This interview has been published by Anshi Mudgal and The SuperLawyer Team
What drew you to this specialized field of healthcare and life sciences sectors and was there a pivotal moment that influenced you to pursue law?
There wasn’t one single pivotal moment that led me to the healthcare and life sciences field, it was a series of small, steady influences that ultimately shaped my path. Both my grandfathers were doctors, and I grew up listening to stories about their patients, their long hours, and the deep sense of purpose that came with practicing medicine. What resonated with me most was the service orientation of their profession, the idea that knowledge, when applied ethically, can tangibly improve lives. That value system stayed with me.
When I chose to pursue law, I wanted to retain that sense of impact and service while approaching it through a different lens. My academic foundation, a dual degree in Science and Law (B.Sc., LL.B.) at GNLU, allowed me to explore that intersection meaningfully. It kept my scientific curiosity alive while giving me the analytical tools of a lawyer. I found myself drawn to subjects that sat at the interface of law, policy, and technology, spaces where regulation both enables and restrains innovation.
During my time at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM), I rotated through three distinct practice areas, spending six months in each. It’s a model I remain grateful for, because it gave me the chance to experiment across corporate, litigation, and regulatory mandates before finding my fit. What ultimately drew me to the healthcare and life sciences group was its balance: it wasn’t confined to one box. The practice blended corporate transactions, regulatory advisory, and litigation support, meaning every day required both legal precision and scientific context. It offered the intellectual breadth of a generalist practice with the technical depth of a specialist one.
That mix, of science, regulation, and strategy, is what continues to excite me today. Healthcare and life sciences law isn’t just about compliance or contracts; it’s about facilitating innovation responsibly, ensuring that good science gets to patients safely, and helping clients navigate the grey zones where policy is still catching up to progress. It’s that dynamic intersection that keeps me engaged, challenged, and grounded in the same sense of purpose that first drew me to the field.
Completing your LL.M. at Stanford Law School, how did it shape your understanding of the legal challenges faced by emerging tech and health ventures?
Studying law at Stanford Law School was a truly formative experience. Stanford is one of the few law schools in the world that encourages genuine interdisciplinary exploration allowing you to cross-list courses seamlessly across its schools of business, medicine, engineering, and policy. That design, combined with its location at the heart of Silicon Valley, places you right at the intersection of innovation and regulation. You’re surrounded by people who are not only thinking about the law but actively building the future industries it will need to govern.
During my LL.M. in Law, Science, and Technology, I took classes at both the Graduate School of Business and the School of Medicine. That cross-pollination exposed me to an extraordinary range of ideas: from startups reimagining payor and provider systems, to biotech ventures pursuing cell and gene therapies for rare diseases. These were students who were scientists, engineers, and founders often working at the bleeding edge of what was scientifically possible but who also needed guidance on what was legally permissible. It was fascinating to see how quickly innovation can outpace regulation, and how early-stage ventures often struggle with foundational legal questions, entity formation, licensing, data governance, clinical trial compliance because they lack access to specialized counsel.
That realization became the starting point for what later became the Stanford Law and Start-up Project (SLASP). I noticed that, despite Stanford being one of the most active startup ecosystems in the world, there was no formal pro bono legal support available for student-led ventures. To bridge that gap, I launched SLASP, an initiative jointly supported by Stanford Law School and the Graduate School of Business, with mentorship from partner law firms and alumni practitioners. The idea was simple but impactful: create a structured framework where law students could work under faculty and practitioner supervision to advise early-stage founders on key legal and regulatory issues, from incorporation to IP strategy and data privacy compliance.
Founding SLASP was both entrepreneurial and deeply personal for me. It allowed me to apply my legal training not just as an academic exercise but as a tool to enable innovation. It taught me that being a good lawyer in emerging industries requires more than technical accuracy, it requires empathy for the builder’s mindset and the foresight to anticipate how law and technology evolve together.
Stanford, in that sense, didn’t just teach me about the legal challenges of emerging ventures, it showed me how law can become a strategic enabler of innovation when approached creatively and collaboratively.
Having practiced law in both India and the U.S., what key cultural, regulatory differences have you observed between the two jurisdictions?
Every country’s legal system is a reflection of its history, society, and institutions. Each evolves to meet the needs of its people, shaped by its own political, economic, and cultural realities. That’s especially true for global leaders like the United States, whose legal system is both intricate and deeply structured, marked by layered jurisprudence, federalism, and an acute focus on precision. It operates quite differently from India’s, where the system, while equally rigorous, often emphasizes flexibility and contextual application. But these differences are expected. As practitioners making that transition, what matters most is the ability to adapt, to absorb the logic of a new legal culture without losing your own analytical identity.
That’s where the LL.M. program and bar preparation process play an instrumental role. They don’t just teach the black-letter law; they retrain how you think, write, and reason within a new legal framework. The rest, as I learned, comes through immersion. If you have tenacity and curiosity, you can navigate almost any system. Curiosity ensures that you keep asking the right questions, while tenacity gives you the discipline to keep refining your craft until the differences that once felt foreign become intuitive.
What you truly need to gear up for, however, are the cultural shifts in practice.
The first is the hyper-specialization that defines much of the U.S. Big Law. Unlike India, and even most of Asia or Europe, lawyers are expected to be broad-based generalists, U.S. firms value depth over breadth. You’re expected to carve out a niche, build recognized expertise, and become the person clients call for a specific problem.
The second is the entrepreneurial expectation built into the practice. Growth isn’t just about billing hours; it’s about shaping your professional brand, through thought leadership, industry engagement, and business development. You’re encouraged, and often expected, to take ownership of your practice early: to publish, speak, participate in trade groups, and cultivate client relationships proactively. Typically, by your fifth year, the firm’s leadership identifies who will be groomed for partnership and who will develop as senior specialists, and provides support accordingly.
The third adjustment lies in the nuances of day-to-day practice: the precision of drafting, the tone and cadence of client interactions, and the expectation of proactive collaboration within the firm. Communication is often more direct, timelines more compressed, and initiative more visibly rewarded. One is expected not only to execute but to anticipate, to think commercially and contribute strategically.
Adapting to these differences can be challenging, but it’s also deeply enriching.
Coming with diverse experience advising various entities, could you share one particularly memorable case or experience that stood out to you ?
Over the course of my seven-plus-year career, I’ve advised on complex corporate transactions and regulatory mandates for leading pharmaceutical companies, health systems, and high-growth innovators. What has mattered just as much, however, is the chance to do work with real public-health consequences, projects that move beyond balance sheets and directly affect access, equity, and outcomes.
Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) for adolescents and young people is one of those crucial areas. The stakes are unambiguous: unclear or conflicting legal standards do not just create compliance risk; they translate into delayed care, inconsistent counseling, and, ultimately, poorer health outcomes for some of the most vulnerable populations. In that context, I authored a report for the World Health Organization, “Review of Conflation of Laws on Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Services for Adolescents and Young People in India.” The analysis mapped how overlapping statutory and regulatory frameworks were impeding ground-level implementation and proposed concrete, harmonizing solutions. Several of those recommendations were subsequently reflected in WHO’s submissions to India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and informed amendments to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 2021.
I’m especially grateful that I was able to do this kind of healthcare policy work,collaborating closely with WHO and MOHFW, while employed at a corporate law firm. It was a rare and formative opportunity to bridge rigorous legal analysis with system-level health policy, and to see how thoughtfully crafted legal recommendations can unlock access to timely, appropriate care.
The project was also personally meaningful because, despite being relatively junior at the time (a third-year associate), I was entrusted to lead it,based on my sustained interest and enthusiasm for healthcare policy. It became the first healthcare policy matter executed by the Healthcare & Life Sciences team at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, setting a template for how our practice could contribute to policy alongside traditional transactional and regulatory work.
Women’s and adolescents’ health remains a priority for me. This engagement reaffirmed my conviction that the law is not just a set of constraints to navigate,it’s an instrument to improve public-health systems when applied with clarity, empathy, and evidence. I’m proud that my contribution helped translate legal complexity into actionable reforms, and even prouder of the tangible impact those reforms continue to have on access and care.
At Holon Law Partners, how do you manage the dual demands of strategic legal counsel and business growth while maintaining personal well-being and handling external pressures?
At this stage in my career, I’ve come to appreciate that as a lawyer, business development isn’t separate from the practice of law, it’s an extension of it. As one progresses, the role naturally expands: it’s not only about providing sound counsel, but also about helping build something that endures beyond the individual matter or client relationship. The most respected leaders in the legal world are those who’ve learned to straddle both roles seamlessly, trusted advisor and strategic builder.
I’ve been fortunate that I genuinely enjoy both aspects of my work at Holon Law Partners: advising clients on complex healthcare, life sciences, and technology transactions, and simultaneously helping shape and grow these practice verticals. Coming from a business family, I’ve always been fascinated by the entrepreneurial side of firm-building, the thrill of taking something from inception to a differentiated, high-performing platform. Business development, for me, isn’t just networking or pitching; it’s about identifying white spaces, nurturing partnerships, and architecting ecosystems around ideas that matter.
Balancing both roles in a high-stakes environment requires clarity of focus and self-awareness. I’ve learned that work–life balance is deeply subjective, for some, it’s separation; for others, it’s alignment. For me, it’s alignment: when the work energizes you, the hours blur. I center myself through structure, running, and conscious resets, but I also accept that intensity comes with ambition.
Just as importantly, balance depends on the environment. You can only sustain high performance if you’re in a culture where colleagues and partners support, mentor, and elevate you when it counts. I’m fortunate to have that, at Holon Law Partners, within DCTAV (where I serve on the executive board), and across my broader ecosystem. Their support shows up in tangible ways: senior partners who open doors and share context; peers who pressure-test strategy and swap hard-won playbooks; mentors who give candid feedback and air cover so you can take smart risks; and communities like DCTAV that amplify ideas and create warm, values-aligned connections. That scaffolding doesn’t just make the work better, it makes the pace sustainable.
What ultimately sustains me is the purpose behind the work and the people around me. Building a practice that delivers real impact for clients while advancing the healthcare and life sciences ecosystem is energizing, and having a network that invests in your growth makes the dual mandate of counsel and business building not only possible, but genuinely rewarding.
What motivated you to get involved as a Senior Executive Board member at the DC Tech & Venture Coalition? Were there some of the key challenges you’ve observed in this area?
What first drew me to ecosystem building was the recognition that innovation doesn’t grow in isolation – it grows in networks. My professional life has always sat at the intersection of law, business, and policy, and over time, I realized that facilitating those connections between founders, investors, and policymakers can be as impactful as drafting a great transaction document.
At the DC Tech & Venture Coalition (DCTAV), my work as a Senior Executive Board Member centers on strengthening the DMV’s technology and venture landscape through strategic partnerships, ecosystem growth, and international business attraction. A key focus for me has been developing a global soft-landing platform to help international startups and scale-ups, particularly from Asia and the EU region, establish operations and grow in the United States. I’m deeply interested in business attraction to the U.S., not just as an investment initiative but as a long-term mechanism for innovation exchange, talent mobility, and cross-border collaboration.
That interest evolved naturally from my legal work in healthcare, life sciences, and emerging technologies, where I saw how promising companies often struggled not because of their technology, but because they lacked cohesive support systems – clear regulatory guidance, local partnerships, and market entry frameworks.
The solution lies in building infrastructure for confidence, connecting innovators with advisors, regulators, and capital early in the process; creating pathways for responsible scale; and ensuring that policy, legal frameworks, and investment ecosystems evolve together. That’s where my dual focus on business development and legal structuring converge: translating ambition into access, and innovation into tangible growth. Ultimately, what excites me most is the role ecosystem work plays in making the U.S. a global destination for innovation – a place where ideas, capital, and talent converge to build something that lasts.
How do you see these initiatives like the U.S.–India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and the New Jersey–India Commission, shaping the future of the U.S.–India partnerships in technology and investment, particularly for startups and growth-stage companies?
Both collaborations, though aligned in vision, operate at very different levels of the U.S.–India engagement spectrum, and that’s what makes them so complementary.
With the U.S.–India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), I’ve been collaborating to advance high-level business development initiatives between the two countries. As one of the leading U.S.–India trade lobbies, USISPF works closely with large corporates, venture funds, and institutional investors navigating the regulatory and policy landscape across both jurisdictions. My role has centered on helping companies that are exploring or expanding their U.S.–India footprint, facilitating introductions, advising on deal structures, and coordinating with USISPF teams on issues like trade advocacy, market access, and investment strategy. The goal is to bridge the practical gap between policy intent and business execution, turning the promise of partnership into operational collaboration.
In parallel, my work with the New Jersey–India Commission is focused more at the ecosystem and startup level. Through initiatives like Choose NJ, the Commission helps early-stage and growth companies from India evaluate soft-landing opportunities in the U.S. market. I’ve worked with them to support founders who are scaling to the U.S., particularly those in digital health, life sciences, and technology, by connecting them with legal, regulatory, and ecosystem partners.
Alongside, I’ve also collaborated with both organizations on policy-focused webinars and discussions around tariffs, trade deals, and innovation frameworks, designed to equip emerging companies with context and clarity on cross-border challenges.
Taken together, these initiatives are shaping a new phase of the U.S.–India corridor, one that moves beyond diplomatic rhetoric toward tangible economic architecture. For startups and growth-stage companies, the future lies in structured soft-landing programs, trusted capital networks, and integrated advisory ecosystems that allow them to scale seamlessly between the two markets. My broader goal is to serve as a connector within this space, linking innovators, investors, and institutions on both sides to accelerate not just trade, but shared innovation.
Finally, what guiding motto or philosophy has carried you through your legal journey? And looking back, what inspired you to pursue a career in law in the first place?
If I had to distil my philosophy into a single line, it would be: lead with curiosity, sustained by blind optimism. Early in my career, a family member, now a senior partner and board member at KPMG, offered advice that became my operating system: initiative and enthusiasm are always valued and they pay off. “When there’s an opportunity to take initiative, however challenging or unknown, if you’re interested, raise your hand,” he said. Most of the time you won’t regret it; it will accelerate your growth.
I’ve tried to translate that into daily practice. Curiosity means asking the extra question, mapping the problem before proposing the solution, and learning fast from adjacent disciplines. Initiative means volunteering for the ambiguous brief, stepping into white-space roles, and taking ownership early, then over-communicating, preparing obsessively, and following through. Blind optimism isn’t naïveté; it’s a choice to believe that with discipline and goodwill, hard problems yield. That mindset has consistently opened doors, across corporate transactions, regulatory strategy, and health-policy projects – where caution alone would have kept me on the sidelines.
That approach also helps me see the law not as static doctrine but as a living system – one that shapes industries, enables innovation, and, most importantly, improves lives. It’s why I keep stepping into complex mandates: the work is harder, but the impact is greater.
As for why I pursued law, it’s rooted in justice and family history. My family is a first-hand example of how innocent people suffer when the law falls silent and fails to protect them, as it did during Partition. That legacy impressed upon me both the fragility and the potential of legal systems: they can divide, but, when wielded with empathy and integrity, they can also heal. That conviction anchors my practice today in healthcare and life sciences. Whether negotiating a transaction, advising on policy reform, or navigating regulation, I lead with curiosity and optimism, grounded by a commitment to justice, and I keep raising my hand for the challenge.
Contributing meaningfully to the artisan economy and various social impact initiatives, how have these experiences informed your perspective on the law as a tool for sustainable and inclusive development?
Working with 200 Million Artisans and Creative Dignity has been among the most grounding experiences of my career. Both initiatives, one focused on building a fairer ecosystem for India’s craftspeople and the other supporting artisan livelihoods through crisis, showed me something that no transaction or policy paper alone can: law is a framework for dignity only when it works at the last mile. At 200 Million Artisans, I helped lead fundraising, research, and ecosystem-building, including conceptualizing the India for Artisans fundraiser, work that required stitching together entrepreneurs, designers, investors, and policymakers around market-linked, resilient livelihoods.
This work also carried a deeply personal resonance. My ancestors, particularly my female ancestors from Coochbehar, such as Rajmata Indira Devi and Gayatri Devi, were ardent supporters of India’s artisan and cultural sectors. Their belief that craftsmanship is not merely an economic activity but a reflection of identity, heritage, and self-determination has always inspired me. Their legacy shaped how I approached this work: not as charity, but as empowerment through structure, design, and market access.
These experiences sharpened my view of the law as a tool for sustainable and inclusive development. Robust statutes and elegant policy architecture matter, but they only create value when they are implementable at the grassroot. They also reinforced two habits that now anchor my healthcare and life sciences practice: coalition-building (because durable solutions are interdisciplinary) and empathy in execution (because even the best frameworks fail if they ignore field conditions). Much like artisan enterprises, health and tech innovators often operate in under-defined regulatory spaces; clear, practicable rules can unlock extraordinary impact.
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