Dhwani Rao is a Head Legal, IP, Digital & Human Resources at Nestle, South Asia. Before joining Nestle she started working from 2004 in a Law Firm for about 8 years. She started her journey with Nestlé as a Regional Legal Specialist for business units in 2012. Since then, she has supported South Asia Region markets in a wide variety of legal issues and dealing with contentious legal matters. She is also the Head of Data Privacy for the Region and a part of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council and focusses on embracing the diversity of gender, generation and culture.

She has also handled a wide variety of digital legal issues including privacy, crowd-sourcing, e-commerce, cloud computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, drones, augmented and virtual reality. Dhwani is appreciated by business and legal teams for the implementation of anti-counterfeiting measures in the SAR Region. She has also been integral in rolling out varied employment law-related policies across the organisation.

Before joining Nestlé, she worked at a law firm for almost eight years, advising several esteemed international and national clients on both domestic and international businesses on a wide variety of legal issues. She is currently a member of Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy, International Technology Law Association, International Trademark Association and Inter Pacific Bar Association. Dhwani was awarded in the Rising Star category (under the age of 40 years) for varied initiatives by Legal Era (2016); was specially mentioned at The Asia Pacific Legal 500 for the works delivered to the clients (2009-2010); awarded for varied initiatives in legal functions around IP litigation strategies, data privacy and managing cyber-bullying by Global Nestle Legal Awards.

"If Ethics is in place and if you understand the preamble of All statutory Acts- more than half of our job is done!"