Vivek Rajan, assistant vice president - legal and compliance at Scope International Pvt. Ltd, a wholly owned IT services company of Standard Chartered Bank, is joining Bengaluru-based oncology chain HealthCare Global Enterprises Ltd (HCG) as head of legal. Rajan will look after the hospital chain’s corporate legal affairs, litigation, non-litigation documentation and compliance, a person familiar with the development told VCCircle.
An alumnus of Bangalore University, Rajan started his career with Bengaluru-based law firm Govindraj Associates before moving to Pramila Associates as attorney. In 2005, he joined First Indian Corporation Pvt. Ltd as in-house counsel after which he moved to Manipal University Learning Pvt. Ltd as head of legal and compliance. From Manipal University, he moved to the Indian subsidiary of HR solutions firm Adecco. Later he left Adecco to join Sclpe International.
“Vivek has the ability to formulate legal procedures and policies for the consumer facing sector and get them implemented. He is a task master and goes into details,†said a lawyer, who has worked with Rajan, on the condition of anonymity.
Rajan, who has more than a decade of legal experience, is joining the specialty hospital chain at the time when it is planning to expand across cities after getting listed on the exchanges recently.
HCG, founded in 1998, had 15 cancer centres, four diagnostic centres, one day-care chemotherapy centre and 12 cancer centres under various stages of development as of 30 June 2015, according to the firm’s filings at the time of its IPO.
Specialty hospitals and healthcare chains have seen exponential growth in last couple of years as people have started spending more on proactive health measures.
Companies including Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd, Thyrocare Technologies Ltd and Dr Lal PathLabs Ltd have already hit the market while Aster DM Healthcare is looking to list itself to raise around $300 million. Also, New Centre For Sight, which is owned by New Delhi Centre For Sight Pvt Ltd has initiated the process for a maiden fundraising process.
Traditionally, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies spent heavily on legal and compliance due to stringent regulations as well as to protect their product portfolio from copycats. Domestic pharmaceutical company Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd was the highest legal and compliance spender among listed companies in FY2015-16 with total expenses of Rs 1,895.72 crore. Other pharma companies including Forties Healthcare (Rs 848 crore) and Lupin (Rs 533.74 crore) were also among the top 10 spenders on legal and compliance. The cost of not complying is much more in terms of penalties than not keeping systems and processes and hence companies are eager to fill legal posts.
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