Alibaba’s regional e-commerce unit Lazada marks new year with layoffs in Singapore
E-commerce firm Lazada laid off an undisclosed number of staff from its Singapore office on Jan 3, The Edge Singapore understands. Junior and senior employees from multiple departments, including the commercial and marketing teams, were affected. The Edge Singapore understands employees received calendar invites for individual meetings with the HR department on Jan 3 at the end of the Jan 2 work day.
While it is unclear how many employees have been laid off so far, the retrenchment exercise could last until Jan 5. One affected employee, who asked to remain anonymous, tells The Edge Singapore that meeting rooms have been reserved by HR for the remainder of the week.
Last August, former CEO of Lazada Singapore Loh Wee Lee left after more than four years with the company. In an email statement to The Edge Singapore on Jan 3, Loh says he had decided to move on to new opportunities outside of Lazada.
Loh has since relocated to Hong Kong and is now group chief digital officer at DFI Retail Group, part of the Jardine Matheson conglomerate.
Lazada Singapore has also operated without an in-house communications department since last year. The Edge Singapore has reached out to its regional team for comment.
As of Jan 3, Lazada’s corporate website lists eight open roles in the company — five in the Philippines and three in Malaysia. Meanwhile, the company’s LinkedIn page lists one open position in Thailand.
Lazada and its parent company Alibaba Group Holding have seen a slew of leadership changes since mid-2022. In June that year, Lazada’s CEO Li Chun was replaced by James Dong, the head of Alibaba’s Thailand business and former business assistant to Daniel Zhang, a former Alibaba CEO.
Zhang, in turn, announced in June 2023 that he would step down as CEO and chairman to focus on Alibaba’s cloud division from September 2023. On the day of the move, however, Alibaba announced Zhang’s departure after 16 years with the Chinese e-commerce giant.
Founded in 2012 under the Rocket Internet umbrella, Lazada had an early start in the region’s online shopping space. But it quickly faced intense competition from Shopee, a unit of Sea, which funded extensive marketing and offered generous discounts with earnings from its profitable gaming unit Garena.
In a bid to stay on top of the competition, Alibaba has been frequently injecting cash investments into Lazada. In 2023, there were at least two rounds of funding — US$845 million ($1.12 billion) in July and US$634 million in December.
Lazada has seen multiple chiefs come and go over the past decade. After Alibaba acquired the company in 2016, co-founder Maximilian Bittner vacated the top job in 2018 for Chinese billionaire Lucy Peng — also known as Peng Lei — one of the founders of Alibaba.
Peng would stay in the role for just eight months. Lazada co-founder and former COO Pierre Poignant took over as CEO from December 2018, before PayPal and Alibaba alumnus Li took over in June 2020.
Parent entity Alibaba Group Holding has suffered a 75% drop in its share price over the past three years, allowing competitors like PDD Holdings Inc, which operates the Temu online shopping site, to catch up in terms of market value.
Over the past couple of years, various previously fast-growing digital economy entities have laid off people, as they grapple with the realities of higher funding costs, slowing growth and demand from investors to turn profitable.