ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

1. Legal Advisory & Business Partnering:

- Provide expert legal counsel to internal stakeholders on business transactions, regulatory matters, and operational risks to ensure legal considerations are proactively embedded into strategic planning and execution.

- Partner with Sales, Procurement, HR, Finance, Operations, and Strategy teams to enable timely decision making while appropriately identifying, mitigating, and escalating legal risk.

- Design, implement, and periodically update internal legal policies, SOPs, and governance frameworks to institutionalize consistent legal risk management across operations.

2. Contract Management & Commercial Legal:

- Draft, review, and negotiate a wide range of commercial agreements including vendor contracts, NDAs, distribution agreements, marketing partnerships, and SLAs to protect commercial interests and support favorable business outcomes.

- Establish and maintain standardized contract templates, negotiation playbooks, and approval matrices to improve speed, consistency, and risk discipline in contracting.

- Provide structured legal input during commercial negotiations to balance agility, risk exposure, and long term contractual integrity.

3. Regulatory Compliance & Governance:

- Ensure ongoing compliance with key statutory and regulatory mandates including Legal Metrology, Drugs and Cosmetics Act, food and health supplement regulations, and relevant global standards to minimise enforcement and reputational risk.

- Maintain active liaison with regulatory authorities and ensure timely renewals, filings, and approvals for licenses relevant to FMCG and health supplement products to support uninterrupted business operations.

- Support corporate governance processes including board matters, statutory filings, and compliance reporting to uphold regulatory transparency and governance standards.

4. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Management:

- Lead end-to-end management of trademarks, copyrights, patents, and design registrations across business categories.

- Coordinate with internal stakeholders and external counsels for filing, prosecution, renewal, opposition, and defense of IP assets.

- Partner with R&D, Marketing, and Product Development teams to safeguard proprietary innovations and formulations.

- Ensure alignment of IP practices with evolving regulatory and industry requirements.

5. Product Labelling, Legal Metrology & Statutory Packaging Management:

- Ensure compliance with applicable sector-specific labelling regulations, consumer protection requirements, and statutory disclosure norms.

- Advise business teams on permissible product claims, disclaimers, declarations, warnings, and advertising representations.

- Monitor regulatory changes impacting packaging and labelling requirements and drive timely implementation.

- Ensure organizational compliance with Legal Metrology Act, Packaged Commodities Rules, and related statutory requirements.

- Track amendments in legal metrology regulations and drive implementation across plants and business units.

6. Third-Party Due Diligence & Legal Risk Assessment:

- Lead end-to-end third-party due diligence processes for vendors, distributors, consultants, agencies, and strategic partners.

- Develop standardized due diligence checklists, risk-rating frameworks, and escalation protocols.

- Conduct legal risk assessments relating to entity constitution, litigation exposure, regulatory compliance, financial credibility, and reputational risks.

7. Litigation & Dispute Management:

- Lead the handling of disputes and litigation matters in collaboration with external law firms by defining strategy, monitoring progress, and driving action plans to achieve timely and favourable resolutions.

- Advise business leaders on settlement options, litigation exposure, and risk scenarios to support informed, commercially aligned decisions.

- Manage civil litigations, commercial disputes, recovery matters, and legal notices across jurisdictions.

- Support recovery proceedings relating to distributor defaults, contractual breaches, outstanding receivables, and commercial recoveries.

8. Team Leadership & Capability Building:

- Allocate work, set priorities, review outputs, and ensure quality and consistency of legal deliverables to maintain high professional standards within the team.

- Develop team capability through coaching, knowledge sharing, and structured feedback to create depth, resilience, and succession readiness.

- Drive adoption and effective utilization of legal technology tools including contract management systems, litigation trackers, compliance management platforms, and document repositories.

- Conduct internal training sessions and workshops on regulatory updates, compliance norms, and ethical conduct to build first line legal awareness across the organization.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE:

Minimum qualification:

- Bachelors degree in law (LLB) Mandatory.

- Masters degree in law (LLM) or MBA in Business Law Mandatory.

Minimum experience:

- Minimum 7 years of experience in a legal role, with mandatory exposure to cosmetic/beauty & personal care/health supplement sectors.

- Proven track record in contract negotiation, IPR management, regulatory compliance, dispute resolution, and handling product related laws.

- Experience working in a corporate legal department of a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) or nutraceutical company is essential.