About

Moving from private practice to in-house work taught Trisula Dewantara how ‘the legal world is implemented in the corporate practice’, a lesson which he learnt very quickly and which allowed him to take on a number of in-house positions with companies such as Astra and Indosat before moving to Tokopedia in 2017. ‘I saw the way the industry is going’, he says, ‘and that we are on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution, and I joined a company that has evolved significantly from its core business of C2C marketplace into a super-app platform in order to keep up with this’. He has continued to improve and hone the legal department’s skills and value to the business: ‘When I joined, the legal department that was comprised of high spirited young lawyers basically handled anything and everything in reaction mode. I started to specialise the work and recruit people who would act as mentors and a bridge between me and the more junior members of the team. I also introduced – as far as we can – automation, precedents and templates’. All to ensure legal department’s transformation to be a more trusted business partner, and correctly positioned to support Tokopedia’s growth. Among his main highlights with the company has been his work on fundraising events. ‘Given I was new to the tech space, the experience of handling my first fundraising was interesting and quite an eye opener. I was used to doing a more traditional M&A per se, but a tech fundraiser requires a specific set of skills beyond purely legal expertise’, he says.