Asia’s founderless unicorns struggle to fly in tech winter

What do Lazada, Luckin Coffee, and Flipkart have in common? Besides being in the consumer space, all of these unicorns are now operating without their founders.

As per Tech in Asia data, we found at least 15 unicorns in Asia that have gone founderless – that is, there are no founders sitting in the C-suite or on the board of the company.

While there are more than 15 founderless unicorns in Asia, we have only included firms for which we could find publicly available valuations for this analysis.

A majority of these firms – 10 out of the 15 unicorns – saw their valuations decline after seeing their founders leave.

However, these drops in valuation can be attributed to the tech winter, as many of the founders we noted in our list exited their companies between 2022 and 2024. About three of them left due to “restructuring,” while most gave up their roles to establish a new startup.

But some unicorns have managed to recover, even when a founder leaves due to public scrutiny.

Take Luckin Coffee founder Jenny Qian, who was confirmed to have fabricated sales transactions after the company went public. By June 2020, she was terminated from her post as CEO of the firm.

Yet, as of February 2025, Luckin Coffee’s market capitalization has risen to US$8.3 billion from US$550 million when Qian left. The coffee chain also closed the third quarter of 2024 with US$1.5 billion in revenue, a 41% year-on-year jump.

In Indonesia, Tokopedia co-founder William Tanuwijaya left the board of GoTo Group – the merged entity of the ecommerce company he helped build and Gojek – in June 2024.

The co-founder left as the company underwent restructuring after Tokopedia merged with TikTok Shop. Former Tokopedia COO Melissa Siska Juminto and former GoTo deputy chairman Andre Soelistyo all left in the same week Tanuwijaya did.

The week before they left, GoTo had a valuation of US$3.2 billion. As of the first week of February 2025, the company was worth US$5.4 billion.

Profitability may not be enough

But these are exceptions, as most founderless unicorns we tracked saw their valuation dwindle even if they became profitable.

For instance, while Indonesian unicorn Bukalapak recorded its first EBITDA-profitable quarter in Q1 2024, its valuation remained below the peak market capitalization of US$2.5 billion it recorded when it debuted on the local bourse in August 2021.

Founder- versus CEO-led startups