Singapore-based Lazada Group, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Southeast Asian subsidiary, has named Li Chun as the group’s new CEO.

Li, who served as Lazada co-president and head of its Indonesian operations, will replace Pierre Poignant with a duty to drive the company’s growth through business localization and data technology, according to a company statement Friday.

“Li Chun is an experienced business leader who can realize Lazada’s vision of unifying commerce with technology to advance Southeast Asia’s digital economy,” Lazada chairwoman Lucy Peng said in a statement.

Li joined Alibaba in 2014 as chief technology officer for its business-to-business unit. He was appointed as Lazada co-president in June 2017 before becoming Lazada Indonesia CEO last July.

Poignant will take the position of “special assistant” to Alibaba chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang, the statement added.

E-commerce is a fast growing sector in Southeast Asia, and is expected to exceed $100 billion in gross merchandise value by 2025 from $23 billion in 2018, the South China Morning Post reported, citing a joint report by Google and Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

Lazada claims it served over 70 million consumers across six markets in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam for the twelve months ended March 31, 2020.

Singapore-based Tencent-backed Shopee unseated Lazada as Southeast Asia’s most downloaded and used e-commerce app as of the end of 2019, Reuters reported, citing statistics from research firm iPrice.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

Related: Alibaba’s Lazada Briefly Stops New Singapore Grocery Orders