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

Go Viet Technology Trading, an affiliate of PT GOTO Gojek Tokopedia, a publicly listed Indonesian company valued at US$5.4bn, operates in Vietnam as Gojek Vietnam. We specialise in ride-hailing services, food delivery, and postal delivery.

In 2023, I led the legal team in numerous transactions, contributing significantly to the profitability of Gojek Vietnam. In the face of insurance regulations in Vietnam, the launch of SafeTrip+ by Gojek introduced a new transport feature offering users premium insurance and other benefits during Gojek rides. This initiative aimed to boost revenue for traditional ride-hailing services. Despite challenges posed by the new law on Insurance Business effective from January 1, 2023, the legal team collaborated closely with business and product teams during development to ensure compliance. The law required written consent from insurance beneficiaries, presenting a unique challenge. The legal team creatively interpreted digital acceptance as “written consent,” enabling a successful and timely launch of SafeTrip+ features.

We also helped launch GoFood on MoMo in Vietnam, an intermediary payment platform regulated by the State Bank of Vietnam. This feature allows MoMo users in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to explore and enjoy millions of affordable food options from GoFood merchants without leaving the MoMo platform, integrated within the Gojek ecosystem. The legal team proactively navigated technical integration challenges and successfully set up a relaxed approach for the licensing requirements. They also expedited the contract negotiation and finalisation with MoMo within a two-week timeframe, significantly speeding up the launch date. From a business perspective, this enables Gojek to tap into MoMo’s extensive user base, potentially increasing turnover.

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?

Like other giants in the technology winter, Gojek Vietnam is also impacted. Our legal team is required to do more with less. In 2023, we have been more efficient with reduced resources. We have worked on initiatives to save time, including a ticketing system for our internal users. With this system, users can raise a request via our internal website for contract drafting and review. The requestor shall provide all relevant background information and relevant documents. The benefit for requestors is that they can easily follow up on the status of their requests and not follow up with us. For our legal team, we can save more time, limit breaking time, manage their expectations, and avoid cases where requestors suddenly request a contract review because of their deadline.

The legal team also provides a self-served contract template integrated with DocuSign. These templates are used for our repeated transactions and are applicable for certain transaction thresholds. They are available on DocuSign, which eligible users can use, fill in the information, and sign directly, at their delegated power without requesting legal to vet or approve each time they need a simple contract. Our legal team has worked to integrate DocuSign for all other teams and the Board in Vietnam, providing more flexibility and convenience for signing contracts and documents and reducing most of the paperwork.

Furthermore, when providing supporting documents for compliance applications, we use more ChatGPT and automatic translation tools to provide quick and reviewable translations. As our team works closely across all countries, we usually need to provide quick translations of Vietnamese regulations, internal business reports, and compliance documents to relevant stakeholders in Indonesia and Singapore. In those cases, ChatGPT and automatic translation tools are very efficient and reduce our workload significantly, leaving us more time to focus on impacting initiatives for the business.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Vietnam over the next five-ten years?

I believe that the requirements and expectations of the role have certainly increased. As general counsel, it is always important to understand new complex concepts and speak the language of the business. This requires the general counsel to adopt a risk-based, proactive, and real-life approach. Furthermore, the business now expects the general counsel to be incorporated into various new roles and responsibilities, such as data protection officer, tax advisor, and government relations manager. All these new challenges require constant learning and new expertise for the general counsel.

What are some of the main trends impacting your industry in Vietnam?

With increased technological involvement, there emerge new concepts and approaches that in-house counsel must understand before they can effectively support the business. Understanding the business has never been easy, and it is now more challenging. Furthermore, legal tech represents a new way of working. ChatGPT will gradually replace translation vendors, DocuSign will replace paperwork, and Slack will replace work emails. All these new technologies, if adopted, will become powerful tools for any in-house legal team.