Director, Legal Counsel, INSWA

Location: Gurugram, India

Role Type: Individual Contributor

Please note: The selected candidate will need to be based in Gurugram, India. This is an Individual Contributor position.

As the Director, Legal Counsel - INSWA will provide support and advice to Operating Unit (OU) who support the Bottlers. across India & Southwest Asia (INSWA) Operating Unit.

What You'll Do

• Lead legal strategy and governance for national and strategic customer engagements across the OU-bottler system, managing risk and system alignment.
• Act as the primary legal partner for complex customer and bottler relationships, overseeing negotiations, contracts, and dispute resolution.
• Establish compliance and governance frameworks for customer interactions, data sharing, and cross-bottler coordination.
• Lead legal and regulatory strategy for mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic investments, including transaction structuring, regulatory approvals, foreign investment compliance, and engagement with regulators.
• Oversee transaction execution and governance, covering documentation, filings, board processes, post-closing compliances, and management of external counsel in alignment with business and global governance frameworks.
• Strategic Counsel and support to OU Franchisee teams who support the Bottlers.
• Lead competition and antitrust compliance across commercial activities and strategic transactions, including pricing and go-to-market models, customer and channel arrangements, mergers and joint ventures, data sharing, and market communications, ensuring alignment with applicable laws and internal policies.
• Build and maintain an enterprise-wide competition compliance framework, covering risk assessment, conduct guardrails, training and awareness, regulatory monitoring, and support for investigations, in collaboration with global stakeholders to ensure consistent market conduct.
• Support tactical execution of projects, routine business tasks by OU teams to achieve agreed objectives of the organization.
• Be proactive, manage and mitigate legal risk by crafting strategy and tactical execution plans to support associates on field.
• Provide proactive and creative strategic and tactical legal counseling and support, advice and assist in problem resolution on a timely basis; work as part of cross-functional teams on projects and initiatives to achieve business result in the right way

• Provide advice on contract & commercial, corporate, employment, environment, sustainability, consumer protection and competition, and ability to learn more industry/country related laws, such as food law, e-commerce, legal metrology and the applicable laws and regulations and minimize risk and ensure compliance with Company policies, laws, and regulations
• Provide litigation assessment counseling and risk mitigation advice
• Overseeing all stages of a legal dispute, from initial investigation to final judgment or settlement.
• Conducting thorough research on relevant laws, statutes, and precedents to support case strategy. Preparing and reviewing a wide range of legal documents, including legal notices, complaints, petitions, briefs, and pleadings.
• Manage and assist external counsels for the Company and Bottlers as per legal strategy and alignment.
• Provide counselling on contract, commercial, marketing, product supply, food law, employment, privacy and antitrust law (among others) to all of the client groups, draft and negotiate agreements, and review marketing materials, campaigns and promotional matters.

• Enable Governance, Strengthen Compliance with Company Policies: Provide guidance and direction regarding the Company's operations in an ethical manner, compliance programs and policies, including the Code of Business Conduct, competition law policies, privacy and data protection, regulatory compliance, and collaborate with the rest of the OU counsels to advise the Franchisee bottlers.
• Represent and/or guide the representation of Company interests in dealing with local governmental authorities
• Provide strategic legal support and business solutions to ensure realization of business priorities, while continuing to identify opportunities to bring consistency and uniformity to legal work and implementation of initiatives in an effort to enhance business-wide activities.
• Handle real estate related matters including leases, construction related services contracts, stamp duty and compliances such as BOCW, PCB requirement etc.
• Ensure compliance with Company policy and provide proper training and support in the areas of corporate governance, including but not limited to Code of Business Conduct, Anti-Bribery Compliance, Supplier Guiding Principles, FCPA, Trade Sanctions, Anti-trust, Privacy Policy and other policies.
• Carry out any other instruction given by Operating Unit General Counsel to advance the interests of the Business initiatives

• Education: Qualified lawyer
• 10+ years of prior relevant experience in providing legal advice, researching, and interpreting laws and regulations, and managing legal risks.
• Experience in the FMCG industry or supporting customer and commercial operations would be a plus.
• Demonstrated ability to research, analyze, and interpret proposed and existing laws, statutes, and regulations.
• Experience in structuring, drafting, negotiating, and/or approving legal contracts, letters of agreement, policies, and other documents.
• Experience in representing/advocating for an organization in litigation, arbitration, mediation, or other disputes with courts, government agencies, or other legal authorities.
• Proven track record in ensuring the organization gains regulatory approval for new products and product amendments; and for maintaining the currency of product licenses and permits.
• Business Partnership and Legal Efficiency: Provide legal support and business solutions to ensure realization of business priorities.
• Ability to be highly organized and effective, handle multiple complex projects and carefully prioritize competing work assignments from many clients.
• Demonstrated ability to ensure the organization is aware of and compliant with legislation and regulations pertaining to the business.
• Experience in monitoring/interpreting regulatory developments and determining the impact on business operations and compliance programs and implementing compliance measures.
• Proven experience in implementing compliance measures.
• Experience in preparing, reviewing, and/or approving regulatory compliance documents.
• Experience in identifying potential fraud cases and taking appropriate action, including research and analysis of account activity to assess levels of risk, contacting customers to verify legitimate usage, and providing review and analysis of risky or exception conditions.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to influence parties within and outside of the job function at an operational level regarding policies, procedures, and practices, ability to communicate complex legal topics to all business clients.

• Growth Mindset: Demonstrates Curiosity. Welcomes failure as a learning opportunity.
• Smart Risk: Makes bold decisions/recommendations.
• Commercially Focused: Understands the upstream and downstream implications of his/her work.
• Performance Driven & Accountable: Has high performance standards. Outperforms her/his peers.
• Fast/Agile: Removes barriers to move faster. Experiments and adapts. Thrives under pressure and fast pace.
• Empowered: Brings solutions instead of problems. Challenges the status quo. Has the courage to take an unpopular stance.

• Act Like an Owner: Deliver results, creating value for our brands, our System, our customers and key stakeholders.
• Collaborate with the System, Customers and Key Stakeholders
• Develops Self and Others: Develop self and support others' development to achieve their full potential.
• Drive Innovation: Generate new or unique solutions and embrace new ideas that help sustain our business.
• Strong experience in managing senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and positively impact teams.

• Career growth and development: Leveraging our boundaryless network, we provide access to educational platforms and provide coaching, mentoring and feedback, as a part of our Leadership & Development process.
• Diverse and inclusive culture: You'll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs. We want to make our culture inevitable.
• International Experience: Become part of international projects and work along multicultural teams, through our global network.