About

Originally from Los Angeles, Sanaea Daruwalla’s background in assisting tech firms and startups saw her ideally placed to take on an in-house legal role for content intelligence company NewsWhip upon moving to Ireland in 2015. The company’s product is an ingenious one; it uses technology to gather content from across the web and social media in order to identify which stories are gaining traction, an obviously invaluable resource for its clients. Daruwalla explains that she built the legal function at NewsWhip ‘from the ground up’, as it did not exist before she joined: ‘Soon after joining, I put in protocols to ensure appropriate sourcing of content from the web and third party APIs, which meant a lot of copyright and IP work. I was also closely involved in our Series A financing, and worked on business plans and legal documentation’. On top of this, Daruwalla looked to create a function that ‘was compliant but also efficient in terms of the business model’. A large portion of her work is focused on protecting the company’s IP, which is at the centre of the business. ‘Getting the company’s IP in order was paramount, and one of the biggest projects I was involved with upon joining was a pending patent that I was able to resolve and get granted within about six months’. Daruwalla is currently working to avoid any potential pitfalls that incoming updated data protection regulations are likely to pose given the company’s operations. ‘I am keen to go through a thorough data protection audit, as almost every company we work with provides us with some level of personal data. We are working on our internal processes and with other companies to make sure that we are in perfect compliance before the law is rolled out’, says Daruwalla.