Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Gojek has appointed Sumit Rathor as the new general manager of Gojek Vietnam to succeed the Vietnam unit’s co-founder Duc Phung, who had held the general manager role since 2020.
Phung has chosen to seek new professional challenges, Gojek said in a statement.
Rathor joined Gojek in 2019 as regional head of Gojek Indonesia, managing Central and East Java Bali territories. He has more than 20 years of experience in strategy, operations and finance.
He relocated to Vietnam in 2022 to lead merchant, marketing and strategy functions.
Rathor, who had earlier taken various senior leadership positions in the manufacturing industry across multiple geographies, sees Vietnam as “an important and vibrant market for Gojek”.
Phung co-founded Gojek Vietnam in 2018 and was appointed to the general manager role in 2020 from his previous position as chief operating officer.
Before that, there had been several leadership reshuffles within the business.
In September 2019, when the unit was named Go-Viet, Christy Le left the firm after only five months acting as its general manager. Her predecessor, Duc Nguyen, had stepped down in March 2019.
Gojek said it has garnered more than 200,000 drivers and tens of thousands of food merchants in Vietnam.
Starting out with bike transport, the company added a food delivery service in 2019 and car rides in 2021. In 2020, DealStreetAsia reported that Gojek acquired Vietnam-based payments startup WePay Payment Services from local media firm VCCorp.
Gojek’s competitors in Vietnam have also witnessed multiple changes in their leadership teams.
In December 2022, Grab announced Alejandro Osorio as managing director of Grab Vietnam. In March 2022, Nguyen Thai Hai Van, who had been appointed as country managing director for Vietnam at Grab in January 2020, stepped down to pursue “a new career opportunity”. Grab’s Jerry Lim had taken the same responsibility before Van.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s homegrown app Be Group also appointed Vu Hoang Yen as CEO in 2021, taking over Nguyen Hoang Phuong. The company’s first CEO was Tran Thanh Hai.
Last September, Be Group ramped up its war chest with a loan facility of $60 million from Deutsche Bank, which can be upsized up to $100 million. DealStreetAsia also reported that Be was looking to raise at least $100 million in an equity funding round to ready itself in the expansion game.