Former Lazada CEO Ray Alimurung Joins Kaya Founders as General Partner

Lazada's former chairman and CEO Ray Alimurung has officially joined early-stage investment firm Kaya Founders as a general partner. Alimurung, who led Lazada’s expansion in the Philippines as CEO from 2018 to 2022, will now help lead Kaya Founders’ mission to find and fund tech startups with the potential to shape Filipino industries. In his new role, Alimurung will preside over pre-seed investments under Kaya's upcoming Zero to One Fund.

Kaya Founders’ portfolio includes prominent and up-and-coming startups in the Philippines. Some of these include established startups like Etaily, Kraver’s Kanteen, PayMongo, and Peddlr and newer startups like Kindred and Uwi.

“With [Ray Alimurung] and Paulo Campos, former head of Zalora Philippines, as Kaya Founders’ top leaders, we hope to support many startup founders build great local companies,” said Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng, general partner at Kaya Founders, in a Facebook post. 

“As the CEOs of Lazada and Zalora respectively in the Philippines over the past years, Ray and I have been on the frontlines of the e-commerce and digital adoption boom in the country. It is an absolute honor and pleasure to be able to welcome Ray as a GP at Kaya Founders to further our common mission to back and support founders in the Philippines looking to build transformative and impactful technology businesses," said Paulo Campos in a statement.

"Founders in the Kaya ecosystem will benefit tremendously from his depth of experience as an entrepreneur, tremendous business acumen, and proven track record in building and scaling technology businesses." 

Kaya Founders is now led by Zalora Philippines co-founder and former CEO Paulo Campos as managing general partner; senior vice president of JG Summit Holdings Inc. and president of Summit Media Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng as a general partner, and Ray Alimurung as a general partner. Locad co-founder Constantin Robertz is Kaya's senior advisor. The four are veteran entrepreneurs and angel investors in the Philippine ecosystem, with decades of experience in e-commerce, digital media, and logistics.

Prior to leading Lazada’s Philippine expansion, Alimurung worked with Amazon and Rocket Internet. Outside of the Philippines, Alimurung is a prominent investor in Southeast Asian early-stage tech startups looking to enter the Philippine market. 

Esquire Philippines is published by Summit Media, a company owned and managed by the Gokongwei family, who also controls JG Summit Holdings.