Lazada Forward Women Awards 2021 Awards Recipients

PR88387

SINGAPORE, March 8, 2021 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

-Six Lazada women sellers across Southeast Asia are recognised for their

inspirational online business journeys-

Lazada hosted its inaugural Lazada Forward Women Awards 2021 (the Awards) on

International Women's Day that recognised six outstanding women across

Southeast Asia who are trailblazers in the eCommerce space, and showcased

resilience and innovation in their journeys as entrepreneurs.

The Awards celebrates the range of accomplishments and milestones women in the

region have achieved by overcoming challenging circumstances in their personal

lives, communities and cultures. Comprising three award categories, namely the

Creative Seller Award, Enterprising Seller Award and Inspiring Seller Award.

The first-ever six award recipients have demonstrated their different

approaches to overcoming and embracing new ideas when building an online

business. The winners are:

Creative Seller Award

-Anne Ong, Owner of Anne's Secret Recipes, Singapore

-Pham Thi Xuan Hong, Owner of PinkShopGiayDep, Vietnam

Enterprising Seller Award

-Georgianna Carlos, Owner of Fetch, Philippines

-Lalilla Thamnita, Owner of AggieHome, Thailand

Inspiring Seller Award

-Hanna Suhardi, Owner of Shopping Shoes, Indonesia

-Annie Chia, Owner of NLWK Florist, Malaysia

During the awards ceremony, Chun Li, Chief Executive Office of Lazada Group,

said, "I am honoured to be amongst such inspirational women today. You found

interesting and unique ways to leverage the Lazada platform to not only

establish your online business, but also to engage customers and build a niche

following while uplifting the lives around you. Lazada is proud to be your

partner and have the opportunity to be part of your successful journey."

As part of the Awards presentation ceremony, Chun Li also joined in a lively

discussion moderated by Virginia Tan, Founding Partner of Teja Ventures and

Co-Founder of She Loves Tech, with panellist Ayesha Khanna, CEO of Addo.ai, on

the topic of Growing Women Entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia: Current

Challenges and Opportunities.

With the steady acceleration and growth of eCommerce in Southeast Asia, there

is an increasing number of women business owners who have turned to the digital

economy due to the convenience of starting a home business, the low barriers of

entry and ease of registering a store on the Lazada platform, as well as the

availability of services, solutions and knowledge to sustain and grow a

business.

Held live in Singapore, the Awards was also livestreamed on the Lazada LazLive

channel to viewers in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and

Vietnam. It also featured guest performers like Malaysia's rap darling, Zamaera

and Singapore's very own funny woman, Sharul Channa.

About Lazada Group

Founded in 2012, Lazada Group is the leading eCommerce platform in Southeast

Asia. We are accelerating progress in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,

Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam through commerce and technology. With the

largest logistics and payments networks in the region, Lazada is a part of our

consumers' daily lives in the region and we aim to serve 300 million shoppers

by 2030. Since 2016, Lazada is the Southeast Asia flagship platform of Alibaba

Group powered by its cutting-edge technology infrastructure.

ANNEX

LAZADA FORWARD WOMEN AWARDS 2021 WINNER STORIES

CREATIVE SELLER AWARD

Anne Ong, 56 years old, Singapore

Anne is the owner of Anne's Secret

Recipe(https://redmart.lazada.sg/anne-s-secret-recipe/) that sells quality

baking premixes on Lazada Singapore's RedMart Specialty Stores platform since

2017. Making a career switch from being an architect, Anne started her business

in 2014 stocking the shelves at supermarkets, and ran the company with the

motto No Mess, No Fuss, Just Mix, Bake and Serve.  She comes from a Nonya

family background where cooking runs in her family genes, with a love to

preserve heritage recipes.

From happenstance, Anne started baking cupcakes for her son at kindergarten to

help add colour and joy to his tea breaks. As her son happily shared the treats

with his classmates, many parents started asking Anne for her recipe. Instead

of simply sharing the recipe, Anne started packing little packets of premixes

to be given out in the school, where parents could easily recreate the cupcakes

with their children.

Despite the preconceived perception that only men could be leaders, Anne, with

the support of her family, has embraced every obstacle that came her way

single-handedly, adopting and learning new technologies and spending time to

ensure heritage tastes are not lost. Anne has managed the art of raising her

children, research recipes, running a central kitchen while marketing her

business offline and online. In 2020, when she learned of some families losing

their jobs, she also found time to mentor them how to bake and to sell their

products to earn some money. Today, apart from Asia, her business goes all the

way out to the Maldives as well. She is still intending to cater more for other

communities by having her items certified as halal or kosher.

To sign up as a seller, please visit http://lzd.co/LazadaSGSellerSignUp.

Pham Thi Xuan Hong, 34 years old, Vietnam

Hong started her online store

PinkShopGiayDep(https://www.lazada.vn/shop/pinkshopgiaydep/) selling shoes on

Lazada Vietnam in 2018 with the initial idea of having a side hobby. After

realising that online sales can be quite active and trendy, she decided to make

a full-time switch, leaving her job as a software engineer. Subsequently, Hong

began to get more involved with livestreaming and started leveraging LazLive to

provide her followers a holistic review of her products while introducing

ongoing promotions and upcoming deals to drive greater excitement.

Working with her relative who owns a shoe factory, Hong sources for trendy and

fashionable designs that she feels consumers will be attracted to. The

beginning was hard as Hong's livestream viewership rate was low. However, she

persevered by upskilling her knowledge from Lazada University and the LazLive

team. Gradually she incorporated her learnings into her daily operations and

put into practice various different communication styles to keep her audience

engaged. For example, she will plan and curate content in a storytelling format

such as "How to pick the right shoes for a first date" or "Choosing the right

shoes for yourself". Hong will also strategise her livestreaming content to

coincide with special occasions such as Valentine's Day, Teacher's Day,

Mother's Day, and more. With a consistent and well-thought-out pipeline of

livestream content calendar, Hong also created her own gameshow to keep her

followers excited during voucher giveaways that has kept her followers updated

of product styles and latest fashion trends. This led to her viewership to grow

more than 60% alongside increasing orders.

Coming from the countryside of Vietnam where people are generally camera shy,

Hong has grown more confident with her presentation and business skills, with

the strong support and encouragement from her husband and mother-in-law. Hong

continuously keeps up with new livestream features and proactively signs up for

trainings and courses to learn of fun new ways to keep her followers interested

in her content.

To sign up as a seller, please visit http://lzd.co/LazadaVNSellerSignUp.

ENTERPRISING SELLER AWARD

Georgianna Carlos, 30 years old, Philippines

A psychology graduate, Georgianna was a children's guidance counselor for

almost a year before realising that it wasn't the right job for her. After a

brief stint at a PR agency, she later joined the team of MyOffice, a virtual

office company founded by her mother.

Around the same time, her family adopted four puppies, and she realised the

youngest dog Khal Drogo had super sensitive skin and would get an allergic

reaction no matter which pet product she used. Eventually she came across a

product all the way from Italy, but it was expensive. She realised the

ingredients were widely available in the Philippines, especially the active

ingredient Neem.

Partnering with a chemist, they began research to create a new, locally-made

product in late 2016. The first batch of

Fetch(https://www.lazada.com.ph/shop/fetch-1530193521/) was ready by March

2017. Besides being an effective and safe pet for skin/fur sensitive animals,

the product was also registered and approved by the Philippines' Food and Drug

Administration (FDA). Leveraging her success with Fetch, George also works with

local pet shelter "Pawssion Project" to donate proceeds from some of her sales

and even products to help with the upkeep of the local initiative.

To sign up as a seller, please visit http://lzd.co/LazadaPHSellerSignUp.

Lalilla Thamnita, 39 Years Old, Thailand

Lalilla started selling agricultural tools three years ago with her husband.

Back then, they were a fully offline store and Lalilla started to look at

selling online. She wanted the business to be modern and have the ability to

keep records of the prices, inventory etc. she didn't want a customer to walk

in and leave empty-handed.

Starting from scratch and within two months, she received her first order on

AggieHome(https://www.lazada.co.th/shop/aggiehome/) that she started on Lazada

Thailand, which was for a small item costing just B3,000. With the excitement

and encouragement of the first sale, Lalila focused on growing her online

store. When she found that such agricultural products were not easily

understood and common with consumers, hence she decided to educate her buyers

by uploading more videos and product information.

Although agricultural and equipment products are still her primary selling

items in her stores, she has also branched out to selling solar panels after

discovering that some villages in Thailand only had water but no electricity.

To sign up as a seller, please visit http://lzd.co/LazadaTHSellerSignUp.

INSPIRING SELLER AWARD

Hanna Suhardi, 29 years old, Indonesia

Hanna Suhardi, owner of the online store Shopping

Shoes(https://www.lazada.co.id/shop/shoppingshoes) on Lazada Indonesia, sells

women's shoes and men's bags. Collaborating with the residents of several

villages in West Java and Central Java that have special sewing convection

expertise, Hanna has managed to revive the tradition of tailoring villages

through continuous flow of orders.

In the beginning, due to limited capital for renting a place to sell, Hanna

decided to sell her products through the online marketplace. With her careful

reading of trends and understanding of basic designs, Hanna supports more than

100 tailors from two villages in West Java and one village in Central Java to

fulfill Shopping Shoes orders which can reach more than 9,000 orders per month.

Currently based in Jakarta, Hanna and her husband work with three local

communities to produce her products and enhance the communities' well-being.

To sign up as a seller, please visit http://lzd.co/LazadaIDSellerSignUp.

Annie Chia, 44 years old, Malaysia

In 2017, a portion of Pasar Perambang caught fire, and half of Annie's store,

NLWK Florist(https://www.lazada.com.my/shop/nlwk-florist/), that was passed

down from her parents was affected, losing almost everything including their

family's livelihood. She rented a temporary space for two years and upon

recommendation from her friend, she decided to explore new ways of selling

through digital means via online marketplace, eventually landing on Lazada

Malaysia.

It was a challenging phase for her as she wasn't familiar with technology. She

had to learn from scratch things she didn't do before, such as taking pictures,

editing and uploading them onto the digital platforms. Not only did she

research and learn from online community groups, whenever she came across

English terms she was did not understand, she would get her daughter to explain

to her as well. Every night, Annie will put in the time and effort to practice

her photo taking and editing skills and it took her at least a month before she

was confident of setting up her online store.

To sign up as a seller, please visit http://lzd.co/LazadaMYSellerSignUp.

SOURCE Lazada Group

Image Attachments Links:

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   Caption: Lazada Forward Women Awards 2021 Awards Recipients

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   Caption: Anne Ong, 56 years old, Singapore

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   Caption: Pham Thi Xuan Hong, 34 years old, Vietnam

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   Caption: Georgianna Carlos, 30 years old, Philippines

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   Caption: Lalilla Thamnita, 39 Years Old, Thailand

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   Caption: Hanna Suhardi, 29 years old, Indonesia

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   Caption: Annie Chia, 44 years old, Malaysia