Meet the woman who made life easy for entrepreneurs

BANGALORE: Sharda Balaji was a legal professional and a regular at startup networking events like Barcamp and Open Coffee Club in Bangalore. She would answer queries from wannabe entrepreneurs on how to incorporate companies, handle cofounder issues and demystify term sheets, the paper contracts between entrepreneurs and investors.
It began as a weekend pastime, but Sharda soon realized there was an opportunity in turning it into a business venture.In February 2008, she founded NovoJuris, a legal counseling firm focused on technology startups and small and medium businesses.
“Many aspiring entrepreneurs would ask me if there was a guidebook on how to start a company in India. So I knew there was a ready market out there,” says Sharda. NovoJuris was one of the first law firms to offer a startup kit to entrepreneurs that had details pertaining to how to start a company, necessary registrations, clearances, drafting cofounder agreements, and website terms and conditions. “The feedback we got was lawyers lacked transparency in how they structure their fee. So we went live on our website quoting a fee for our startup kit,” she said.
In the last five years, NovoJuris has offered legal assistance to over 500 companies and has structured over 100 deals related to preferential allotments, employee stock options, stake sales and mergers. Sharda says she wants to touch at least 1 lakh entrepreneurs. Sharda did her Bachelors in commerce from Mysore University in 1989, and then worked to obtain membership of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India. In 1999, she did LLB from Bangalore University, and later a PG diploma in intellectual property from the National Law School of India University and an advanced certification course in copyrights from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Sharda started her career in 1996 as an attorney and company secretary for Molex India, a maker of connectors and harnesses, and then moved to telecom equipment manufacturing company Anco Communications as its legal head and company secretary.
In 2003, she moved as the corporate counsel of Manipal Group that consisted of 23 companies with business interests in software, health, education and finance.
“I learnt the art of buying and selling companies, understood brand valuations and how holding companies get revenues from its subsidiaries. It was a great learning ground,” she says. Sharda then worked with Intel’s legal team that looked after its South Asia operations. It was at a patent harvesting session at Intel that she fine-tuned the business plan for her startup.
“Engineers would come with a two-page idea and present it to the jury to know if that idea could be commercialized. Some ideas passed the proof of concept stage and were incorporated into the company. That was when I wanted to be a one-stop legal firm for startups,” she says.
She gave up the steady pay cheque at Intel to pursue her startup dream. She even persuaded her banker husband to quit his job at ING Vysya and join her. Today, she has a 15-member team in Bangalore, a branch in Delhi and a partnership with a Singapore-based lawyer. Sharda notes that India ranks 132 in ease of doing business among 185 countries. “It takes at least two months to start a company. Worse, if you want to start a company, you have to give the authorities an office address. Entrepreneurs have to execute a lease agreement in the name of the company, when the company is yet to be registered. It’s all very complex,” she says.