Lazada announced on Friday that it will have a new group chief executive officer, who will replace incumbent group CEO Pierre Poignan.
“Under Pierre’s leadership, Lazada has delivered healthy growth over the past two years. As a member of Lazada’s founding team, Pierre has inspired all of us through his dedication, passion, humility and perseverance. We are deeply grateful to Pierre for his invaluable contributions in building the solid foundation for Lazada’s long term sustainable success,” said Lucy Peng, Lazada Group Chairwoman.
According to Lazada, the new executive officer will be Chun Li, who served as a president of the Alibaba-owned company and head of its Indonesia operations. He will remain as Indonesia CEO.
“Chun is an experienced business leader who can realize Lazada’s vision of unifying commerce with technology to advance Southeast Asia’s digital economy,” said Peng.
Li worked at Alibaba in 2014 as the chief technology officer for its business unit catering to the business-to-business market. He was appointed co-president of Southeast Asia’s e-commerce giant in June 2017, as Alibaba got a majority stake in the company. In July 2019, he became the Indonesia business head.
“Lazada’s priority is to create unique value for our consumers and merchants in Southeast Asia. There is incredible momentum for eCommerce across the region, and together with our strong local talents, we will step up Lazada’s digital innovation and commercial development to empower our customers to be successful and provide the best user experience for our consumers,” said Li, Lazada Group CEO.
Online grocery sales
Lazada online grocery sales in Singapore rose due to coronavirus. The e-commerce giant saw its sales jumped four times from early April.
Since the city-state imposed movement restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the Alibaba-owned company experienced a rise in the sales of its online supermarket delivery business called RedMart.
Meanwhile, Lazada, which acquired RedMart in November 2016, currently caters to around 65 million active consumers on its platforms across six different markets in Southeast Asia.
James Chang, chief executive officer of Lazada Singapore, reported that RedMart’s unique visitors on daily have jumped more than 11 times.
The company experienced a “pretty tough time” trying to provide customers quality service during the peak period, Chang said during an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday.
To meet the increase in demand, Lazada hired full-time staff and part-timers.
″(RedMart’s) sales have increased about four times in this space and we hired about 500 staff here in Singapore over the course of a few weeks to be able to increase our capacity substantially,” Chang said.
New delivery system
Moreover, Lazada launched a new delivery system on April 4. This new system added 50% capacity and allowed the company to take on more orders as more consumers started utilizing e-commerce.
Chang said their peak was when the coronaviru started spreading outside China in February. RedMart’s orders increased and surpassed its weekly average by 300% when people in Singapore hurried to buy items in bulk.
Lazada made “a huge investment” in information technology and logistics infrastructure, he noted.
