GoJek loses its 2nd Vietnam CEO in 5 months – what went wrong?

A few friends of ours were approached by GoJek headhunters last year to be country CEOs, in its regional expansion. The ones we know all turned it down.

I asked one of them, whom I was quite close with, why. He said: “it is an impossible job. Impossible to win.”

In March this year, GoJek’s Vietnam operations – Go-Viet – lost its CEO and Chief Growth Officer in a leadership shake-up.

We heard rumours about 2 months ago that the newly appointed Go-Viet CEO, Christy Le, would not last long. And the rumours were proven to be true as of today. Go-Viet and Christy Le both confirmed the latter’s departure.

We did a full analysis about the first shake-up – I think the environment and market conditions have not changed much since.

The news coincided with a research released by ABI research that Go-Viet only occupies about 10.2% of Vietnam’s ride-hailing market, versus Grab’s 72.9%.

Many of you would remember, the first of our 10 predictions for Southeast Asia this year was “GoJek’s traction outside Indonesia slow”.

There is an interesting article by Jon Moed on the challenges of localisation in Southeast Asia, which highlights the exact issues Go-Viet was facing.

It is indeed an impossible job being the CEO of Go-Viet.