About

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured?

The corporate-legal team, comprising of 16 in-house legal professionals and four paralegal staff, caters to Godrej Industries (GIL), Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) and its associated companies spread across Indonesia, Africa and Latin America.

The team renders legal and statutory compliance related services and provides timely advice. The team comprises of the following sub teams:

• M&A team: This team ensures smooth closure of transactions of M&As involving due diligence and ensuring proper documentation.
• Intellectual Property team: This team manages the IP portfolio, which consists of over 7,000 trademarks patents and designs. The IP team engages closely with the businesses to identify the right mix of IP protection for new product development and ensures timely filing of relevant applications. The above two teams also collaborate and handle contract management and business advisory. Their work involves drafting, standardisation and registration of agreements/other documents. The teams provide advice on compliances related to packaged commodities, labelling, consumer and ASCI related complaints, licensing compliances, factory compliances and respond strategically to notices received from government authorities on
  any of the above aspects.
• Indirect tax team: This team attends to indirect tax audits, investigations, refund/rebate related hearings and manages pan India indirect tax litigation pre and post GST. The team works closely with the finance teams for contingent liability reporting and providing updates to external auditors. The team also handled GST implementation and provides ongoing GST related advisory to the business. This team also supervises tax aspects related to customs (import) duties, VAT and classification issues for Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and keeps itself updated about VAT introduced in the Emirates. It also engages in de-briefing sessions on tax disputes in Indonesia or in targeted acquisition proposals and connected due-diligence process.
• Litigation team: This team keeps track of issues and provides strategic solutions to mitigate litigation risks at the pre-litigation stage. The team also ensures closure of litigations by reviewing any plausible interpretation of clauses in the documents and/or statutory provisions.

What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has been involved with in the last two years?

First, the divestment of Natures Basket from GIL to Spencer’s Retail where Chakradhar V. was lead counsel, and supported by associate vice president Pankaj Phadnis and deputy general manager Shrenik Jain. Second, the divestment of the UK business to JZ Consumer Brands. Chakradhar V. was lead counsel on this too and supported by Pankaj Phadnis.

What geographical area does the legal team cover?

In Asia Pacific, we cover India and SAARC (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal), as well as Indonesia. In the Middle East and Africa we cover the Emirates, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Angola. In addition to the US, we oversee matters in Argentina, Peru and Chile in Latin America.

What political, economic or regulatory changes have impacted the company and the team most recently?

The introduction of the Goods and Service Tax (GST), as well as “Make in India” and “ease of doing business” Also, the Pesticide Management Bill, the enactment for which has been pending for more than a decade. It is heartening to see industry bodies like the Advertising Standards Counsel of India (ASCI) gaining momentum in self-regulation and enforcement and resolving various advertisement claims related complaints effectively. However, the pendency in the litigation, approval mechanism, registration of products, licensing regime is impacting the growth of FMCG sector.

How significant is collaboration within the legal team and how does it improve output?

The corporate legal team is a strategic partner with different businesses within the Godrej Group. The team advises and actively supports the businesses on various aspects, including M&A, IPRs, commodity regulations, advertising standards, licences, indirect taxation and business contracts. The team also liaises with the government and other regulatory authorities on behalf of the company and makes necessary representations. In the last two years, the team has been closely involved in the successful divestment of GCPL’s UK business, Natures Basket business, sale of the Snuggy brand and GST implementation. The proactive approach to creating awareness about compliance standards and changing laws within the group companies have ensured minimum litigation and maximum legal compliance. The team displays a “can do” attitude and tremendous personal accountability which makes them true business partners. Moreover all the team members have gone through the basic contract drafting workshops and attend regularly knowledge sharing seminars and forums on GST, IPR, M&A, competition law, mediation and similar other business oriented subjects. The team also circulates legal updates to the businesses on a quarterly basis and conducts knowledge sharing sessions for the businesses.

Does the team use any “legal tech” products and do you find them a helpful management device?

The corporate legal team keeps itself abreast of the latest updates by subscribing to various research and legal database tools such as Coresearch, Manupatra, Taxsutra, Lexis Nexis. The team has also adopted cutting edge IP software such as CPA Global’s IP manager for keeping the IP portfolio updated. The team also assisted the audit and assurance team in the implementation of “Legatrix”, a compliance module for streamlining of compliance within the group. The team also uses internally developed software to ensure that the legal work is digitised and the records are properly codified, retrieved and managed more efficiently.