Lazada hands Indonesia CEO regional role as Pierre Poignant heads to Alibaba

Southeast Asia’s eCommerce platform Lazada Group has appointed Chun Li (pictured left) as its new group chief executive officer to drive the company’s next phase of growth under an accelerated digitalisation landscape in the region.  Li served as both president and Lazada Indonesia CEO over the last three years. He will be succeeding Pierre Poignant (pictured right), who will become special assistant to Alibaba Group chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang.

With his deep experience in technology architecture and product strategy, Li aims to further strengthen Lazada’s competitive advantage through data technology application and business localisation across the six markets. He joined Alibaba Group in 2014 as chief technology officer for Alibaba B2B business unit, and moved to oversee the Lazada business in June 2017.

According to Lucy Peng, Lazada Group chairwoman, under Poignant’s leadership, Lazada has delivered healthy growth over the past two years. Poignant was handed the CEO remit in December 2018, to succeed Lucy Peng. Poignant was previously the group executive president and was leading the company’s strategic development into new growth pillars, while continuing to manage Lazada’s operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. 

“Li is an experienced business leader who can realise Lazada’s vision of unifying commerce with technology to advance Southeast Asia’s digital economy. While, as a member of Lazada’s founding team, Poignant has inspired all of us through his dedication, passion, humility and perseverance. We are deeply grateful to Poignant for his invaluable contributions in building the solid foundation for Lazada’s long term sustainable success,” she said.

Meanwhile, incoming group CEO Li said there is incredible momentum for eCommerce across the region, and together with the company’s strong local talents, Lazada will step up its digital innovation and commercial development to empower customers to be successful and provide the best user experience for its consumers. According to Lazada, currently, more than 90% of its talents are local as the company prioritises development of local talent. Lazada revealed it has served over 70 million unique consumers in six countries for the 12 months ended 31 March 2020.

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