Thomson Reuters general counsel for global emerging markets, Bijoya Roy, has taken up the position to head Flipkart in Bangalore under its new Walmart owners.

She succeeds interim general counsel Grant Coad, who had flown over to India from Walmart Canada after the US retail giant’s record acquisition of the Indian(ish) unicorn, alongside a bunch of other senior Walmart executives.

Roy will be reporting to Walmart Asia senior vice president, chief administrative officer and its Asia general counsel.

We have reached out to her for comment.

Roy is a 2002 Symbiosis Law School Pune graduate with a postgraduate diploma in European competition law from King’s College London. She had begun her career at the Tata Housing Development Company, moved to Asian Paints in 2004, followed by Kodak Eastmann in 2005.

In 2008 she had joined Thomson Reuters in London, moving up the ranks from senior legal counsel EMEA in London, to UAE-based chief counsel MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa, Russia/CIS, and in 2017 to general counsel (GC) of so-called global growth organisation (global emerging markets).

Flipkart had seen a fair bit of turnover at the top of its legal team, losing GC Rajinder Sharma in 2016, only a year after he’d joined from Samsung. His predecessor was Srivals Kumar.

She will also be joining at a challenging time in Indian e-commerce regulation, particularly for foreign-owned companies that have been impacted hard by new, more restrictive FDI rules that could see increasing competition from deep-pocketed domestic players.

To date, Khaitan & Co has been Flipkart’s go-to corporate legal adviser, for the most part, while Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas had worked closely with Walmart in the acquisition.