Head of Legal & Company Secretarial (Group General Counsel)
Location
NCR / Gurugram
Reporting
Directly to Promoter Group (Boardlevel visibility)
Group Overview
Our client is a fastgrowing, promoterdriven conglomerate that has evolved out of a large, established automotive ecosystem, with strong jointventure partnerships, B2B autocomponents DNA and a clear plan to build a diversified, multisector platform. Current group revenues are around INR 2,000 crore, making every senior leadership hire highly visible and critical.
Role Mandate
The Group General Counsel will build and lead the integrated Legal + CS function across multiple entities and JVs, and act as the primary legal advisor to the promoter family. This is a greenfield, buildout role spanning existing operations and upcoming ventures (EV JV, NBFC, GCC real estate, food exports).
Key Responsibilities
- Act as strategic legal advisor to promoters and board on structuring, risk and governance across the group.
- Design and implement a unified legal, contracts and compliance framework, including templates, playbooks and negotiation positions.
- Lead legal work on JVs, M&A and partner negotiations (strong focus on International partners).
- Own regulatory engagement and external stakeholder management (RBI, SEBI/stock exchanges, MCA, other sectoral regulators, auditors, law firms).
- Oversee all litigation/disputes (customs, tax, regulatory, commercial, employment) with a preventionfirst, earlyresolution bias.
- Anchor governance and board support (boards/committees, minutes, filings, policy frameworks, listing readiness and PE/NCD transactions).
- Build and mentor a small internal legal/CS team while effectively leveraging external counsel.
Candidate Profile
Education & Experience
- Law graduate (LL.B); LL.M preferred.
- Mandatory Company Secretary (CS) qualification integrated Legal + CS leadership profile.
- 1822+ years of total experience, including 810+ years in a senior role as Head of Legal / GC / Legal & CS in mid to largesized organisations.
- Strong exposure to listed or listingready environments (IPOs, PE, NCDs, SEBI/LODR, Companies Act).
Industry Exposure
Musthave:
- Auto manufacturing / autoancillary, or strong core manufacturing background with plant, OEM contract and supplychain exposure.
- Handson JV experience (ideally Japanese and/or European/Italian) negotiation, structuring, shareholder agreements and longterm relationship management.
Advantageous:
- NBFC/financial services regulatory exposure or demonstrated ability to ramp up in financial regulations.
- Crossborder structuring in GCC, Europe or East Asia, including real estate and exportoriented businesses.
- Experience with B2C/consumeradjacent legal issues (warranties, product liability, data/privacy, fair practices).
Technical Competencies
- Corporate & securities law: Companies Act, SEBI/LODR, JV/shareholder agreements, FEMA, land/realestate laws, legal metrology and relevant sectoral regulations.
- JV/M&A/structuring: endtoend JV lifecycle, renegotiations, exits, restructuring with foreign partners.
- Contracts: OEM supply contracts, technology transfer/licensing, NDAs, services, financing and distribution agreements, realestate documentation.
- Litigation & disputes: strategy and oversight across customs, tax, regulatory and commercial matters with effective external counsel management.
- Governance & CS: boards/committees, minutes, filings, policies (CSR, POSH, ABAC, code of conduct, risk), listing and transaction preparedness.
Leadership & Style
- Businessfirst, commercially sharp and pragmatic; able to translate law into decisions and tradeoffs.
- Comfortable operating in a promoterled, highexpectation environment; calm and clear under pressure.
- Proactive, anticipatory, solutionoriented; not a backoffice, reactive legal role.
- Longterm orientation, with evidence of multiyear tenures and intent to build and stay.
- High preparation, humility and confidence; culturally aligned to lowlitigation, hightrust JV environments, especially with Japanese partners.
