What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Ninja Van’s success in securing $578m through the 2021 Series E funding round with notable participation by Alibaba Group as a new investor, was partly as a result of the various legal due diligence and compliance exercises undertaken by the legal departments of the respective Southeast Asian Ninja Van entities including that of Malaysia, under our general counsel’s leadership.

In a recently completed $750,000 acquisition of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution at the group level, I was given the opportunity to drive the completion of the acquisition project under our general counsel’s guidance. This saw us directing both local and international external counsels in the conducts of legal due diligence exercises on the seller and its subsidiary. Based on our holistic legal assessment on the outcomes of the legal due diligences, we advised internal stakeholders on the most viable and risk-adverse acquisition structure to be adopted.

We internally crafted and directed external counsel on the required conditions precedent and closing actions to be captured in the main transaction documents. We also internally undertook full reviews of the main transaction documents, drafting of standard completion documents and direct commercial negotiations with the seller. Post acquisition, completion actions were meticulously tracked to ensure successful closing of the acquisition.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

I personally view that innovation by a legal department is a privilege available to well-established and multi-national institutions which are not as limited in terms of financial resources, as compared to startups.

Although we are unable to “innovate” in the purest sense, we resorted to being resourceful. For example, we experimented with various free cloud drives which would allow the Malaysian legal team to work as efficiently as conventional law firms having the perks of a shared local drive. We also drive awareness across commercial, fleet and procurement teams for the adoption of digital signing in their day-to-day contracting works.

Our aim is simple – to substantially increase work productivity for all by minimising business interruptions, simplifying processes and eliminating administrative works.