Netflix India director legal Ashish Chandra has joined WhatsApp as associate general counsel (GC) India, making him the messaging giant’s first in-house legal hire in India.

He joined the Facebook-owned messaging service last month.

Chandra had been director legal at Netflix - which had recently added an in-house IP vertical with Priyanka Chaudhari - since March 2018, having joined from Snapdeal.

The role is bound to be challenging and busy, facing high profile legal challenges over issues such as payments and privacy in the Supreme Court.

Coupled with WhatsApp’s scale in the Indian market, those challenges are not likely to decrease.

The 2001 Delhi University graduate has wide in-house experience, beginning with company secretary at Cyber Media India in Delhi, followed by NCR Corporation in Mumbai and Geometric Software for around a year each.

Between 2005 and 2010 he was legal counsel and company secretary at eBay India, then moved to Star TV Network as assistant vice president legal until 2012, Reliance Jio Infocomm as vice president and head legal (media and technology) until 2014, and Snapdeal from 2014 to 2017 as group general counsel.