Saveena Bedi Sachar A Woman Who Loves Winning In A Man’s World She Has Won Many Legal Battles And Is Waiting To Win Many More

-ALI PETER JOHN

I have always been an admirer of women who are achievers and have done amazingly well in their chosen fields, with the kind of passion that is not very difficult to understand for most men who believe that they still own and rule the world and if there is one young woman who has earned my unstinted appreciation and respect, it is this young woman who I have known only for a little more than a year and who has given me all the reasons to want to know her better and for many more years to come. 

I have been watching women as lawyers in every kind of Court ever since I was a student and nursed the ambition to be a lawyer myself, but, I had to give up my ambition when I saw how lawyers were treated by Magistrates in Courts which were not fit to be factories or offices of the worst kind. I was appalled when I saw lawyers running after prospective clients in the gullies and lanes leading to the Courts, especially in Presidency Magistrate Courts in places like Borivali, Andheri, especially Bandra and the Chief Magistrate’s Court, the Esplanade Court which was and still is known as Qilla Court by many.

I lost all my interest in being a lawyer when I once heard the Chief Magistrate of the Esplanade Court, His Lordship, bawling out his Vakil, firing the daylights out of this young lawyer who was making an application for the adjournment of a hearing and was dressed in tattered clothes wearing chappals on his feet and I distinctly remember the Chief Magistrate saying, “Mr. Mishra, please dress first and then address the Court”. I used to attend most of the sessions in different Courts including the Sessions Court and the High Court and was a witness to some of the most historic and very interesting hearings for which I even missed my classes for my M.A exam. But, after that experience in the Qilla Court, I went back home making up my mind that I would do anything in life, but never be a lawyer. To add to my feelings about Lawyers in general, I saw the first of the female lawyers’ being humiliated and insulted by their fellow male colleagues, especially in the smaller courts.

I had taken to Journalism and one of the first endeavors I took up was to conduct a survey to find out how many Female Lawyers there were in the then Bombay (now Mumbai) and to my utter dismay, I found out that there were hardly ten percent of female lawyers in the Financial capital of India, Bombay. I kept carrying a not so happy image of female lawyers in India, till I saw and heard some of the best female lawyers fighting pitched legal battles in the same Courts where I used to once go as a student.

I had some very good friends as lawyers and then I got happily engrossed in the world of glamor, glitz, glory and glide. I met and interacted with some new lawyers and I found them very efficient and it took me quite some years to find a female lawyer who was as I wanted her to be and I have no hesitation whatsoever on naming Ms. Saveena Bedi Sachar, who I am now very proud to have as one of my most respectable friends.

Ms. Saveena is a law graduate from Pune who reached high places at a very young age having specialized in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) from the prestigious World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Switzerland and is one of the youngest co-authors of the manuscript of a Book on Intellectual Property Rights, published by Butterworths, U.K. 

She was soon  recognized as a legal expert in the field of the Intellectual Property and handled matters related to  media and entertainment, literature, art, films, television, music, marketing, advertising and other associated fields within the novel years of her legal career. In acknowledgment of her legal prowess, in a very short span of time she was appointed as the legal head of leading Indian and Multinational companies where she could show her prowess and in the process had grown into a one-woman institution by herself.

She started her career from the chambers of the leading intellectual property advocate ‘the Late Adv. Avinash Shivade’ a pioneer in the field of Intellectual Property and his brother Adv. Shrikant Shivade who is a leading criminal law advocate. Thereafter having worked for several years, heading the legal function in companies viz. Walt Disney, UTV, Star TV, INX Media (9X, 9XM and NewsX), Ac Nielsen, Ogilvy and Mather (O&M) and Music Broadcast Private Limited (Radio City 91.1FM ), she founded her own law firm ‘Lawhive Associates’ in June 2012

One woman's decision led to the forming of Saveena Bedi Sachar’s Lawhive Associates in 2012. Ever since that time, her company has been fighting for and against cases from the smallest Courts to High Courts of various states to the Supreme Court, from Company Law Tribunals, to the Competition Commission, the Copyright Board, TDSAT etc.   In the International Arbitration space, she has successfully handled matters for leading Indian conglomerates in US and Europe. Give her a good fight and she is ever willing to take it up together with her young team who know the fire in their “Ma’am" which can never slow down or be tamed because of her never say die attitude towards life. All the work that the raring-to go advocate has put in has not gone unrecognized by people in high places who met her. 

Within a couple of years of founding her law firm, she has successfully led the firm to transition from traditional Media and Entertainment practice to a leading full-service law firm.  Her law firm now handles various civil and criminal matters including corporate advisory, international arbitrations, dispute resolution, bankruptcy and liquidation matters, family law, real estate, information technology and private client advisory, 

She has been awarded on countless occasions and has been felicitated for her efforts to excel in the field of law. She has been featured among the hundred most powerful women in the legal field and her efforts have been acknowledged to give new directions and dimensions to some old laws and she is respected by one and all where the dignity of the law is recognized.

She has played a very vital role in solving the various problems of the various associations of the film industry and has been campaigning the cause of every section of the industry. The fire in Ms. Saveena keeps growing brighter and stronger with every case she takes up and fights without any fear and this fire has made her a kind of light which doesn’t diminish with time. In the midst of all these legal wrangles, Ms Saveena never neglects her duty as a mother of a six year old daughter, called Simran. In fact, at one of our meetings which I always look forward to, she was fighting out a case in her mind while she was very busy planning Simran's birthday which was only a few days before her own birthday.

Everyone from Modi to Maniben and from Smriti Irani and Arundhati Roy are only talking about the ideal Indian woman of tomorrow. I saw her, met her, talked to her, had lunch with her and shook hands with her and genuinely wished her a Happy New Year and all the way to ‘Chaayos', my working place, I wished how we could have many more Indian women like Saveena Bedi Sachar.

Two days later, it was, Ms. Saveena ’s birthday and I was taken aback by how my feelings for her and her own feelings on her birthday matched.  I told her I would not be naïve and wish her a thousand years and before I could complete my sentence, M.s Saveena said, “I only want to live a healthy and long enough life to see my daughter, Simran established and settled down to a good and meaningful life in these troubled times when it is so very difficult to predict what the future will hold for you, me and anyone”.  That one sentence again raised Ms. Saveena in my esteem.  

Covid-19 may have curtailed the functioning of many, but this woman has been fighting with time to face all the challenges that get attracted towards her because of her ability to deal with them and has been busy fighting her cases in the Virtual Courts and keeping in touch with the latest developments in the field she is. She has now dedicated her life totally to providing services in the legal field, the kind of dedication which if followed by other women (and even men) can surely lead the Country into the kind of light that some of the greatest leaders, philosophers, reformers, poets and writers and even the most common Indian has been dreaming of since the last seventy years and more.

Glimpse from the life of an Achiever

It becomes very difficult for a man of my experiences to encompass Ms. Saveena’ s achievements in a few lines or many more paragraphs, because I think she has achieved what very few women her age have, will or can. Learning more about the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) has been a prime priority for her and she seems to be living for it. 

Can anyone imagine a woman who belonged to a traditional Punjabi family and whose father, Mr Tejpal Singh Bedi is the 13th direct descendant of the Guru Nanak Devji being one of the most sought after first generation lawyer who has made a place of pride and honour for herself and her family after she first took flight (she had once pursued flying due to her interest of being a pilot, i think) to reach the place of eminence and excellence she has reached in a very short time.

A woman with the ambition to soar like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, nothing could stop her from starting her own firm, Lawhive Associates, a full-service law firm, which has its principle office in Mumbai and associate offices in several cities in India 

Knowing more about Ms. Saveena only makes me curious to know what more she has achieved and it gives me a rare kind of pleasure to know that she has a very successful global litigation practice and has handled high stake litigations and International Arbitrations across US and Europe also.

It is staggering to know what one woman can achieve and the rest of the cases I have before me can be the proof to her worthy of being one of the best lawyers I have heard of in my long life. To mention a few of such achievements, Adv. Saveena Bedi Sachar handled the first major case related to fixation of royalty rates and compulsory licensing against the Copyright Society known as Phonographic Performance Limited at the Mumbai and Delhi High Courts, the Copyright Board and the Supreme Court. 

She was also instrumental in challenging the right to collect royalties from Radio broadcasters and in the alternative fixation of reasonable rates of royalty along with recovery of amounts already paid, before the Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad High Court, the Copyright Board and the Supreme Court. Her corporate clients have included prominent names such as Zee Entertainment’s India Webportal Pvt. Ltd. (India.Com); Grant Investrade Ltd (Hinduja Group – NXT Digital), Neela Teleflms (Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chasmah), Navketan International Films, Wadia Hospitals. Her Firm, Lawhive Associates stood vital legal representatives for various well known cinematographic films and TV Serials viz. 102 – Not Out, Batti Gul Meter Chalu, Mulk, Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chasmah, Nach Baliye to name a few.

In her ongoing glorious career of advocacy she has also legally represented numerous public figures, including Late Shri Dev Anand, Simi Garewal,, Dharmendra, Farah Khan, Taapsee Pannu, Abhinav Sinha, John Abraham, Richa Chaddha, Jaaved Jafferi, Asit Modi, Dilip Joshi and other film personalities, to name a few. I know some of these well known and worthy men and women and they all have the highest praise and hold Ms. Saveenain high esteem.

A woman like her can just not be avoided, forget being neglected and the awards and recognition that have come her way are further evidence for all those who want to know the truth and nothing but the truth about Ms.Saveena …

She was featured among the ‘Top 100 Powerful Women in Law’, by the World IP Forum’, her law firm Lawhive Associates was featured as one of the ‘Top 15 IP consultant Companies in India’. She was featured alongside several well-known personalities in the 2016 Calendar – ‘Inspiring Women of India’.  She was recently felicitated for ‘Legal Excellence’ at the ‘6th Global Economic Summit 2017 held at the World Trade Center, Mumbai’. She has been featured in various Television shows as a Legal Expert and has been a Panelist and key note speaker in various forums and institutes across India.

What do I say about a woman who I knew nothing about when I first saw her, then met her and who is now a Queen-bee of the highest kind of mental activity which I believe will make her worthy contribution to society, the country and even the world.  All I can do for this young woman who has come into my life as a blessing, is bless her, encourage her and inspire her to keep the fire burning and let the light reach as far as it can.