About Sameer
Group Legal Counsel is the Chief Legal Officer of the company. Sameer Chugh, who is currently Group General Counsel for Bharti Enterprises since 2019. Sameer in a new role has the responsibility of the new Bharti Group. In his new role, he looks at all shareholder matters across the Group in all geographies and also provides counsel and advice to the operational entities on strategic and group-wide matters.
Education
Sameer completed his Law, majoring in Company Law and Criminal Law, from Symbiosis Society’s Law College, University of Pune. Sameer also holds a Masters in Marketing Management from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Pune and Msc in Telecom Business from University College of London, London, UK.
Journey in Law
Sameer started his career as a trainee in the High Court of Delhi under Advocate, D.S. Chauhan, Advocate on Record, Supreme Court. He started his law firm journey with Singhania & Co. working on Corporate and Commercial Transactions and entry strategy into India, incorporation of Companies, investment agreements etc. Before moving into the house, he also worked with Kochhar & Co.
Sameer has worked as the Legal Counsel of NCR Corporation in India and helped NCR set up their manufacturing plant in India located at Pondicherry. He was also the Head of Legal and Regulatory Authority of British Telecom in India before moving to London as head of Legal and Commercial doing major transactions across the globe. He returned to India as the Senior Vice President and Head Legal of the Telecom Business of Essar Group and the Global head of legal for M&A. Sameer has also worked as the Group Counsel of the Cummins Group in India before taking up the Director – Legal & Regulatory position in Bharti Airtel. He has 5 years experience in Airtel, Sameer is now the Group General Counsel for Bharti Enterprises.
Sameer has a total of more than 25 billion dollars of transactions to his experience over the period of his career. He has been involved in cross border M&A also and has been managing mid to large-sized Law Departments as part of his role.
Some of the salient initiatives include implementation of the “Open Network” program, which focused on involving customers in identifying network issues and then resolving them; closing important deals for the implementation of core business intelligence platforms that enable targeting customers with customised offers; leading closure of contracts with multiple partners for implementing projects, enabling customers to have greater visibility and control of their services and consumption. On his leadership and success as an in-house lawyer, Chugh identifies qualities that have helped him: ‘the in-house counsel has the end-to-end responsibility of not stating what the law says but also how the same is to be applied and implemented.
Airtel’s legal team, which is headquartered in Gurgaon, is 65 people team, divided mainly into three teams: regulatory, litigation and corporate, covering the entire South Asia market.
