Indian firms are now concerned about reputation risk
(Times of India)
(Times of India)
Reeba Zachariah & Boby KurianReeba Zachariah & Boby Kurian, TNN | Aug 6, 2011, 07.12AM IST
It is 7.15 pm and AZB & Partners, a leading corporate law firm on South Mumbai's smartest street, is buzzing with energy. Its founder Zia Mody is flitting between meetings and rushes in twenty minutes late. She apologizes before getting down to business. "Shoot the questions," says the Harvard educated lawyer whose firm has advised on mergers and acquisitions worth $20 billion in the first six months of 2011.
She's just back from a short vacation to Kenya where she rung in her 55th birthday with her businessman husband Jaydev Mody. A gaming-cum-safari club located right on the Equator has been her favourite holiday spot for years.
"We went there for our honeymoon," Mody says with a chuckle.
It was marriage that brought Mody back to India in the early eighties from the US where she was working with a New York law firm Baker & McKenzie. Jaydev and she had met through their lawyer-fathers. Returning to India meant starting her career all over again. The uncertainty of a career weighed on her, but she was here to stay.
Workstartedwithcourt practice. The bias against an Indian woman standing up and arguing in court hadn't disappeared yet. "The fear was how long would one have to keep proving oneself," she recalls. But early success beckoned when "typically hardened businessmen wanted me to argue their case".
Court practice went on for a decade until one day it no longer excited her. Those years also saw her taking up several public interest litigations like Floor Space Index (FSI ) valuation, when, on many occasions, she argued for free. "I didn't like the waiting period. There were constant adjournments. It didn't end," she says. "Most of the fights were silly. I got tired of all that."
And then the big switch happened. She crossed over from court practice to chamber practice, setting aside her father Soli Sorabjee's advice that she should be a judge. The Indian economy was opening up, corporate law was in the making. She was in the right place at the right time. "God moved me with the times, and my career moved with a changed India," Mody, a follower of the Bahai faith, says.
She's just back from a short vacation to Kenya where she rung in her 55th birthday with her businessman husband Jaydev Mody. A gaming-cum-safari club located right on the Equator has been her favourite holiday spot for years.
"We went there for our honeymoon," Mody says with a chuckle.
It was marriage that brought Mody back to India in the early eighties from the US where she was working with a New York law firm Baker & McKenzie. Jaydev and she had met through their lawyer-fathers. Returning to India meant starting her career all over again. The uncertainty of a career weighed on her, but she was here to stay.
Workstartedwithcourt practice. The bias against an Indian woman standing up and arguing in court hadn't disappeared yet. "The fear was how long would one have to keep proving oneself," she recalls. But early success beckoned when "typically hardened businessmen wanted me to argue their case".
Court practice went on for a decade until one day it no longer excited her. Those years also saw her taking up several public interest litigations like Floor Space Index (FSI ) valuation, when, on many occasions, she argued for free. "I didn't like the waiting period. There were constant adjournments. It didn't end," she says. "Most of the fights were silly. I got tired of all that."
And then the big switch happened. She crossed over from court practice to chamber practice, setting aside her father Soli Sorabjee's advice that she should be a judge. The Indian economy was opening up, corporate law was in the making. She was in the right place at the right time. "God moved me with the times, and my career moved with a changed India," Mody, a follower of the Bahai faith, says.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Indian-firms-are-now-concerned-about-reputation-risk/articleshow/9501869.cms
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