2023 JUDGE’S PROFILE

Deborah Chong

Global eCommerce Director
Danone

Deborah Chong is the Global ECommerce Director at Danone, accelerating the eCommerce growth for all categories Specialised Nutrition, Waters, Dairy and Plant-based. She has been with the company for over two years and has over total 10 years’ experience within the marketing and eCommerce in FMCG industry with multiples countries international relocation.

Chong and her team collaborated closely with Grab HQ to activate SEA JBP for One-Danone, resulting in the inaugural regional launch in February 2023 across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore in featuring Specialized Nutrition, Water, and Plant-based Categories. By tapping into the vast user base of Grab’s SuperrAPP, which enables millions of people across Southeast Asia to discover, shop, eat, ride, pay, and more every day, this joint-partnership aims to leverage authentic moments to engage and connect with consumers.

In 2022 and 2021, Chong and her team worked with Shopee to launch its first ever Regional Brand Day, ‘Our Health, My Choice’ in 2021 and ‘Let Wellness Take Flight’ in 2022 across 6 Markets in SEA. Prioritizing consumers’ health is crucial for us and we believe this regional campaign lets us show our care and appreciation for our consumers by providing convenient access to our products.

In August 2021, Chong supported the Indonesia eCommerce Team lead by Audya Bisma, Head of eCommerce Indonesia Specialised Nutrition, in driving the initiative was to delivered a social impact through SGM Eksplor x Lazada Healthier Mission Campaign. The campaign was a massive success and achieved all of the business key metrics with magnificent uplift. In addition, a part of the GMV were donated to improve the nutritional condition of 500 children from 500 families in East Nusa Tenggara, a province which has the highest rate of malnutrition children in Indonesia.

Chong honed much of her skills in the CPG space with the likes of the Kraft Heinz company where she was the GM of ECommerce, Greater China and Head of eCommerce Asia. During her time with Kraft Heinz, she was leading digital transformation of Kraft Heinz’s China eCommerce strategy through direct P&L ownership, reshaping business model, eRTM, change and crisis management driving back to growth. Meanwhile, with her Asia remit, she was helping to build up eCommerce structure, go-to-market strategy, brand and customer roadmap, partnership and P&L management.

She also has much experience helping companies rebuild and reshape their eCommerce business models with P&L turnaround, having led a team of over 50 across sales, EC-marketing, supply chain, finance, operation during her Kraft Heinz days. Her time at Reckitt also saw her lead the regional eCommerce business acceleration across Southeast Asia, part of SEA Leadership team. Particularly she led business across Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, while managing a team of seven.

In conclusion, Chong is a highly respected passionate, eCommerce senior leader who has made a significant contribution to the companies with incremental business growth and value she’s worked with. Her focus on innovation, agility, and customer-centricity and partnership driven has propelled her to excel in the eCommerce space.