Shanthala Rao

Shanthala Rao is a Partner at the Bangalore office of the Firm. She is a graduate of the prestigious National Law School of India University where she did an Honours degree in Arts and Law. She was awarded the gold medal for being the best graduating girl student of the University in 1996.

Shanthala began her career working at a leading commercial law firm in New Delhi in the areas of joint ventures, foreign investments and aviation law. Thereafter, she worked for a couple of years at a law firm in Singapore. She has also worked briefly with a law firm in Germany.

Her experience includes foreign investments, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, general corporate work, including advising companies on corporate compliance and assisting companies to clean up pre-acquisition corporate non-compliances. In particular, she has been involved in numerous projects relating to foreign investments in India, including through establishment of wholly owned subsidiaries, joint ventures and acquisitions and represents numerous international companies in setting up their business operations and also assisting with their ongoing corporate compliance in India.

Shanthala also spearheads the corporate compliance and restructuring practice at Kochhar Bangalore. She has handled extremely large multinational company restructuring projects for the Firm's clients. Shanthala's has rich experience in relation to labour and employment laws and has advised several multinational clients with respect to their employee & HR issues.She is also an external member of sexual harassment complaints committee in some of the leading companies and has spoken at employee awareness programs in this regard. Shanthala has been a speaker and panelist at various seminars and conferences on prevention of sexual harassment at workplace.

She is also a trained commercial Mediator, trained by JAMS Institute and Centre for Advanced Mediation Practice.