New honestbee CEO's mandate: "Restructure the business, build employee morale"

Food and grocery service provider, honestbee has appointed Lay Ann Ong (pictured below) as CEO, effective 15 July 2019. He takes over from Brian Koo, interim CEO of honestbee and Chairman of the Board.

Per the statement by the Chairman, the new CEO has been tasked with restructuring the business as well as building employee morale. Koo said: "Lay Ann is an exceptional business leader that has been brought on board due to his tremendous track record in turning ailing businesses around.

"We have confidence that Lay Ann has what it takes to restructure the business, build consumer confidence and employee morale, repair relationships and bring the brand to greater heights."

Lay Ann brings with him close to two decades of leadership experience in IT, commodities, real estate and infrastructure. He currently holds directorships positions at Weststar Industrial Limited, an ASX-listed company, and ISDN Investments, the investment and trading arm of ISDN Holdings Limited.

Most recently, he has been credited with turning around Perth Precast, which he salvaged from judicial management. He acquired the assets of Perth Precast via Precast Australia and listed Precast Australia on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) via a reverse takeover into Weststar Industrial Limited.

Lay Ann commented: "It is a huge privilege to lead honestbee - a true-blue local start-up full of potential and brilliant talent. While the company has faced recent setbacks, I believe that there are still immense opportunities to be met. Our focus will be to bring value to our customers, shareholders and partners."

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In the meantime, honestbee has also announced the resignation of Co-Founder and CTO, Jonathan Low, as of 11 July 2019. Jonathan co-founded the company in July 2015, and has led the engineering team in Singapore and Taiwan, supporting the development of honestbee’s products over the years.

He said: "It is my privilege to have worked with some of the best talent during my time here. The decision to leave honestbee was made before Lay Ann had come on board. However, I have full confidence that Lay Ann will help honestbee enter its next phase and recover from its recent setbacks."

Photo / honestbee