Ex-RNA GC, Hammurabi Partner Vidya Adsule joins Sheth Builder as Group GC in challenging post-RERA regime

Vidya Adsule, former RNA Corp general counsel (GC), joined the Mumbai-based $300m+ net worth realtor Ashwin Sheth Group, run by Sheth Corp, as group GC on 21 January, 2019.

She will lead the team of eight in-house lawyers at the group, which had been without a GC for the past four years. After one year at RNA Corp, she left. Earlier, she was with JP Infra. A 1988 Mumbai University Alumnus, Adsule has worked in in-house at companies including Ahuja Constructions, ICICI Bank, ICICI Venture Funds. She has also served as GC at Kotak Mahindra Investments Limited and Bombay Dyeing from 2005 before joining Hammurabi & Solomon in 2014. Thereafter, she joined Kolte Patil Developers in Pune and JP Infra and RNA in Mumbai.

One of the biggest challenges facing the real estate sector was contending with the imbalance of equity in the post-RERA regime, she said.

“The 1980s was the growth story for real estate. The market obtained its peak between 2005-2010 and after 2010 [there was a decline]. Under the [Maharashtra Ownership Flat Act 1963] there was no separate regulatory body. Post RERA, there is a separate regulator and every project has to be registered with the regulator before the developer can start selling.”

“RERA is just two years old and it is getting evolved right now. In that evolution the authorities, which are not from a legal but a bureaucratic background, [tend to lose sight of legal implications to business in] passing new rules, she said.