Samheeta Rao is a Partner at GLA’s Bengaluru office, and has 14 years of post-qualification experience. Prior to joining GLA, Samheeta co-headed the legal department of Goldman Sachs’ Bengaluru office and was Goldman’s sole employment counsel covering all their India offices during her stint there.
She is well versed in enterprise risk assessment issues, handling sensitive investigations and regulatory inquiries. She also acts as the independent member on the internal complaints committees of clients (required under the anti-sexual harassment laws in India).
She also brings to the table strong transactional and advisory experience, having spent the first 6 years of her career at the Bangalore office of Amarchand Mangaldas Suresh A. Shroff & Co., where she advised clients on mergers and acquisitions transactions and private equity transactions, spanning early stage funding rounds all the way to pre-IPO rounds of funding. Her corporate commercial expertise continued to be built during her stint at Goldman Sachs, where she was responsible for all corporate compliances of the Bengaluru entity, spanning companies legislations, foreign exchange control, contract advisory and all other local law compliances.
Apart from spearheading the GLA’s Employment Practice, she has spent the last year or so, adding strength to GLA’s Social Enterprises practice. Since joining GLA, she has worked with several leading Indian social impact organizations and helped them navigate a complex legal and regulatory environment.
Samheeta graduated from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru in 2006. She is an avid Wodehouse fan, and hopes to see a day when lawyers display more wit than legal jargon!
We are GameChanger Law Advisors (GLA) – a boutique corporate and commercial law firm with expertise advising technology startups, venture capital investors, multinational corporations, social enterprises and sporting businesses on a broad range of legal and compliance matters. With offices in India’s startup hubs Bengaluru and New Delhi, we have built deep relationships with clients across the globe.
We pride ourselves in providing practical advice, while providing clients with billing options that are considerate of every business’s financial needs. We have developed a proprietary content platform, through which we simplify the law for the benefit of our stakeholders.
In 2020, we were ranked by leading legal business publication, Asian Legal Business, as a “Firm to Watch” in India. In 2018, an independent survey of over 1200 legal professionals in India, commissioned by India’s leading legal recruitment agency, Vahura saw us being ranked as the overall WINNER of the Vahura Best Law Firms to Work Award 2018 in the Boutique Law Firms category in India.
We advise clients on Corporate and Commercial Laws, Employment Law, foreign exchange control regulations, Intellectual Property Laws and Venture Capital, Mergers & Acquisitions Transactions.
We work extensively with clients operating in the following industries: TMT, Sports, Entertainment & Gaming (SEG) and Social Enterprises, particularly those operating in the Education, Healthcare and Agritech industries. We provide clients with specialised legal assistance on issues concerning these industries, apart from advising them on the different practice areas listed above.
