The new crew at Lazada Group

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Hi there,

The Shopee-Lazada rivalry is something we’ve covered extensively here at Tech in Asia. For me personally, though, there’s a clear winner: one of my colleagues was surprised to find that I’m a Shopee “diamond” user.

That’s what you get when you order 94 times on Shopee, which I did for the first half of this year.

As an ecommerce writer, however, I must admit that things are not as simple. What are the untold stories from Shopee and its rivals that we need to dig?

One thing I can certainly say: Stories need, and are driven by, people. After inaugurating our Shopee org chart last week, we’ve now updated the Lazada org chart to reflect the personnel changes that have happened of late.

In June, Tech in Asia broke the news about James Dong’s appointment as the new Lazada Group CEO, making him the fifth person to hold that post in five years. In July, we also reported that Magnus Ekbom, one of Lazada’s co-founders, was set to leave.

But the changes haven’t just happened at the top. The org chart suggests that Alibaba is deepening its role in Lazada, with both heads for payments and logistics originating from the Chinese tech giant’s companies.

But this time around, Lazada doesn’t just have Shopee as its archrival. With TikTok Shop clearly making Southeast Asia one of its top priorities, we’ll continue tracking what could possibly be a triathlon ecommerce showdown.

Meanwhile, my colleague Samreen spotlights in our Hot Take why ShopX, an India-based ecommerce enabler with US$56 million in funding, has to file for bankruptcy.

Ultimately, the lessons learned from failures are perhaps the most valuable of all.

– Huong

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THE BIG STORY

Org Chart: The people steering Lazada (updated)

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THE HOT TAKE

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NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW

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