Org Chart: The people running Shopee

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 Sea Group’s ecommerce arm Shopee.

From starting out as a Southeast Asia-focused ecommerce marketplace launched by Sea Group in 2015, Shopee has evolved into a juggernaut in its own right, with businesses spanning food delivery (ShopeeFood), financial services (ShopeePay), and logistics (Shopee Xpress) – all on top of ecommerce.

Led by Chris Feng, a former executive at both Lazada and Zalora, Shopee has pushed beyond the region to expand into India, Europe, as well as Latin America in recent years, though it has since dialed back some of these efforts.

Shopee, for the most part, has flourished under the steady hand of Sea Group, which has been known to make silent, calculated bets. Many of Shopee’s top executives have spent time in other parts of Sea Group’s business.

CEO Feng, for instance, joined Sea Group in 2014 and founded the mobile games division of Garena before going on to helm Shopee as CEO a year later. Feng’s connections and prior experience as chief purchasing officer at Lazada have reportedly been crucial to Shopee’s growth, particularly in its early days.

What’s clear from Shopee’s org chart, though, is that the company values loyalty, as does Sea Group. A quick scan of Shopee’s country heads shows that all of them have been with the company for at least five years.

The ecommerce firm’s Indonesia heads have particularly long histories with the company. Christin Djuarto joined Sea Group in 2012 before moving to Shopee in 2015 as head of operations for Shopee Indonesia. Handhika Wiguna Jahja, the other country head for Indonesia, joined Garena in the same year as a management associate before taking on the role of head of operations at Shopee Indonesia in 2016.

Shopee’s focus on scaling, however, could have resulted in inefficiencies within the organization. In June, Shopee laid off employees in its ShopeeFood and ShopeePay teams in Southeast Asia. Employees from Shopee’s Latin America- and Europe-based ecommerce units were also affected.

The move came amid Shopee’s push to hit positive adjusted EBITDA before cost allocations for headquarters in Southeast Asia and Thailand by next year.

See also: Sea Group’s financial health in 9 charts

Here are a few more observations:

• Within Shopee, each nation has its own country director, with the exception of Singapore and Malaysia, whose operations are overseen by Ian Ho, Shopee’s regional managing director
• Shopee generally entrusts regional expansion to staffers with a solid track record. In 2020, Pine Kyaw took on the mantle of executive director at Shopee Brazil after spending four years as executive director at Shopee Vietnam. He also holds a dual post as the head of Latin America for Sea Group.
• Meanwhile, Esten Mok, formerly the head of operations at Shopee Malaysia, took on a new role as head of operations for Shopee Poland in August 2021 to support Shopee’s push into Europe.
• Upward mobility is an active practice within the company. In August 2022, Lei Lei was promoted to director of engineering after spending seven years as head of engineering. Prior to that, he was an associate director at Sea Group for almost nine years.
• Much of the staff has also transitioned between Sea Group’s various divisions. For instance, Agatha Soh, a director at ShopeePay, joined Garena, Sea Group’s gaming division, as a regional marketing manager before taking on an equivalent role at Shopee.

Tech in Asia has invited Shopee to participate in this story, but the company did not respond to our requests for comment. We have verified the chart with some sources familiar with the ecommerce firm and against publicly available information.

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