Mathew Chacko

What Mathew brings to the table

Mathew Chacko is the Founding Partner at Spice Route Legal, where he leads the firm’s market-leading Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) practice group and co-heads the Financial Services practice. He has over 2 decades of experience in assisting some of the largest players in the global market – straddling a mix of data protection and financial services matters.

His range of top-end experience includes advising India’s largest international airline carrier on an adoption of a global payments platform; on over 20 bank outsourcing contracts, on Indian law compliance with global OFAC investigations, and has argued a case involving a large data theft at one of the world’s largest chargeback fraud management companies.

Mathew has been consistently ranked as a Band 1 lawyer by Chambers Fintech, recognised as a Leading Individual by The Legal 500, a Distinguished Practitioner by Asialaw, and Highly Regarded by IFLR1000 for five consecutive years. In 2024, he was honoured as “Fintech and Financial Services Regulatory Lawyer of the Year” by The Legal 500. He is also empanelled on the committee established by the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) to evaluate regulations pertaining to Asset Tokenization.

Beyond his professional achievements, Mathew is a true tech enthusiast, passionate about discussing and exploring emerging technologies. Outside his expertise in TMT and financial services, he has a deep interest in the evolving healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. To learn more about his work in healthcare, click here, and for his TMT matters, click here.

Representative matters:

Assisted a consortium of India’s 18 largest commercial banks with forming a joint venture to create a blockchain-focused trade finance platform, the first of its kind in India, while leading the consortium’s negotiations against Infosys and R3.
Assisted one of India’s largest commercial banks with tech deals valued over USD 200 million, while identifying gaps in the bank’s internal regulatory architecture for outsourcing and data practices.
Assisted one of the world’s largest insurance companies on building its core tech stack in compliance with IRDAI cybersecurity and outsourcing guidelines and with negotiating tech sourcing contracts with some of the largest technology companies in the world.
Assisted one of the world’s largest and oldest investment banking companies on navigating SEBI’s cybersecurity framework, including regulatory classification, compliance roadmap, infrastructure governance, and cross-border data management, ensuring alignment with evolving Indian regulatory expectations.
Assisting one of the world’s largest insurance and investment service providers achieve compliance with India’s upcoming data protection law.
Assisted India’s first digital only insurance group with investments of over INR 100 crore.
Assisted the world’s largest payment solutions company with navigating the Indian regulatory framework pertaining to the operation of Account Aggregators Ecosystem and assisting with solutions for establishing open banking services.
Advised one of India’s largest financial conglomerates on data localisation and data transfer regulations in relation to the delivery of financial services with the assistance of Amazon’s Alexa.
Assisting one of the world’s largest chargeback fraud management service providers, and its Indian affiliates, with a dispute arising out of leakage of confidential information and personal data of customers.