Taking Ownership Is The Key: Vineet Bose, General Counsel, Nuvoco Vistas Group

Mr Bose, could you briefly tell us about your illustrious journey in law.

If I say my journey starts from a regulator to be regulated, this is the kind of a journey because I started as a part of the government of India and over a period of time I worked with law firms, worked with various MNCs and in  I've worked with Vedanta in the natural resource sector. Vedanta is one of the biggest companies in the natural resource sector. It has done a humongous job in terms of CSR too. 

In my opinion, there is no such concept of a sector specific expertise or domain expertise. All these concepts are a thing of the past. It's all about having the right attitude. This is what my journey has taught me.

I was working in an area, which is more on the investigation side and then I moved to a law firm, which again, over a period of time, I was doing various due diligence and all those aspects and then I moved to taxation and then I landed in a company in the mining sector. So, the right attitude, is what it makes the difference.

Now how will the right attitude come is something I will briefly touch upon.

When you are working in a particular setup as a General Counsel, you have to be a business legal person. In fact, I would like to emphasize that when you talk to an engineer think from an engineer's perspective, when you talk to a promoter, you have to be visionary like a promoter because if you think then only you're on the same bandwidth, and only then you can transform his ideas, his approach, and provide not only the solution, right solutions with a management that becomes very important in any journey. 

How has the role of a general counsel changed over time?

For a general counsel, the fundamentals remain the same. In my two decades experience also what I've seen is that as a general counsel, you're still responsible for the risk management, litigation, compliance and governance. 

So what has changed? 

If I summarize what has changed, the change is the ownership. The ownership not only towards your shareholders, the ownership towards your employees, the ownership is towards your state, your vendors, the ownership towards is your community, realized the importance of the ownership is of the General Counsel towards the community when I worked in the mining sector. If an industry suffers from noncompliance, it can lead to discontinuation of work and the employee will suffer and the ancillary industries depending on that industry will suffer too. That’s why the element of taking ownership is very important.

A GC with a decade or two decades of experience over a period of time develops a sixth sense, a kind of inherent predictability in proactively dealing with situations and do best for your organization by giving the right advice and business solution.  You need not be a problem-solving person and be able to nip the issues in the bud itself. Being a team player and thinking like an entrepreneur is crucial too. 

What is the way forward for a General Counsel? 

We are slowly becoming of course, tech savvy also over a period of time data has become very important. Adopting a data driven approach is critical. What exactly is your company's EBITA? What exactly is the volume? What is the company is striving for? The stakeholder’s goal and how you are value adding.  The moment you start thinking from that perspective, you will definitely deliver on the right goal and you will unlock that potential.

Over a period of time, another area which has come up very for a General Counsel is advocacy. Working with the regulators, approaching the regulators through various forums and bringing what is important for the industry what is important for the national growth. 

I have interacted with Niti Aayog a number of times on the mining issues and when you prepare the right story you can approach the regulators with what the existing laws are, where exactly those laws are not industry friendly and G C is in the best position or a legal in- house counsel is in a best position to work with the government to get the right policies in place and to also ensure that the obsolete policy goes away. 

Your team becomes very important, you have to nurture your team, you have to mentor your team in the right way. Because ultimately, a general counsel cannot do everything alone. In today’s day and age, leveraging the technology is what is a very important point which I always emphasize.

Technology changes your approach because you become more strategic in your thinking and the more you become strategic in your thinking, the more you value add. If you believe in the compliance reporting that the time has changed, what is important is compliance assurance and when it comes to compliance assurance, one has to learn, and understand what exactly is the challenge in relation to the compliances and one has to be upfront in bringing out all those issues before the board in a timely manner. 

If those issues are addressed because before the thing can become a bigger issue from that. So, I think these are some of the important aspects which I would like to highlight. Again, another area where person is working in a regulated sector like ours. It is a battle of perceptions. Perception plays an important role which ultimately enhances or can make an impact on the brand image of a company. So again, on the perception building, whichever external shareholder one connects, he has to build that right perception for the organization.

*Edited from BW Legal World GC Conference 2021