I graduated from WBNUJS in 2016. Some tidbits:

  • I was the last person on the general merit list.
  • I was debarred from my first law school exam (Contracts I). We were given the option of skipping classes but meeting the teacher later to adjust our attendance and allow us to meet the attendance cut-off. It didn’t feel right to get attendance this way and I missed out by one class.
  • I couldn’t bring myself to go through the rigor of moot courts, but enjoyed parliamentary debates (managed to get on the University’s B team).
  • I was the first person in my batch to land a job.

Work Experience

Now — Independent Consulting

Nov 2024 – Present

I consult on venture operations and AI-enabled services.

Recent work includes:

  • Designing automated systems for transactions execution for an AI-native law firm
  • Data pipeline optimisation for a private credit startup

Sequoia Capital (India & SEA)

March 2021 – October 2024

  • 2021: Selected (from ~2,000 applicants) into Sequoia Capital’s parallel analyst program for the Operations team; offered a 2-year contract. Joined immediately after the firm raised a $2.8B fund.
  • 2021–2022: Supported execution for ~100 deals across geographies during ZIRP-era peak deployment velocity.
  • 2023: Retained and converted to full-time as my role’s focus shifted to portfolio management. Completed CFA Level I around this time.
  • 2024: Transitioned to internal systems, data, and process design. Built end-to-end deal-operations and reporting infrastructure using Power Query, Power BI, and Python; consolidated fragmented data into a single source of truth covering 100+ live deals, enabling:
    • real-time visibility
    • cycle-time diagnostics
    • bottleneck prediction for investors and internal stakeholders
  • Late 2024: After seeing a fund through its full lifecycle (raise → deploy → manage → harvest), took a leap of faith and quit to continue learning about tech as a labour of love.

AZB & Partners

November 2019 – February 2021

  • A running refrain throughout law school / my early career was that I had no idea what the inside of a Tier-1 law firm looks like**. My time at AZB & Partners settled that score.
  • Worked in the general corporate & transactions team, with exposure to big-ticket M&A and Private Equity transactions. Crucially, I saw how billion-dollar deals could be abstracted into nuts-and-bolts workflows.
  • A memorable detour involved helping set up a ~200 MW power plant in Rajasthan — at the time, one of the largest solar facilities in the country. To do my job well, I had to learn **how a solar facility actually operates, from how solar panels are made to supply-chain hijinks.

Lexygen

November 2017 – October 2019

  • Lexygen is a boutique firm specialising in venture capital transactions. I had patient mentors who taught me how to execute deals.
  • The firm works with leading consumer VCs, and it’s always gratifying to walk down a supermarket aisle knowing I helped with funding rounds for Epigamia, Veeba, Sula Wines, and others.

Zehn

July 2016 – October 2017

  • Zehn was a boutique law firm set up by WBNUJS alumni. When I joined, it functioned as a captive unit for Uber, handling public policy and government engagement as Uber launched operations in South India. Uber’s story is a classic RegTech case study - trying to fit tech-enabled operations into legacy regulation. This work continues to shape how I approach my analysis of laws and regulations even today.
  • I also worked with the Government of Karnataka on implementing its Start-up Policy 2015–20, and helped operationalise its marquee investment platform, Idea2PoC. Happy to see this still going strong today.