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Honestbee appoints Ong Lay Ann as CEO; co-founder Jonathan Low resigns
SINGAPORE — Grocery and delivery start-up Honestbee announced it has appointed Ong Lay Ann as chief executive officer, with effect from 15 July.
Ong takes over from interim CEO Brian Koo, who is the chairman of the board, according to a statement from the company on Tuesday (30 July). Koo had replaced former chief and co-founder Joel Sng, who stepped down in May.
“Lay Ann is an exceptional business leader that has been brought on board due to his tremendous track record in turning ailing businesses around,” Koo said.
Ong has close to two decades of leadership experience in IT, commodities, real estate and infrastructure. He is a director at Weststar Industrial Limited and ISDN Investments, the investment and trading arm of SGX-listed ISDN Holdings Limited.
“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,” Ong said.
The company also announced that Jonathan Low, its co-founder and chief technology officer, had resigned on 11 July.
Low co-founded the company in July 2015 and led the engineering team in both Singapore and Taiwan, supporting the development of Honestbee’s products over the years, the company said.
“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,” Low said.
Honestbee had temporarily suspended its business operations in Malaysia, including grocery and food delivery services, from 22 July.
This comes after the company dropped food deliveries and suspended its laundry service in Singapore from 20 May, as part of an ongoing review of the business.
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