Shopee completely withdraws from the Argentine market

Shopee, an e-commerce platform under Sea, notified employees that it will close local businesses in Chile, Colombia and Mexico (retain cross-border businesses) and completely withdraw from the Argentine market (both local and cross-border businesses will be closed).

People familiar with the matter said that Shopee will cut most of its teams in Chile, Colombia and Mexico and lay off dozens of employees. At the same time, Shopee's operations in Brazil will not be affected.

Shopee CEO Chris Feng said in an internal email that "given the current heightened macroeconomic uncertainties, the company needs to focus its resources on its core business and has decided to focus on cross-border business in Mexico, Colombia and Chile."

Another source revealed that Sea has issued an internal directive to Shopee's management to achieve profitability in major Southeast Asian markets by 2023. This indicates that Shopee will continue to focus on the Southeast Asian market while reducing its business in South America.

It is worth mentioning that in March this year, Shopee announced the closure of its cross-border business in India and France. In June this year, Shopee laid off employees in the e-commerce and food delivery departments in Southeast Asia and Latin America. In Europe, Shopee also closed its early pilot in Spain.

In addition, sources said that Southeast Asian e-commerce giant Shopee has canceled dozens of offers in the past two weeks. According to relevant media reports, Shopee has recently canceled offers on a large scale, and many prospective employees have had their contracts terminated when they were about to start work, mainly including positions set up by Shopee in Singapore.

A spokesperson for Shopee's parent company Donghai Group confirmed that Shopee had canceled some offers, but declined to disclose the exact number. The spokesperson said: "Due to adjustments to the recruitment plans of some technical teams, some positions at Shopee are no longer valid. We are working closely to provide support to those affected."

It is reported that Donghai Group has cut some positions in its gaming division Garena. Employees of Garena's game live broadcast and community app Booyah! were told that they would be fired and the app would no longer be updated, which means that 30 to 40 people were laid off.

Sea Labs, the development arm of Donghai Group, is shutting down some of its largest experimental projects and laying off employees, including blockchain and public cloud projects, according to people familiar with the matter.