Article XIII – Legal Awareness of Contractual Documentation required for Business Enterprise Expansion and Growth


What is a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)?

 

When an entrepreneur shifts his customer base from individual customers to corporate customers, this is starting point of this new type of relationship. For an organization to be registered as a “Registered Vendor”, corporate entities will often require the organization to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (commonly known as an “NDA” ) along with various other documents.

An NDA can be considered the most celebrated document executed by the majority of new/upcoming entrepreneurs. However, often NDAs are executed by signing “on the dotted lines” without reading or understanding any provisions contained in the document. It is always presented as “a mere document to start a relationship” whereas, on the contrary, it may contain serious complications/implications.

An NDA certainly must be signed as a starting point of a relationship to protect and maintain the confidentiality of important confidential/proprietary information of both parties that may be exchanged between the parties and to be in the sense of “Trust” between the parties. 

BUT signing an NDA without going through the implications just to get a new customer or to enter into a new business relationship with a new corporate entity is certainly not advisable.

Often corporates will require/insist that an organization/vendor sign a “Unilateral NDA” protecting ONLY the corporate’s Confidential/ Proprietary information disclosed to the vendor organization, whereas during the business relationship with that corporate entity often the vendor organization may also disclose its ‘Confidential / Proprietary Information. The vendor organization’s information must also be protected properly as it is equally important and valuable.   

The concern stated above is not the only concern there are many more which we shall discuss in detail in our upcoming Article. 


For any query feel free to contact me.


Mahesh Vaidya
M.Com, LLM, ACS, DFM, CAIIB  
Legal Adviser
Cell Number 9769949701 / 9223173695
Email ID maheshvaidya2706@gmail.com

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