In the age of feminism, women in India are making remarkable progress and surpassing others in all the spheres of life. They are known for delivering multiple roles effortlessly and for giving their cent per cent hard work to achieve success in whatever they do.
This is the reason that women are known as the backbone of society. In a male-dominated society, women play the most important roles of being a loving daughter, a caring mother, and a capable colleague. Reaching heights in such a male-dominated culture is a different kind of happiness as people criticize them and try to pull them down. However, they manage to stand strong and fight for their place in the society.
One such woman with such a personality is Naina Krishna Murthy. She is an exemplary leader, who inspires other females to fight for their rights and accomplish what they deserve.
A Formidable Leader
Naina Krishna Murthy, one of India’s most formidable legal advisors, is the Founder and Managing Partner of Krishnamurthy & Co. (K Law). She started her career with Arthur Anderson followed by a stint as the In-house Counsel at Biocon. With over 24 years of experience, Naina specializes in corporate commercial law, specifically M&A, JV, collaborations, and PE/VC investments. She is also a trusted legal advisor to some of the foremost corporates in India.
Naina is on the board of several leading organizations, including the Universal Business School. She has co-chaired the Infosys Grievance Redressal Board for five years. In addition to that, she has been on committees of various companies involving sexual harassment complaints. Some of these companies are Novartis India Ltd., Mphasis Ltd., McAfee Software India Pvt. Ltd., GE India Technology and British Telecom.
Naina has been appointed as the external Ombudsman of SB Energy, a Softbank company. She has also served as the director of various companies including National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Ltd. Currently, she is on the Board of Bajaj Energy Ltd. since March 2019 and IndoStar Capital Finance Ltd. since February 2018.
Naina has been acclaimed tremendously as being at the forefront for women in business. She has been widely appreciated by accolades including being recognised as one of the Super 50 Lawyers in India by Asian Legal Business, 2021 and featured in the Managing Partner Roundtable by Asian Legal Business in its December 2020 edition. She has also been awarded the Woman of Excellence Award and the Business Leadership Award hosted by Indian Achievers’ Forum, 2020, the Most Influential Woman in M&A Law by APAC-Insider 2016, Woman Leadership for Excellence in Entrepreneurship award by CMO Asia, Pan Pacific, Singapore, and Woman Lawyer of the Year by Legal Era Awards in 2013. Also, apart from her practice of law, her interests go beyond to animal welfare, environment conservation, and education of the impoverished.
Naina’s favourite quote: “Two things you are in total control of in your life are your ATTITUDE and your EFFORT.”
Delivering Excellence in Legal Space
K Law was founded in 1999 in Bengaluru, under Naina’s leadership and guidance. It has become a major player in the Indian legal market today. The firm is one of the premier full-service law firms in India providing top-notch, comprehensive legal and regulatory advisory, transactional legal services, and dispute resolution support across a broad spectrum of practice areas and sectors.
In a relatively short spell of just over two decades, K Law has transformed itself into a national player with a rapidly expanding practice footprint in mergers & acquisitions, private equity, banking and finance, dispute resolution, intellectual property, projects, media and entertainment and real estate. The firm has a strength of around 85 accomplished and committed lawyers across offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Chennai.
Since its inception, the firm has grown exponentially into a full-service law firm, rendering exceptional legal services to its clients. K Law assists its clients by advising in structuring commercial transactions (both domestic and cross-border), obtaining governmental and regulatory approvals, drafting and negotiating transaction documents, and implementing transactions in India. The adroit team of lawyers assists several national and international clients in dispute resolution proceedings while representing them in diverse fora including courts, tribunals, and other judicial authorities across India.
The prime motive of the firm is to nurture relations while delivering quality services to its clients. It is ensuring an edge over its peer law firms with the unmatched level of partner attention and involvement in each matter. Integrity, assurance, confidence, experience, and an overarching sense of service are some of the key elements that are the foundations of K Law. The firm’s approach is client-centric, solution-oriented, service-driven, and aimed at value-optimization through high partner-attention.
An Inspiration to Practice Law
Naina loves the practice of law. It has been her prime motivation and continues to be so even today, without compromise. She wanted to create an environment, where this passion for the law was brought into the special and sacred relationships between the client and the lawyer.
K Law was created based on the zeal to offer something out of the box in the relevant domain. Naina aspired to devise an environment that reflected the passion and purpose of the entrepreneur. The venture converged on offering a joyous and secure place for people to work at, and in turn, offer best-in-class services to clients. The intention was to do better, to do service, both for the people who worked at the firm and those who sought work from the firm. After the successful commencement of the business venture, Naina headed forward with faith, courage, confidence, optimism, and hard work, that paved the path to success eventually.
Obstructions Faced
Every entrepreneur at some point in their career, will face a time when their expertise or skill set will fall short of what the challenge demands. Nonetheless, with unshakeable faith, courage, confidence, flexibility to adapt, hard work, and lots of positive energy—knowing that every uncertainty has its shelf life, and this too, shall pass—one has to keep moving undaunted towards their target.
Naina started K Law in her 20’s. In a profession that values age and experience, it was certainly an uphill struggle, to convince clients to take a chance with her, especially in the early years of inception of the firm. Further, at that time, the legal industry was heavily male-dominated and a 20+-year old woman starting out without any background or legacy to show for her presence certainly made it a challenge to convert apprehensive clients.
Today, however, the challenge is that of any growing organization—talent building, people retention, client service, quality assurance and above all, maintaining a discipline of culture, integrity, transparency, accountability, and service throughout the entire organization.
A Glimpse on Personal Life
To explain Naina’s point of view on this, let us begin with the fact that she has never understood the question, “How do you keep a balance between your personal life and professional one?” Her, definition of ‘balance’ is very different from others. She tries to keep Sundays completely work-free. But it is sometimes necessary to work as everyone is going through challenging times and one needs to be there for these people, who work within the firm or the clients.
Since she enjoys what she does, she does not consider it an unbalance, even if she has to work sometimes on Sundays too. She gets ‘balance’ every day in the morning—with her routine of meditation, workout, and prayers. It sets her up beautifully for each coming day.
Naina revealed her aim in life and said, “My purpose in life is to create a firm that will sustain after her and will represent service to the people within and outside the firm and to create a place people are happy to work for, and where people are happy to come to work.”
Driving the Firm through Technology
Technology has certainly influenced the way we carry out the business of law. From storing data to retrieving old matters, to record keeping of time, to computing productivity, to managing complex portfolios of clients; technology has come a long way and has interspersed its way slowly and effectively in the way we provide legal services.
However, these are all primarily the procedural aspects of providing legal services, it still has a long way to go in impacting the substantive practice of law.
A Different Perspective
Naina has never planned the future. In fact, she has always despised questions like “where do you see yourself 5 years from now?” Life is unpredictable and there lies the magic and beauty of it. The future is what one makes of it. It can be new and exciting or routine and dull.
For Naina, each day is a fresh start and a new beginning. What she focuses on is taking control of the day and the moment, to live that day fully. Curiosity and excitement about what each day brings, and it will bring something new is the promise of every new day. This is what the present and future are for Naina. There will be new mountains to scale and new goals to surpass certainly. But for today, what is being done is enough and that is a new blessing.
Remarkable Endorsements
Naina’s Achievements:
- Featured in the Managing Partner Roundtable by Asian Legal Business (Thomson Reuters) in its December 2020 edition
- Honoured with ‘Woman of Excellence’ and ‘Business Leadership’ awards hosted by Indian Achievers’ Forum, 2020
- ‘Notable Practitioner’ for Corporate / M&A by Chambers and Partners Asia-Pacific, 2019
- Included in India Business Law Journal’s ‘A List’ of India’s top 100 lawyers, 2016 & 2017
- Recognised as ‘Most Influential Woman in M&A Law’ by APAC-Insider, 2016
- ‘Market – Leading Lawyer’ for Corporate / M&A by Asialaw Leading Lawyers, 2016
- ‘Leading Practitioner’ for Corporate / M&A by Chambers and Partners Asia-Pacific, 2016
- Honoured with ‘Woman Leadership Award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship’ by CMO Asia Awards, 2013
- Honoured as ‘Woman Lawyer of the Year’ by Legal Era Awards, 2013
- Featured in Entrepreneur India magazine, March 2013 edition
Firm’s Accolades:
- Recognised as one of the top “Corporate & Commercial” law firms in India at the India Business Law Journal’s Indian Law Firms Awards 2021
- Ranked as “Tier 1” for “Copyright / Trademarks” in India in 2021 by Asian Legal Business (Thomson Reuters)
- Recognised for the following categories by IFLR1000 2021:
- Project development: Infrastructure
- Project development: Power
- Project development: Transport
- Restructuring and Insolvency
- Shortlisted as one of the only 6 firms in India for the “Firm of the Year” award at the Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific Awards 2021
- Ranked as a “Notable Firm” in India in the following three practice areas by the Benchmark Litigation Asia-Pacific Rankings 2021:
- Commercial and Transactions
- Intellectual Property
- Insolvency
- ‘Tier 4’ for M&A by IFLR1000, 2021
- ‘Other Notable Firm’ for Corporate and M&A by Asialaw Profiles. 2021
- Recognised for Corporate / M&A by Asialaw Profiles 2021
- Recognised under M&A Rankings 2020 by Asian Legal Business (ALB)
- Awarded the Best Corporate & Commercial Law Firm 2020 – India by Acquisition INTL Magazine’s 2020 Global Excellence Awards
- ‘Bengaluru Firm of the Year’ by India IP Awards 2020
- ‘Tier 4’ for M&A by IFLR1000, 2020
- ‘Other Notable Firm’ for Corporate and M&A by Asialaw Profiles. 2020
- Recognised for its Real Estate practice by India Business Law Journal at the Indian Law Firm Awards, 2019
- ‘Notable Firm’ for Corporate/M&A by Chambers & Partners Asia-Pacific, 2019
- Recognised for its Corporate & Commercial practice by India Business Law Journal at the India Law Firm Awards, 2017-18
Building a Self-Perpetuating Team
This is what the team at K Law mentions about how they expand the team, “We have never pursued rapid expansion in terms of the size of the team; rather, we have been very choosy when it came to the selection of the right individual. We believe in the similarity of values between the organization and its members and thus, ask only those to join our team who fit well in our work and professional culture.”
Academic brilliance and professional talent coupled with integrity, ethical conduct, and client centricity are the key attributes that Naina looks for in prospective lawyers of the firm. K Law values a creative, dynamic, and solution-oriented approach towards delivering excellence to its clients and this is just what Naina seeks in her lawyers.
Along with inherent talent, she also strongly believes in continuous learning and development. As such, she encourages and provides regular in-depth professional training to the lawyers.
Offering a Supportive Work Environment
Partners have regular calls with their teams. Sometimes, these are one-on-one discussions. Naina is always accessible to everyone within the firm from paralegals to partners to the support staff. Everyone knows that they can call her to discuss anything.
The K Law team ensures that talent is recognized and appreciated. From an intern to a paralegal to a partner. Every person is heard and seen in the firm. Nobody is made to feel like they are just a cog in a large machinery because in this firm they are not. Everyone is important to the success of K Law. No problem falls on deaf ears and every issue is addressed, and addressed quickly.
The team has regular town hall sessions, and the entire firm is hosted by Naina herself to give hope, faith, assurance, and optimism. The level of transparency and open communication that has been proactively inculcated in the team by the top management allows issues to be identified at a very early stage and, steps can be taken to alleviate any problem at its root. Also, there is zero tolerance for any kind of politics.
A number of recreational activities are designed and implemented to allow K Law’s culture to trickle down to every level of the firm to keep the enthusiasm at its peak. These include celebrating birthdays, Independence Day, Republic Day, Christmas, and Diwali at the office locations; having puja ceremonies at all locations; and organizing office outbounds, lunches and dinners frequently. The firm also regularly conducts welfare programmes such as online meditation programmes and mental wellbeing workshops, etc. for the benefit of all its members.
Just recently in 2019 (before the pandemic struck), the firm completed two decades of its operation and thus, the entire team (from all locations) was taken to the Bengaluru office to celebrate this milestone in December 2019. This combined with Christmas and Secret Santa ensured that everyone had a gala time!
Mental health of its people is a priority at K Law. And the team has set up proper structures to enable the protection and wellbeing of the mental health of its people, which everyone can take the benefit of.
At the end of the day, everyone feels that they are part of a very cohesive family and that the firm has their back. They are important to the firm and their presence means something to the firm.
Setting the Goals High
Naina’s team mentions, what sets them apart from their competitors, “Our motto is ‘nurturing relations, delivering quality’. As such, our competitive advantage lies in our unmatched level of partner attention and involvement in each matter, which when complimented by our client-centric, solution-oriented, commercial approach towards service delivery and high standards of integrity and professional ethics, are difficult to replicate.”
“What really differentiates us from the crowd is our relentless focus on relationships as opposed to transactions. We focus on relationships not transactions. Our focus is on service, walking the talk and ensuring integrity every step of the way. Our clients have learnt that when we say something we do it and then have their back every step of the way. Our relationships are not transaction-based but based on trust, service, and purpose,” they added.
Naina’s team aims to consistently meet the clients’ needs and provide outstanding service in a timely, efficient, and ethical manner. To this end, they follow the highest standards of integrity, professionalism, and responsibility in delivering on the commitments.
The high level of partner involvement and attention, the commercial perspective, the client-centric approach and value optimization that are at the heart of the firm’s foundation allows it to ensure that nothing, but the highest quality of services are rendered to the clients each and every time.
Naina’s team said, “Our clients, their interests, and our relationship with them are paramount to us. Thus, we assign a great deal of value to swiftly assessing situations and giving practical, commercial solutions to our clients’ problems.”
“We look at every aspect of a matter, identify and prioritise the issues, and provide innovative, appropriate, and pragmatic solutions to accomplish the desired and necessary outcome to the most complex of problems,” they added.
Words of Wisdom
Remember as Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you did or what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
Despite your drive and your ambition and your busyness, never forget to respect and be kind to people and understand that at the end of the day, we are all connected. That will take you much further in life than all the hustling you can do.
