Khaitan & Co

Vaibhav Bhardwaj is a Partner in the Employment, Labour and Benefits practice group. Prior to joining the Firm, Vaibhav was a partner at IndusLaw (New Delhi).

With over 15 years of experience, Vaibhav has been practising in the Employment Law and Ethics and Investigations space. He has advised clients on a range of matters across sectors, on structuring of policies, C-Suite level exits, workforce restructuring, employee secondments, closure of undertaking and employment issues in mergers and acquisitions.

He has extensive experience in advising clients on complex matters involving internal disciplinary investigations and inquiries associated with behavioral misconduct, fraud, bribery and corruption charges, ethics violations, sexual harassment and other related matters.

Representative matters:

In his areas of expertise, Vaibhav has advised several prominent clients including:

• Air India on restructuring all contracts and employment terms applicable to flying and non-flying staff. This mandate was undertaken as part of a merger harmonization exercise, pursuant to Air India’s acquisition by the Tata Group.
• Wipro on several complex and unique employment and investigations related matters including investigations concerning moonlighting, and manipulating the background verification process; and workforce restructuring, senior level exits and structuring of separation documents, amongst others.
• Shell India on the statutory considerations in relation to the engagement of contract workers and fixed term contract employees. This also included structuring of their existing manpower supply structure.
• Deliveroo, in setting up its technology hub in India. Advising Deliveroo in several unique and significant matters such as separation of senior level exits, on matters pertaining to its day-to-day affairs, including on applicable data privacy requirements, procedures for effectuating employee separations and the payments required to be made thereunder, procedures for obtaining insurances required under labour laws, and so on.
• A multinational alcohol beverage company which is home to a number of renowned brands on several independent investigations into employees who were suspected of having committed fraud against the company.
• A foreign educational institution on the migration of the provident fund corpus maintained by the institution to the statutory fund maintained by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).
• an American car manufacturer on the legal requirements and procedure under law for closure of one of its large manufacturing facilities in India. The transaction derives its significance from the several complexities, including the proposal to rehabilitate employees, offer of voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) to remaining employees and analysis of the legal requirements for closure in the event there is a sale of assets.
• a leading beverage company in India on diverse subject matters such as strategy to be adopted for retrieval of company assets and confidential information in possession of a former employee and advice on a major potential litigation in the wake of allegations of wrongful termination of an employee during her maternity leave.
• McCormick India on the process of movement of employees and related benefits to an outsourced partner to whom IT operations was proposed to be outsourced.
• a chemical manufacturing company on the strategy to be adopted in termination of the employment of a senior employee who held a prominent public office and had the full support of the trade union.
• A leading renewable power producer in India on a reduction in force (RIF) exercise at eighteen of its locations spread across the length and breadth of India;
• Several large conglomerates on matters relating to prevention of sexual harassment including but not limited to conducting training sessions for employees as well as members of the internal committee; end-to-end assistance to the internal committee to handle sexual harassment complaints; and structuring of the internal committee.

Avik leads the Employment Law Practice Group of Khaitan & Co. Avik is an alumnus of the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) and is well known for his employment law expertise across all industry sectors. Avik is also very well regarded for his strategic advice to the legal and HR functions of multinational corporations in relation to employment risk mitigation/management and related best practices in Indian markets. While Avik’s work primarily revolves around all facets of employment law, he also frequently advises and assists foreign corporations in entering Indian markets and setting up their local operations across India, especially with reference to compliance with local labour legislations. Prior to Khaitan & Co, Avik had the benefit of working both with an in-house team of one of India’s largest technology companies as well as with one of the largest full-service law firms in Bangalore, wherein he established their employment law practice. Avik has been ranked by Chambers and Partners, since 2011, as one of India’s highly recommended employment lawyers.