Cyril Shroff, managing partner of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM), and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) have launched the Cyril Shroff – IIMA GC Leadership Academy, an executive education and research initiative aimed at developing the next generation of general counsel (GC) leaders.
In an exclusive with India Business Law Journal, Shroff said, “I am particularly interested in the idea of investing in people at points in their careers where the impact can multiply.
“For me, this is a form of intellectual philanthropy – about investing in people, knowledge and institutions, particularly institutions that can continue creating value long after the original contribution has been made.”
This initiative is the brainchild of Shroff and will be independent of CAM. “This is a personal philanthropic commitment to the profession. The intention is not commercial. Nor is it about creating another platform for the firm,” Shroff said.
“If you look at how we develop lawyers, there is a gap. We invest enormously in developing technical expertise.
“But the transition from being an outstanding lawyer to becoming an outstanding institutional leader is still largely left to experience, individual mentors, luck and circumstance. I don’t think that is sufficient for where the profession is going. That is fundamentally why we are creating the academy.”
On the need to nurture the next generation of GCs, Shroff said, “If you help develop a general counsel into a stronger leader, the benefit does not remain with that individual. It travels into the organisation they advise, the board and management teams they work with, the legal function they lead, and the younger lawyers they mentor.”
The initiative was formalised through a memorandum of nnderstanding signed on 8 August 2026 at the IIMA campus in Ahmedabad.
The academy will focus on executive education, research and thought leadership for GCs, with an emphasis on the expanding role of legal leaders within businesses.
The press release confirmed that the programme would address areas including boardroom and enterprise leadership, business strategy and finance, governance and risk, organisational behaviour, technology and artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and emerging regulatory risks. It will also provide opportunities for peer learning, international exposure and knowledge creation on the future of legal leadership.
IIMA brings its expertise across strategy, finance, negotiation, organisational behaviour, decision science, AI and public policy to the initiative. The partnership was intended to combine this management expertise with the legal and professional experience of senior GCs to create a specialised platform for leadership development within the in-house legal community, the press release stated.
Shroff said, “There is also an important moment for India behind this. Indian businesses and institutions are becoming larger, more sophisticated and more global. The environment in which they operate is becoming considerably more complex.”
