Ankita is a Counsel with the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications team at Spice Route Legal, and is an integral part of India’s largest fintech practice – a team of 17+ lawyers, spearheading the strategies for market-leading, first-of-a-kind fintech mandates. Ankita has advised a host of fintech giants, (including the largest “unicorns” in the global market) and emerging companies.
Ankita is already recognised as ‘Rising Star’ by leading global legal directories such as Legal500 and Asialaw. She is well-reputed for her incomparable understanding of financial regulations, the market for financial services, combined with a deep expertise in laws governing technology which has given her a command over digital payments, lending, data protection, artificial intelligence, insure-tech, blockchain, cryptocurrency, KYC compliance advisory, and prevention of money laundering.
In recent months, Ankita has –
- assisting one of the largest global payments & technology companies on navigating the Indian regulatory framework pertaining to the operation of Account Aggregators (AA) Ecosystem and assisting with solutions for establishing open banking services;
- assisting a consortium of India’s 18 largest commercial banks, on forming a joint venture to create its blockchain focused trade finance platform, the first of its kind in India;
- advised a leading payments player, one of the first companies in India to introduce the offline ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ technology behind scanning a QR code. While this was an incredibly novel and innovative advisory, Ankita was able to successfully navigate this challenging and tricky project for the client;
- advising one of India’s largest payment players (with 55 million users) and one of India’s fintech unicorns – last valued at over USD1.5 billion dollars, on several matters;
- advising India’s first BSE listed non-bank issuer of cards – on various regulatory matters, including conducting an audit of their products to ensure compliance with financial sector regulations;
- advising a Singapore-based trading platform, and its wholly owned subsidiary, a leading cloud-based provider of electronic foreign exchange (FX) trading solutions, across the global financial marketplace, and on its expansion to the Indian market;
- advised multiple prominent fintech players on the Indian regulatory framework, new initiatives, and compliances applicable to the financial services sector, while simultaneously liaising with the RBI, the regulatory watchdog, on the same;
- assisted multiple clients with their NBFC licensing applications to the Reserve Bank of India, from payment and account aggregators to lending solution providers; and
- in 2021, assisted in the development of over 80 fintech products, over 20 regulatory applications, over 20 bank technology outsourcing mandates, over 15 regulatory investigations, and over 30 investors / investees close venture capital investments into fintech companies.
Prior to joining Spice Route Legal in 2016, Ankita has worked with the in-house legal team of a Singapore-based fintech company.
