches the speed’.