Employment Bonds and Non-Compete Clauses in India

What Indian employers get wrong about restrictive clauses

If you have ever asked a candidate to sign a two-year employment bond in India, or dropped a boilerplate non-compete into an offer letter because "everyone does it," this article is for you. Much of the restrictive language sitting inside Indian employment agreements today is either unenforceable, or enforceable only at a cost that makes enforcement pointless. Worse, heavy-handed clauses quietly damage your employer brand at exactly the moments you can least afford it — hiring and exit.

This guide covers employment bonds, non-compete clauses, non-solicitation agreements and confidentiality clauses for HR managers and founders at Indian SMBs and startups: what each clause is for, where it sits on the enforceability spectrum, how to draft it so it reads reasonable rather than punitive, and what to do instead when the real problem is retention.

Before we start. This is general information, not legal advice, and it creates no lawyer-client relationship. Enforceability in India is intensely fact-specific — it turns on exact wording, seniority, bargaining position, evidence and forum — and the law evolves. Have a qualified employment lawyer licensed to practise in India review your documents before you adopt, amend or enforce anything here. We deliberately avoid naming cases or citing section numbers, because those details matter too much to summarise loosely.

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Employment bond vs training agreement vs notice period vs retention bonus

Half the confusion around the employment bond in India comes from using one word for four instruments.

Employment bond. An agreement to serve a minimum period, with a stated sum payable on early exit. The critical question it must answer is: what is the employer being compensated for? "We spent a documented amount on this specific person and agreed to recover a proportionate part if they left early" is a strong foundation. "We lose the person and hiring is annoying" is not. A bond that penalises resignation with a round number unconnected to any actual outlay looks like a trap — the least defensible posture available.

Training agreement. The narrow, better-behaved cousin. It ties to a real, itemised, documented spend; the recovery tapers as the employee serves; the window is shorter (often 12–24 months); and it is framed as recovery of costs, not a fine for leaving. This is the version of "bond" Indian employers can most plausibly stand behind.

Notice period. Not a bond at all — a mutual timing obligation, usually buyable with pay in lieu. Uncontroversial, unless it prohibits buy-out entirely or runs one way only. Asymmetric notice — three months from the employee, immediate termination for the employer — is a common own goal.

Retention bonus. Flips the incentive: "we pay you extra if you stay." Legally cleaner, because nothing is taken from earned wages — a future payment simply does not vest.

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The enforceability spectrum for restrictive covenants in India

If you remember one structural idea, make it this one. Indian contract law draws a sharp line between restrictions operating while employment is alive and restrictions operating after it ends.

During employment, restrictions are treated relatively permissively. Not working for a direct competitor concurrently, not running a competing venture on the side, not diverting business — these are ordinary incidents of the relationship.

After employment ends, the posture changes dramatically. Indian law has long taken the general position that agreements restraining a person from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business are viewed unfavourably; the policy is that the ability to earn a living using one's own skills should not be bargained away. This is why blanket post-employment non-competes are so hard to enforce here.

That does not mean every post-exit obligation collapses. The type matters. Preventing someone from working anywhere in the industry restrains their trade — a very weak posture. Preventing them from using or disclosing your confidential information does not stop them working; it stops misuse of something that belongs to you. Preventing active poaching of your people or specific clients sits in between. Think of it as a spectrum from "restraining the person" to "protecting an asset."

What decision-makers tend to weigh

Without getting into specific judgments, the factors that repeatedly surface include:

1. Reasonableness — is duration, geography and scope proportionate, or a blanket ban?
2. Legitimate protectable interest — genuine confidential information, real client-relationship investment, documented training spend, or just dislike of competition?
3. Genuine pre-estimate of loss — an honest advance estimate of actual loss, or a deterrent number?
4. Demonstrable investment — can you produce invoices and records, or only assertions?
5. Bargaining position — negotiated between commercial equals, or take-it-or-leave-it to a fresh graduate?
6. Employer conduct — did you behave reasonably at exit, or withhold documents and delay dues?

These are lenses, not checkboxes, but they should shape how you draft.

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Clause by clause: purpose, posture, risk, alternative

Treat the posture column as a general characterisation, not a guarantee. Outcomes are fact-specific.

Why confidentiality sits differently

A confidentiality clause does not tell someone where they may work. It tells them what they may not take and use. That is why it survives exit far more comfortably than a non-compete. But it only works if you treat information as a real asset:

• Define it narrowly and concretely. "All information relating to the company" is close to meaningless. Customer lists, pricing models, unreleased roadmaps, source code and unpublished financials are concrete.
• Exclude what should be excluded. Public information, information already known, independently developed, or lawfully received from a third party — and the employee's own general skill. You cannot confiscate what someone learned as a professional.
• Back it with controls. Access permissions, device management, offboarding revocation, data-return acknowledgements. If everyone can download the customer list at will, it is harder to argue it was closely guarded.

Why non-solicit sits in the middle

A non-solicitation agreement does not stop the person working in your industry; it stops a specific behaviour. Reasonable versions are limited to active, targeted solicitation — not an ex-colleague independently applying, and not general recruitment advertising; limited to clients the employee actually dealt with, typically in their last 6–12 months; limited in time, commonly 6–12 months; and free of penalty language. Trying to bar contact with every client and every employee for three years nationwide does not make the clause stronger — it makes the agreement look like it was written to intimidate.

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When an employment bond in India is actually defensible

Suppose you are a 60-person engineering services firm. You send a mid-level engineer for a vendor certification costing ₹2,80,000 in fees and ₹1,10,000 in travel, plus four weeks of paid study leave. That is real money spent on one person. Compare that with a company that hires fresh graduates, runs the same three-week onboarding it would have run anyway, and bonds each of them at ₹2,00,000 for two years. The first has a factual spine; the second does not.

Seven questions to answer before you write a bond

If you cannot answer most of these with documents rather than opinions, do not write it.

1. Is the spend specific to this employee? General onboarding and ordinary supervision are costs of running a business.
2. Can you produce invoices? Course fees, travel bills, exam fees, trainer contracts. Internal time is very hard to value credibly.
3. Would you have spent it anyway? If it happens for every hire regardless, it is a business cost.
4. Does the employee gain a portable, verifiable asset? A recognised certification is easier to justify than "exposure to our processes."
5. Is the period proportionate to payback? If you recoup the value in 12 months, a 36-month bond is not.
6. Does the amount taper? A flat amount payable on day 1 and day 700 alike signals a penalty.
7. Did the employee consent with information? Was the cost disclosed before signing, or discovered afterwards?

Sizing the recovery amount

Work from actual outlay, not from what would hurt enough to deter someone. Include: external course and certification fees, examination fees, travel and accommodation, and external trainer fees apportioned across a named cohort. Sometimes include: salary during a formal paid study block, but only where the employee was fully released from duties. Exclude: salary during normal working weeks, standard onboarding, recruitment and agency fees, laptops and licences, and anything speculative such as "loss of opportunity" or replacement cost — that last category is the fastest way to make a clause look punitive.

Then apply a taper. Worked example for a documented ₹3,90,000 investment over an 18-month window:

The taper is slightly front-loaded, reflecting that someone who leaves immediately delivered essentially no benefit; straight-line proportionality is even easier to defend, and either beats a flat amount. The maximum is capped at documented cost — the moment your number exceeds actual outlay it looks like a deterrent. And the schedule is printed in the agreement, so nobody discovers the arithmetic at exit.

Carve-outs that make a bond look reasonable

A bond with no exceptions reads as a trap. Exclude recovery where the company terminates for reasons other than proven misconduct (redundancy, restructuring, performance, closure); the employee resigns for documented medical or serious family reasons; the company materially fails its own obligations, such as unpaid salary or training not actually delivered; or there is death or permanent incapacity. These cost you almost nothing in real cases and dramatically improve how the clause reads.

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Drafting principles: reasonable vs punitive

Specificity beats breadth. Broad clauses feel safer to write and are weaker in practice. "Shall not engage in any similar business" invites the question: which, where, how long, doing what? "Shall not, for six months, provide data-engineering consulting to the five named clients the employee serviced in their final year" is credible.

Duration should match the shelf life of the interest. If pricing changes quarterly, a three-year restriction on pricing knowledge is theatre. Six months is often plenty for fast-moving roadmaps; twelve may be justifiable for long-cycle enterprise relationships; confidentiality over genuine trade secrets can run indefinitely, because it protects the asset rather than restricting where someone works.

Geography should be real. A nationwide restriction for a two-city company is copy-paste, not reasoning. For remote businesses, scope by client, product line or function instead.

Severability, written properly. Separate covenants into distinct, individually numbered sub-clauses so each can be assessed independently rather than as one indivisible block.

Consideration should be visible. Post-exit restrictions are more palatable when something is given: garden leave pay, a retention payment, enhanced severance. "You get to keep your job" is thin consideration for a post-employment restraint.

Avoid language that screams penalty — "penalty," "fine," "forfeit," sums far exceeding plausible loss, and purported rights to withhold statutory dues. Replace with cost-recovery language, tapers, caps and carve-outs. Keep it readable, too: an agreement signed unread on day one is easier to characterise as not really understood.

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Illustrative clause skeletons

Read this first. These are illustrative drafting starting points only — simplified skeletons showing structure and tone, not finished clauses. They are not legal advice and will not be adequate as written. Have each reviewed and rewritten by a qualified Indian employment lawyer.

Confidentiality

"Confidential Information" means non-public information belonging to the Company or entrusted to it, including customer lists, pricing, unpublished financials, roadmaps, source code and vendor agreements. It excludes information that is or becomes public other than through the Employee's breach, was lawfully known before disclosure, is independently developed, is lawfully received from a third party, or constitutes the Employee's general skill and experience. The Employee shall not use or disclose it other than for proper performance of duties, during employment and thereafter for so long as it remains confidential. Nothing restricts disclosure required by law.

Lawyer to check: definition boundaries, the general-skill carve-out, survival, data protection interaction.

IP assignment

The Employee assigns to the Company all right, title and interest in work product and inventions created in the course of employment and relating to the Company's business or arising from use of Company resources, shall promptly disclose them, and shall execute documents reasonably required to perfect those rights. Pre-existing intellectual property listed in Schedule A is excluded, as is work created wholly outside working hours, without Company resources, and unrelated to the Company's business.

Lawyer to check: scope language, incorporation of Schedule A, moral rights, contractor and intern treatment.

Non-solicitation of employees

For [six/twelve] months after employment ends, the Employee shall not directly solicit or induce any person who was a senior or specialist employee of the Company, and with whom the Employee worked in the twelve months before exit, to terminate their employment. This does not prevent general recruitment advertising not targeted at Company employees, nor prevent any employee independently applying elsewhere.

Lawyer to check: the definition of "solicit," whether the population is narrow enough, duration, and whether carve-outs avoid capturing ordinary hiring.

Non-solicitation of clients

For [six/twelve] months after employment ends, the Employee shall not solicit business, in respect of services competitive with those the Employee provided, from any client with whom the Employee had material dealings during the last twelve months of employment. This does not restrict the Employee from working for any employer, or from serving any person who approaches them without solicitation.

Lawyer to check: the "material dealings" threshold, scope of "competitive services," and whether the final sentence preserves the right to work.

Training cost recovery

The Company will fund the training in Schedule B at a documented cost not exceeding ₹[amount]. If the Employee resigns, or is terminated for proven misconduct, within [eighteen] months of completing it, the Employee shall reimburse the proportion set out in the recovery schedule in Schedule B. The amount shall not exceed documented cost actually incurred, evidenced by invoices provided on request. No amount is recoverable where employment ends due to redundancy, restructuring, termination other than for proven misconduct, documented medical incapacity, or the Company's failure to provide the training.

Lawyer to check: taper mechanics, interaction with wage and settlement rules, whether set-off against final settlement is lawful, and the carve-out list.

Garden leave

During any notice period the Company may require the Employee not to attend the workplace and not to perform duties, in whole or in part, for up to [thirty/sixty] days. The Employee remains an employee, continues to receive full salary and benefits, remains bound by confidentiality and fidelity duties, and shall remain reasonably available for handover queries. The Employee shall not commence employment elsewhere during this period.

Lawyer to check: maximum duration, benefit continuity, interaction with notice buy-out, proportionality for the role.

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Enforcement realities nobody puts in the offer letter

Recovery from full-and-final settlement

The instinct is to deduct the bond amount from the final settlement. Be careful. Deductions from wages and final settlement in India operate within a framework where permissible categories are not open-ended, and statutory entitlements have their own protections. Unilaterally netting off a disputed contractual claim converts a contract dispute into something with a different character. The more careful sequence:

1. Compute the final settlement correctly and separately.
2. Raise any recovery as a distinct, documented, invoice-backed demand.
3. Take specific advice on whether, and how far, set-off is permissible.
4. Where the employee agrees, record the adjustment in a signed settlement showing the arithmetic.

Never treat statutory dues as leverage. That is how a recoverable ₹1,50,000 becomes a much more expensive problem.

Withholding relieving letters and experience certificates

The most common enforcement tactic among Indian SMBs, and a bad one. It is reputationally toxic — ex-employees talk, and the version that spreads is never nuanced. It worries your current team, who notice how leavers are treated. It frequently triggers complaints that would otherwise never have been filed. It often fails anyway, since many employers verify tenure through payslips and statutory contribution records. If you have a genuine documented claim, pursue the claim rather than holding someone's career hostage.

Legal cost versus recovery value

Run the arithmetic before you run the case.

Enforcement is sometimes right: a large documented investment, a serious confidentiality breach, a coordinated lift-out. Act decisively then, with advice. For a junior employee leaving at month 14 of a 24-month bond, the clause did its job as a signal and pursuing it destroys value.

For most employees, restrictive clauses function as behavioural guardrails and evidence of expectation, not litigation instruments. Draft them so they hold up if you ever need them, and design retention so you almost never do.

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Three illustrative scenarios

The fresh-graduate bond that backfired. A 40-person Pune SaaS company bonds 12 graduates at ₹2,00,000 for 24 months, citing "training investment" — a standard four-week internal onboarding. Four leave at month nine. The company demands payment and withholds relieving letters. Reviews appear on employer-rating sites; offer acceptance drops next cycle. Counsel confirms the amount has no cost documentation behind it, and the claims are waived. Better: a modest tapered recovery on genuinely external costs, plus a retention bonus in two tranches.

The certification bond that held. A 90-person Bengaluru firm sends a senior data engineer for an overseas certification — ₹4,10,000 documented, plus an approved three-week paid study block. The agreement discloses the breakdown, sets an 18-month window, prints the taper, caps recovery at documented cost, and carves out redundancy and medical exit. The engineer resigns at month seven; the schedule yields ₹2,25,500. The company presents invoices and a written calculation, and issues the relieving letter on the last working day regardless. It settles.

The team lift-out. A sales director joins a competitor and within two months hires four former team members and approaches six accounts she personally managed. Her agreement had a narrow 12-month non-solicit — and no non-compete. Counsel sends a measured letter citing the specific clause and conduct; it resolves commercially. Notably, the absence of an over-broad non-compete helped: the position was narrow and defensible rather than an attempt to stop someone working.

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Alternatives that actually retain people

If your honest reason for wanting a bond is "people keep leaving after we train them," a bond is a symptom-level fix.

• Stay interviews. Thirty structured minutes at months 3, 9 and 18: what would make you consider leaving this year, what do you want more and less of, what skill do you want in twelve months, what feels unfair? Then act on at least one thing per person. The value is demonstrated responsiveness, not the data.
• Visible growth paths. Most early-career attrition in Indian SMBs is about not seeing the next step. Publish levels, the capabilities each requires and typical timeframes. Ambiguity sends people to the market to find out what they are worth.
• Deferred bonuses. Instead of "pay ₹2,00,000 if you leave," try "₹60,000 at month 12 and ₹90,000 at month 24 if you are still here." Same arithmetic, opposite emotional valence.
• ESOPs people understand. A grant nobody can value retains nobody. Invest in plain-language explainers of vesting, cliffs, exercise and tax, plus annual statements. A very short post-exit exercise window is a known source of resentment.
• Phased skill investment. Module one at month three, module two at month nine, module three at month eighteen. The forward benefit of staying does the retention work, and your exposure at any point is smaller.
• Better managers, and pay hygiene. The strongest predictor of voluntary exit in small companies is the direct manager relationship. Benchmark annually too — bonds are sometimes an attempt to solve a pay problem with paperwork.

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The paperwork workflow: what to sign, when, where it lives

Good clauses fail on process more often than on drafting.

1. Disclose restrictive terms at offer stage. Never spring a bond on someone on day one. Put a plain-language summary of any bond, notice period, non-solicit or confidentiality obligation in the offer letter. It reduces the "I never knew" argument and filters out candidates who would have resented it.
2. Execute core agreements before or on day one — employment agreement, confidentiality and IP terms, code of conduct, signed before system access is granted. Signing three weeks in weakens the story about how carefully you guard information.
3. Sign training agreements separately, at the time of the training. Document programme, provider, dates and cost; present the breakdown and taper; allow a day or two to read it; file invoices with the agreement as they arrive.
4. Refresh acknowledgements at key moments — promotion or role change, access to more sensitive data, annual policy refresh, and any material change to the agreement.
5. Version-control your templates. One master per employment type; a version number and effective date in every footer; a changelog; legal review on a defined cadence.
6. Run offboarding as a checklist. Written acceptance with confirmed last working day; access revocation timed to handover; item-by-item asset return; data deletion confirmation covering personal devices; a short exit letter restating surviving obligations without threats; full-and-final on a stated timeline; relieving letter and experience certificate issued as a matter of course.
7. Keep records findable — not in a founder's inbox or a drive folder called "HR final final." One employee record should hold the offer letter, employment agreement, confidentiality and IP annexure, each training agreement with its invoices, every acknowledgement, and the exit documents, showing which version was signed and when.

Set retention periods with advice — data protection and statutory record-keeping both bear on this, and holding personal data indefinitely without a reason is its own risk.

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Special situations

Interns and apprentices. Bonding interns is close to indefensible and reads terribly — an internship is a learning arrangement where learning is the consideration. Do use proportionate confidentiality and IP terms, since interns often work on real product. Formal apprenticeships sit under their own regulatory framework; take advice.

Contractors and consultants. Governed by contract, not employment law, which cuts both ways. Restrictions between businesses can be drafted more robustly, but over-controlling a contractor — fixed hours, exclusivity, full team integration — feeds misclassification risk. Every contractor agreement needs confidentiality, express IP assignment (the gap that bites most often), data-handling terms and a clear statement of independent status.

Senior leaders. Where post-exit restrictions are most likely to be taken seriously, because interests are substantial and bargaining is closer to equal. Even so, favour paid garden leave over unpaid restraint, narrow non-solicit over broad non-compete, and explicit consideration. And plan succession — a restriction is a poor substitute for a second person who knows the accounts.

Employees moving to a competitor. Resist reflex escalation. Establish the facts; assess whether they hold live non-public information or general market knowledge; preserve evidence lawfully; consider garden leave; send a measured letter restating surviving obligations without threats; and complete the exit properly regardless.

Remote and multi-state employees. Geographic clauses lose meaning — scope by client, function or product line. State rules differ, so review your agreement against the states where people actually sit. A forum clause naming somewhere far from the employee may look oppressive and makes routine matters expensive for you too.

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Common mistakes

1. Copying a competitor's agreement, inheriting their risk profile and drafting errors.
2. Writing a bond with no underlying cost. No invoices means you have a deterrent, not a training bond.
3. Round-number amounts and no taper. The same sum for everyone, payable equally at month 2 and month 22, undermines the cost-recovery rationale entirely.
4. Excessive duration — three-year bonds and two-year non-competes for junior roles.
5. Blanket non-competes in every offer letter, including for people holding nothing worth protecting.
6. Defining everything as confidential. Over-breadth makes the clause harder to rely on where it matters.
7. No carve-outs for redundancy, medical exit or company breach. This is what makes a bond read as a trap.
8. Withholding relieving letters. Reputationally costly, escalation-prone, rarely effective.
9. Unilateral deductions from final settlement, or worse, touching statutory dues as leverage.
10. Signing agreements weeks after joining, once access was already granted, with no version control.
11. Ignoring contractors and interns — the IP gap surfaces at the worst moment.
12. Asymmetric notice periods. Nothing signals bad faith faster.
13. Assuming the clause does the work. A covenant is not a retention strategy or a security programme.
14. Never revisiting the template, and skipping the lawyer. A review costs a fraction of one badly handled exit.

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Frequently asked questions

Is an employment bond in India legal?

Such agreements are not automatically void, but whether a particular one is enforceable is a much harder question. Broadly, Indian law is unfavourable towards agreements restraining someone from exercising a lawful profession after employment ends, and towards sums functioning as penalties rather than genuine compensation for actual loss or documented spend. A narrow, well-documented training cost recovery agreement with a tapered schedule stands on far firmer ground than a generic bond demanding a round sum.

Can we enforce a non-compete clause after an employee leaves?

Post-employment non-competes are the weakest item in the toolkit in India. The general principle disfavouring restraints on lawful trade or profession after the relationship ends makes blanket post-exit non-competes very hard to enforce, while restrictions applying during employment are treated far more permissively. For protection after exit, put your effort into a tight confidentiality clause, a narrow non-solicit and paid garden leave for genuinely sensitive roles.

How much can we recover under a training bond?

No more than what you actually and documentably spent, reduced proportionately for service already delivered. Build from invoices — course fees, exam fees, travel, external trainer costs — and exclude recruitment costs, ordinary onboarding, equipment and speculative "loss of opportunity." Then taper, and cap at documented cost.

Can we withhold a relieving letter until a bond is paid?

It is a poor strategy: reputationally damaging, it frequently triggers complaints that would not otherwise have been made, and it often fails anyway since many employers verify tenure through payslips and statutory contribution records. If you have a genuine documented claim, pursue it on its merits with legal advice.

Can we deduct the bond amount from full-and-final settlement?

Take advice first. Deductions from wages and final settlement in India operate within a framework that does not permit open-ended set-off of disputed contractual claims, and statutory entitlements have their own protections. Compute the settlement correctly, raise recovery as a separate documented claim, and — if the employee agrees — record the adjustment in a signed settlement showing the arithmetic.

Do non-solicitation agreements hold up in India?

They occupy the middle ground. One targeting active, deliberate solicitation of specific clients the employee personally served or colleagues they actually worked with, for six to twelve months, is taken more seriously than a sweeping ban. The version covering every client in the database for three years is far weaker, and its over-breadth can cast doubt on the rest of the agreement.

What should we do instead of a bond if people keep leaving after training?

Reverse the incentive. Pay a retention bonus in tranches at defined milestones, phase training investment across the tenure rather than front-loading it, make growth paths visible, run stay interviews, and invest in first-time manager capability. These cost real money too, but they buy commitment rather than resentment.

Do these clauses apply to interns, contractors and consultants?

Obligations differ by category. Interns should generally have confidentiality and IP terms but not bonds. Contractors need their own agreements with express IP assignment, confidentiality and data-handling terms — the IP gap in freelance contracts is among the most common and costly oversights in small companies. Be careful, though, that restrictive terms on contractors do not resemble employment-style control.

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Bringing it together

Confidentiality and IP assignment are your workhorses. Draft them narrowly, define terms concretely, back them with real access controls. They protect assets, and they travel past exit far more comfortably than anything else on the list.

Non-solicitation is worth having, if you keep it narrow — active solicitation, specific clients, specific colleagues, short duration. Post-employment non-competes are mostly signalling: hard to enforce here, costly in goodwill, and their over-breadth can undermine the clauses you actually need.

An employment bond in India is defensible only as a cost-recovery mechanism grounded in documented, employee-specific investment, with proportionate duration, a printed taper, a cap at actual cost and honest carve-outs. Everything else is a deterrent wearing a legal costume.

And the strongest retention instrument is not in the agreement at all. It is a manager who has a real conversation, a path the employee can see, pay that does not require leaving to discover their market value, and an exit process that treats people decently.

Get all of it reviewed by a qualified employment lawyer. Nothing here is legal advice, your facts matter more than any general rule, and this area continues to develop.

Where CozyHR fits

Most of what makes restrictive covenants work in practice is unglamorous record-keeping. Which template version did each person sign, and when? Where are the invoices backing a recovery claim? Did the relieving letter go out on time?

CozyHR is built for Indian SMBs and startups that need that layer to simply work — onboarding workflows with document acknowledgements, employee records holding signed agreements and supporting documents together, policy version tracking, structured offboarding checklists, and payroll and full-and-final settlement in one place. When a question surfaces two years later, the answer is in the record rather than someone's memory.

If your paperwork currently lives across three drives and a founder's inbox, that is a good problem to fix this quarter. Try CozyHR and see how much of the workflow runs itself.

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This article is general information for HR and people-ops practitioners in India. It is not legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Enforceability of employment bonds, non-compete clauses, non-solicitation agreements and confidentiality clauses is highly fact-specific and subject to change. Always consult a qualified employment lawyer licensed to practise in India before drafting, adopting, amending or enforcing any employment agreement clause.