17LIVE Group announced a new management team in response to market changes and expansion. The group’s current Group Chief Operating Officer, Alex Lien, has been promoted to Group Chief Executive Officer of 17LIVE Group. Kenta Masuda, the Financial Director for the Japanese region, will take over as the Group Chief Financial Officer. The company is firmly established in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, with a global presence in its sights.
The board stated that Alex Lien has actively enhanced collaboration among the group’s regions with a visionary outlook and solid plan since he took on the role of Group COO in September 2022. Lien has held management positions in various Fortune 500 companies including Starbucks with hands-on experience in global operations, and has a unique specialty in gaming industry accumulated through his tenure at Electronic Arts, a leading gaming operator in the market. In the past six months, Lien has taken active initiatives in response to rapid market changes and conditions, and has successfully driven 17LIVE’s overall stability in performance and significant growth in the past six months, particularly with remarkable profitability despite the global market turbulence. Leveraging on Lien’s experience and leadership, 17LIVE team’s close collaboration has realized the company’s vision, operational strategy, and execution capability, resulting in not only stability but also fruitful outcomes.
At the same time, Kenta Masuda, former CFO of 17LIVE Japan Inc., was appointed as Group CFO of the group. Masuda is a certified public accountant in Japan, and was a senior member of the audit team in Deloitte Japan and head of FP&A and Treasury in Walmart Japan. Masuda has been overseeing the financial affairs of 17LIVE Japan Inc. and is familiar with the operations of the group at HQ level while 17LIVE’s business has been primarily operated under 17LIVE Japan.
The board expressed their gratitude to the newly appointed Group CEO Alex Lien, Group CTO Jing Shen Ng, Group CFO Kenta Masuda, and members from different regions around the world for their hard work. They believe that, with the new management team with Alex Lien, Jing Shen Ng, and Kenta Masuda the Group will strive for larger and better market prospects.
Alex Lien pointed out that he had been with the company for over four years, and he was extremely grateful for the continued trust and recognition from the board of directors. He also thanked the teams from various regions for their unwavering support, which enabled him to successfully promote new strategies and plans from a single market in Taiwan to cross-regional integration. Currently, the global economic environment is even more challenging, and crises are often the turning point for the better. The COVID-19 pandemic is driving change around the world, and live streaming has become part of daily life. In the future, 17LIVE expects that its platform will connect everyone with live streaming technology, and expand it from entertainment to various life experiences.
Lien said that in the future, 17LIVE Group will continue to focus on its core business of live streaming technology and lay more emphasis on integrating its services. Based on past operational experience and user feedback, the Group will accelerate its operational capabilities through three directions: V-LIVER, interactive games during live streaming, and live e-commerce, to create a new live streaming experience and accelerate the realization of the 17LIVE Group’s vision – Life takes place in real-time connections. 17LIVE empowers authentic expressions that build borderless human connections and captures these irreversible moments through live technology.
Lien also emphasized that in the process of promoting globalization combined with localization, the team discovered that V-LIVER can combine virtual and real interactions to present a thriving community. Currently, 17LIVE is seeking partners to solve many creative authorization issues, and provide a bigger and better stage for aspiring live streamers who want to combine virtual and real interactions. In addition, since the new features of playing games and watching live streams in live rooms were well-received by users in Taiwan market in 2022, these features have also been increasingly well-received in Japan, the United States, and Southeast Asia. Currently, 17LIVE platform has games such as “Fruit Farm” and “Onmyoji”, and new games will be launched in the second quarter of this year, creating a completely new interactive experience.
In addition to the core live streaming business, the Group had significant performance in e-commerce layout last year; the Japan HandsUP team achieved a new milestone in live e-commerce and sold three cars online in one hour through collaboration with a Korean brand, setting a precedent in Japanese industry, and growing the market performance by approximately 125% compared to last year. 17LIVE Taiwan’s e-commerce team, OrderPally, reached potential customers from different fields through strategic alliances, with performance growing by 11% compared to last year. Live streaming sections were established in the 17LIVE app to cultivate streamers to sell products through live streams, contributing to a new revenue source. In the future, 17LIVE plans to increase its presence in Southeast Asia and collaborate with more local brands, providing more possibilities for cross-border e-commerce cooperation.