Vietnamese e-commerce platform Tiki appoints two top executives

Vietnam’s largest homegrown e-commerce site Tiki has appointed Richard Trieu Pham as general director and Vu Thi Nhat Linh as general director of TikiNow Logistics (TNSL).

Richard Trieu Pham has been with Tiki since 2019, holding the position of chief financial officer (CFO) and president.

A statement on the e-commerce site said Pham was considered “a knowledgeable, experienced and capable person to lead staff development thereby helping the company perfect the financial system according to international standards.”

It also said that the new general director would be in charge of developing the company’s Fintech and Insurtech segments and Ticketbox platform. TicketBox is an online event management and ticket distribution system that makes it easy to sell and buy event tickets.

Pham had led Tiki’s successful series E fundraising of $258 million led by American insurance group AIA in 2021. The group invested $60 million to become Tiki’s exclusive insurance partner, providing health and life insurance services for clients through the e-commerce platform.

Other investors in this round included Taiwan’s second-largest telecom operator Taiwan Mobile, UBS AG, Korean investment fund Mirae Asset, AppWorks and existing investor STIC Investments.

Meanwhile, Vu Thi Nhat Linh joined Tiki in 2015 and led implementation and development of the e-commerce platform in the 2018-2022 period. In 2022, she was made deputy general director of TikiNow Logistics, in charge of the supply chain system, warehouse, delivery and after-sales departments.

In other major Tiki news, founder Tran Ngoc Thai Son, became chairman of Tiki Global Pte. Ltd. starting Tuesday.

Son founded Tiki in 2010 with around $5,000 of his own money. The software engineer with a master’s degree (University of New South Wales, Australia) wrote the platform’s code himself, purchased about 100 English books from Amazon and delivered them on his motorbike in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s southern economic hub, where Tiki is headquartered.

The name Tiki is derived from two Vietnamese words meaning “searching” and “economical”.

Tiki posted revenues of VND846.5 billion ($36.4 million) in the first quarter of the year.

Though Tiki is Vietnam’s largest homegrown e-commerce site, it is the second most popular in terms of hits, behind rival Shopee of Singapore’s Sea Ltd. Another major competitor is Alibaba-backed Lazada.