On 3 January 2024, Lazada, the Southeast Asian branch of Alibaba Group, reportedly downsized its Singapore office, letting go of both junior and senior staff across various departments, such as commercial and marketing teams, as per Singapore media reports.
The Singaporean media reported on 3 January 2024, that the employees received calendar invites for individual meetings with the human resources department, scheduled at the end of the workday on 2 January, 2024.
According to former employees, Loh Wee-Lee, ex-CEO, Lazada Singapore, was reportedly ‘asked to leave’ in August 2023. Lazada Singapore has been without an in-house communications department since last year.
Lazada and its parent company, Alibaba, have experienced several leadership changes since mid-2022. In June of that year, Li Chun, CEO, Lazada, was replaced by James Dong, who previously led Alibaba’s Thailand business and worked as a business assistant to Daniel Zhang, former CEO, Alibaba.
In June 2023, Daniel Zhang announced that he would step down as CEO and chairman to focus on Alibaba’s cloud division starting in September 2023. After 16 years with the Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba confirmed Zhang’s departure.
Lazada was established in 2012 by Germany’s technology incubator, Rocket Internet, with the aim of becoming Southeast Asia’s equivalent to Amazon.com. Alibaba acquired a controlling stake in Lazada for about $1 billion in 2016, marking Alibaba’s largest foreign deal at that time.
