Alibaba Group Holding Ltd will replace Lazada Group chief executive officer Chun Li with the head of its Thailand business and one-time business assistant to Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang, according to people familiar with the matter.

James Dong, 42, will take the reins of Lazada, Alibaba’s South-East Asian arm, while Li will serve as adviser to Lazada Group chairman Jiang Fan and remain on Lazada’s board of directors, the people said, asking not to be identified talking about a private matter.

The leadership change comes as the battle for supremacy in South-East Asia’s Internet arena intensifies. Lazada is locked in fierce competition with Sea Ltd’s Shopee, which has been expanding in Latin America, as well as Tokopedia, part of GoTo Group, which went public in April.

Dong, a former associate partner at McKinsey & Co, served as the head of globalisation strategy and corporate development at Alibaba Group and a business assistant to group CEO Zhang before joining Lazada as its CEO for Thailand in 2018, according to the company’s website.

The following year, he took on the additional role of CEO for Vietnam, where he oversaw a push to bolster logistics and improve operations to cope with rising orders at the height of the pandemic. Between June and August of 2021, at the peak of the fourth wave of Covid-19 in the country, Lazada’s orders quadrupled from a year earlier, Vietnam-based CafeF reported, quoting Dong.

The number of shoppers on Lazada Vietnam doubled in the third quarter of 2021 from the previous year, while its mall offering recorded its highest revenue with a growth rate of more than four times, according to a report by the company in 2021.

Dong has since passed on the Vietnam top role to Kaya Qin and had continued on as CEO for Thailand, where he led the launch of a new social commerce platform. He has an MBA from Cambridge University.

Li, a veteran technologist, is stepping down after two years as Lazada Group CEO. He took over from Pierre Poignant, who co-founded Lazada for Rocket Internet in 2012. Since being absorbed by Alibaba, the Singapore-based company has had four CEOs before Dong and frequent management shuffles.

A representative for Lazada declined to comment.

 - Bloomberg