Self-empowered, multi-disciplinary, award-winning corporate leader
The lovely Vandana Bhatia holds a rare professional achievement – she has completed her Company Secretary, LLB, and MBA! After 11+ years of multi-disciplinary experience, she’s presently with Hyderabad based Ryan Tax Services Private Limited as Director – Legal, Compliance & Company Secretary.
Vandana’s self-empowering journey is inspirational, to say the least. Coming from the small city of Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, she entered the corporate regime right after school due to family crisis. However, her career got a kickstart in 2009 when she joined Ranjeet Pandey & Associates as a CS intern and was soon promoted as an assistant. It was during this tenure that she completed her CS from the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) and went on to earn her LLB and MBA (Finance) degrees.
In 2011, she got her first breakthrough with Dr Reddy’s, joining as Company Secretary for one of its subsidiaries – Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited. From thereon, the road has been immensely prolific. With a CS, MBA and LLB degree in hand, Vandana traversed through increasingly influential careers at NIIT, Caspian and IQVIA India.
To simultaneously pursue a career and education is a tough task, but Vandana achieved this feat on sheer grit alone. Recalling that time, she says, “I overcame challenges including but not limited to travelling long distances, getting bullied, struggling through public transport, safeguarding myself in a big metro like Delhi, managing my fees for getting degrees, studying while having hectic work schedules and limited leaves. There were times I had to study in candlelight as there were almost 12 hour power cuts in Ghaziabad, and we didn’t have an inverter.”
Vandana credits her success to her parents who supported her every step of the way and made her who she is. A proud daughter, she strives to bring value to their lives today.
A consummate professional, she’s equally passionate about her job and owning responsibility for her actions. After dabbling in verticals from Pharma and Clinical Research to Education and Finance, Vandana is excelling in her role at Ryan India, where she has established the Corporate Governance Framework and oversees all legal operations.
She has been exceptionally successful in the corporate legal space, ever since she started her journey as a manager at Caspian and within a span of 4 years, went on to head the entire legal department. While at Caspian, she wore multiple hats being Chief Information Officer, Principal Nodal Officer, Compliance Officer, Legal Head and Member of POSH Committee which was one of her biggest accomplishments.
A big reason for her deliverance can be attributed to the fact that she maintains strict timelines and is proactive about all kinds of emergencies and uncertainties. She maintains a calendar to catalogue and categorize tasks according to urgencies (firefighting, high importance, low importance and not urgent). She does not let people take her for granted while ensuring it doesn’t affect her relationship with peers by being compassionate and grounded.
Vandana’s endeavours as a result-oriented professional have earned her reverence from leaders and peers alike. She was featured under ‘Top 10 Chief Compliance Officers in India’ by the prestigious magazine – CEO Insights, in the year 2020, and awarded as ‘Most Influential Professional Woman to Watch in 2021’ by The CEO Story. Recently, she was awarded as ‘Young Woman Professional of the year’ by Transformance Forums; ‘Indian Achievers Award’ by Indian Achievers’ Forum, Global Choice Awards 2022 for ‘Excellence & Leadership in Legal & Secretarial’ by Xel Research; Right Choice award for the ‘Most profound Legal & Secretarial professional of the Year’ by BrandsImpact; Global Icon Awards 2022 as ‘Legal & Compliance Professional of the Year by World Association of Small & Medium Enterprises (WASME)’; and ‘Professional of the Year Award’ by Indian Achievers’ Forum.
In addition, she is a Guest Lecturer at PVKK Institute of Technology and has written several articles for ICSI Hyderabad Newsletter as well as blogs for Caspian. She is also a Certified Corporate Director by the Institute of Directors.
All of 35 years, Vandana believes in Governance and doing the right things in the right way. Her strengths include – overcoming obstacles, being compassionate and empathetic, being subject matter expert, curious learner, fulfilling challenges and competing with herself.
Today, she would like nothing better than to become an Independent Director, while she slowly but steadily makes her way to a futuristic great leader.