Harshita graduated in law from Symbiosis International University, Pune, in 2009. She also holds a Diploma in Intellectual Property Law from World Intellectual Property Organization, and a Diploma in International Business Laws and Corporate Laws in India from Symbiosis. After a successful stint at Nishith Desai Associates, Mumbai, she is currently Vice President-Legal, at Nexus Venture Partners.

She is the first generation lawyer from her father’s family, though her maternal grandfather was a Judicial Magistrate. She never had the privilege to see him around, but she grew up listening to his stories. His personalised stationery (ink pens with his name embedded on it, note pads, etc.) fascinated her as a child and inspired her to get into the profession (however, she could never own a single piece of personalised stationery even eight years into this profession!). The inspiration soon evaporated into thin air as she was growing up in a family full of engineers around her and her dad’s only vision in life seemed to see her crack the IITs. After getting out of school, she was not left with many choices but to appear for the engineering exams. As obvious as it could be, she did not come out with flying colours in any of those papers and right at that time she happened to learn about the new B.A.LLB course at NLSIU, Bengaluru, from an acquaintance. The curriculum and the course interested her enough and she decided to pursue her childhood passion.  

The BBA LLB combination gives you a better edge only if you are planning to build a career as a corporate lawyer/ in-house counsel since the curriculum gives you a fair insight into business subjects like accounts, corporate governance, principles of management, etc. apart from the regular law subjects.   

Being part of the HRC at law school helped her participate in various social welfare initiatives, be it educating street children, rehabilitation of the children of commercial sex workers or visit to old age homes. It is important both as a student and as a professional that you contribute in some way or the other towards societal welfare and development. You must endeavour to give back to society.

Quoting her first mentor at work Nishith Desai in this context, he says, “As a professional, one-third of our time and effort should be devoted towards generating income for yourself and the family, the other one-third should go into intellectual stimulation and development of your own being and the remaining one-third should be used for societal welfare and improvement.”