Kenyan buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) company Lipa Later has appointed Tom Gong, Co-Founder AliExpress and former Technical Program Manager for Google Wallet, as its new Chief Technology Officer.
Tom takes over his new role at Lipa Later effective March 2022.
Tom Gong, has a very impressive resume having worked as Co-Founder and CTO of AliExpress a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba the Chinese online giant. In 2012, Tom started Wanda eCommerce (Feifan) to optimise shopping mall operations through the use of internet technologies. Wanda is the largest commercial real estate company in the world.
Most recently, Tom Gong has been working at AllDragon that provides SaaS management software for over 500 shopping centres to better connect retailers and consumers. Tom has a Master’s of Computer Science and MBA, both from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
“Lipa Later is a fast growing, Buy Now Pay Later business based in East Africa and rapidly expanding across the African market. As the level of affluence grows across Sub Saharan Africa, consumers Lipa Later is positioned to be able to help consumers access different products today and pay in staggered payments across a number of months. With a population of more than 1 billion people, and over 50% of that number being under the age of 18, the market for Lipa Later is enormous and I am pretty excited at being able to help Lipa Later grow and build robust technology that can help us access all of these numbers ” said Tom Gong.
In January, Lipa Later raised US$12 million from a consortium of investors to help it increase coverage in existing markets and expand into new ones.
“We are very excited to have Tom Gong join Lipa Later as our Chief Technology Officer. As a world-renowned Tech heavyweight, we are very excited to have him as part of our team and have him lead us into creating robust systems that will enable us to grow Lipa Later across different African Markets. With Tom on board we have added yet another strong member into our team, with Africa as our focus” Eric Muli, the Co-Founder and CEO of Lipa Later said.
Lipa Later boasts a wide array of exclusive merchants and world-renowned brands such as Carrefour, Apple, Tecno, Samsung, Hotpoint Appliances just to mention a few. It currently operates in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria.
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