Legaltech VDR, a cloud-based service for sharing confidential documents, is keen to enter the Singapore market as it begins global expansion.
It is a strategic move for the South Korean-based company to choose the Lion City as the launching pad for attracting customers outside its domestic market.
“As an active business environment for global companies, Singapore is rapidly growing as a digital business hub, with many global IT companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, already in business and a significant influx of Chinese IT companies,” said Jeong In-ho, CEO of Legaltech VDR.
Legaltech VDR’s foray into the overseas markets comes at a heels of a US$2 million investment from Japan-based partners who have seen the growth potential of the company’s unique big data search engine.
A virtual data room (VDR) is a secure online repository of confidential information and documents often used as a central reference for a financial transaction. With its increasing use worldwide, experts predict that the VDR market size will grow from US$1.4 billion in 2020 to US$2.7 billion in 2025.
Catering to the data sharing needs of the M&A market
Legaltech VDR has found its foothold in South Korea in recent years addressing the needs of companies that have been actively engaged in short-term expansion and business restructuring through M&A.
For one, global pharmaceutical and bio companies' aggressive mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are rising. In 2018, the size of M&A in related fields totalled KRW400 trillion and is expected to reach around KRW1.6 quadrillion by 2022. They are proactively diversifying their business by merging with different industries following the growth of the online drug market.
“During such intricate M&A processes, management and security of legal, accounting, and other confidential business data are important tasks for negotiations and the prevention of leakage of information,” said Jeong.
In such a scenario, virtual data room (VDR) solutions with specialised functions for information sharing and collaboration with external experts are becoming increasingly popular. They are highly secure, convenient, and efficient for in-out technology licensing and contactless collaboration with global clinical trial data partners.
Jeong pointed out that Legaltech VDR provides a highly secure environment for multilateral collaboration and sharing of confidential data – effectively managing vast amounts of data. While other VDR solutions have a capacity limit of 500MB to 1GB, Legaltech VDR handles up to 2GB and takes less than 10 minutes to upload and download.
“It is possible to effectively manage the vast amount of research and experimental data accumulated during the R&D period. As a virtual data room solution, it guarantees fast upload and download speeds and offers a reasonable price as a feature,” he added.
Currently, there are 190 companies in South Korea that use Legaltech VDR, with a majority of those companies in the pharmaceutical, bio, accounting, law, investment, and finance fields.
Expanding horizons
Although primarily used in M&A due diligence processes, VDR has been increasingly adopted for a wider variety of applications as a collaboration solution for sharing confidential information such as technical data during an IPO, investment attraction, in-out licensing, and corporate due diligence.
And as Legatech VDR extends its reach overseas, it is also keen in expanding the application of its VDR solutions outside the M&A environment. Specifically, the company is setting its sights on the burgeoning ESG sector.
"As ESG management has emerged as a global trend, companies are increasingly trying to apply eco-friendly elements throughout their business, with virtual data rooms becoming one of the key solutions to drive the change,” said Jeong.
He added - "We are expanding our efforts to ensure that virtual data rooms are used widely in today's active business dealings with non-performing loans and are also planning to promote the paperless environment for businesses.
