Org Chart: The people helming Sea Group

Org Chart maps out the people at the top of Asia’s most prominent tech companies. Who are the key decision-makers? How are the teams organized? What does it tell us about the company’s priorities? We continue this series with leading consumer internet company Sea.

When Sea Group started in 2009, there were hardly any hints that it would eventually become the poster child of Southeast Asian tech. Co-founders Forrest Li, Gang Ye, and David Chen ran Garena – now the group’s worldwide digital entertainment arm – out of a shophouse in Singapore, before making the game-changing move of diving into fintech and ecommerce with SeaMoney in 2014 and Shopee in 2015.

Still, it seems that the company is nowhere near done. The next frontier seems to be digital banking: In December 2020, Sea Group was awarded a digital full bank license in Singapore and swiftly acquired an Indonesian bank (which then became SeaBank) within weeks.

Sea Group is also making a mark outside its core Southeast Asia market. Shopee is thriving in Latin America, especially Brazil, and is eyeing markets like India, Poland, and Spain.

Sea also: Visualizing Sea’s rapid rise

While Li has served as Sea’s CEO since it was founded, Gang and Chen have held various roles throughout the journey.

Gang was the group’s CTO between 2010 and 2016 before replacing Chen as group COO in January 2017. Chen also transitioned from the group’s chief of staff to Shopee’s chief product officer by December 2019.

As Sea diversified further, so did its internal structure. Chris Feng, who joined Sea in March 2014 to lead its mobile game business, was a major addition to the group. Feng now leads two of Sea’s major entities, serving as Shopee’s CEO since July 2015 and as the CEO of SeaMoney since March 2020.

Recently, Feng was also appointed president of Sea Group, effective January 1, 2022. He continues to lead Shopee and SeaMoney and reports directly to Li.

Here are a few more observations:

• Nick Nash, before forming private equity firm Asia Partners, was Sea Group’s president. He resigned in 2018, and the position remained vacant until Feng’s appointment.
• Jin Oh, the former CEO of Garena, also resigned in 2018. Later, Terry Zhao, who had served in several senior roles at Garena, was promoted to lead the gaming arm as its president.
• While Sea Group has expanded into numerous countries within and outside Southeast Asia, Maneerut Anulomsombut (Nok), Sea Thailand CEO, is the group’s only country-specific CEO.
• Alan Hellawell, former group chief strategy officer, was another C-level executive in Sea Group’s history.
• Two relative veterans at the company are leading Shopee’s charge into Latin America. Jianghong Liu spent over five years at Shopee – most recently as head of cross-border ecommerce – before becoming head of Shopee Mexico. Pine Kyaw spent four years as the country head for Shopee Vietnam before taking on the same role for Brazil.
• ShopeeFood is one of Shopee’s newer products but it’s unclear whether a specific executive oversees the food delivery service. That said, many ShopeeFood team members concurrently work on ShopeePay.

Sea Group declined to participate in this story.

You can also check out our coverage of Sea here. If you find any missing or inaccurate data, do reach out to budi@techinasia.com to help us fill in the gaps.

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