From New Territories to New Frontiers

By the early 2000s, Shing Chow seemed to be on a traditional path. He had hustled his way from a humble upbringing in Hong Kong’s New Territories to earn a degree from Stanford University, where he studied economics after a brief detour in physics.

After graduation, Chow returned to Hong Kong and took a coveted job in management consulting — the stable, high‑performing path his family had hoped for.

But three years in, something felt missing.

“I became bored,” Chow said. “I started playing Texas Hold’em online and realized I had a knack for it. So I quit my job and started playing poker full-time.”

That decision raised eyebrows. Friends and family questioned whether he was wasting his Stanford degree and promising career. But Chow approached poker analytically and treated it like a profession.

For four years, he barely broke even, but persistence eventually paid off. By 2009, he had achieved financial freedom.

But victory soon felt hollow. “If you win, someone else has to lose. I didn’t want to spend my life that way,” he said.

Chow cashed in his chips for good in 2009. He tried other ventures but nothing clicked. He wanted purpose, not just profit.

A Moving Day Revelation

In 2013, while moving apartments, Chow faced a surprisingly archaic process. Endless dispatcher calls, opaque pricing, drivers wasting hours idly, while customers wasted hours waiting.

The hassle stuck with him. Moving boxes across town shouldn’t be this hard, with too many middlemen and too little transparency. Somewhere, he thought, there had to be a smarter way to match people who needed something moved or delivered with drivers who had a car or van.

Around the same time, Uber was transforming personal mobility in the U.S., using GPS and mobile tech to link drivers and passengers with a tap. Chow saw a parallel: if tech could streamline how people moved, why not how goods moved, too?

“I was impressed by [Uber’s] concept,” he said. “It was so cool to link up a driver and a passenger through an app, so I decided to explore a similar program in Asia.”

But cargo presented unique challenges—variable vehicle sizes, different licensing requirements, and more complex pricing based on distance and cargo type. No one had cracked the code for on-demand logistics the way Uber had for passengers.

Chow approached this new venture with the same mental framework that had made him a poker champion: confidence without delusion.

He had no background in tech or logistics – “I didn’t have IT resources or connections to the online industry,” he recalls – but that didn’t stop him. “Whenever someone tells me I can’t do something, I just want to have a go at it,” he said. “Being an entrepreneur means knowing you want to build something, regardless of what you have. People who think too much about what they lack end up not doing anything. Sometimes prior experience doesn’t matter; it’s about learning on the job.”

_{“Whenever someone tells me I can’t do something, I just want to have a go at it.”}

Shing Chow

In late 2013, Chow assembled a tiny team and bootstrapped the first version of Lalamove (then called EasyVan) in just eight weeks.

The concept was elegantly simple: a smartphone app that uses GPS to instantly match users who need delivery or moving services with nearby van drivers. What Uber did for passengers, Lalamove would do for cargo – bringing speed, transparency, and reliability to a clunky system.

Asset-light from day one, Lalamove owned no vehicles or warehouses. The marketplace model scaled fast. As more users joined the platform, more drivers signed up to earn extra income; with more drivers available, deliveries became faster and cheaper for users. This virtuous cycle of supply and demand created powerful network effects that entrenched Lalamove in its markets.

With technology and user experience at the core, Chow’s small team could roll out to new cities in weeks, something legacy couriers couldn’t dream of. The momentum was undeniable, and Chow doubled down, betting everything on Lalamove’s vision to transform how goods move through cities.

Two Markets, One Vision

One year in, Chow made a bold strategic bet: entering both China and Southeast Asia simultaneously.

In 2014, rather than focusing on one region, he essentially split his startup into two.

“We chopped the company in half,” he said of the decision. “One team focused on Southeast Asia, and one team focused on the Chinese mainland. You can’t go into those markets half-heartedly.”

It was an aggressive strategy – two different brands, teams, and playbooks, pursuing one overarching vision of on-demand delivery.

^{“We chopped the company in half. One team focused on Southeast Asia, and one team focused on the Chinese mainland. You can’t go into those markets half-heartedly.”}

Shing Chow

In China, the service launched under a new name: Huolala (a Mandarin pun meaning “freight pulling”). The opportunity was enormous.

China had an estimated 20 million cargo vans – many underutilized – compared to about 1.35 million taxis. If Uber could double the utilization of taxis via an app, Chow reasoned, digitizing freight could yield even greater gains.

But China was also intensely competitive. To crack the market, Huolala adopted a scrappy, boots-on-the-ground approach – canvassing industrial parks, construction sites, and truck stops to recruit drivers. Early stunts, like an executive dancing on two trucks in a viral video, helped build buzz. More importantly, Chow wasn’t afraid to spend aggressively, offering sign-up bonuses and low prices to capture users.

“In 2015, we [were] doing crazy subsidy spending – at one point we nearly ran out of money,” Chow said. But the gamble worked. By early 2015, Huolala’s growth in China was skyrocketing, and the startup landed a US$10 million pre-Series A investment to fuel the expansion.

Over the next seven years, Huolala expanded from its launch cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen to over 350 cities across China, amassing over two million drivers and capturing an estimated 54% share of China’s $153 billion intra-city freight market.

Expansion in Southeast Asia, under the original Lalamove brand, required a different playbook. Rather than blitzscale with subsidies, the team adopted a market-by-market approach that balanced speed with cultural nuance.

They started in familiar territory – launching in Singapore and Bangkok in 2014 – then expanded to the Philippines, Vietnam, and beyond over the next few years. Growth was steadier and more research-driven.

Each market had its quirks: Thai customers valued politeness and respect; Hong Kongers prized speed above all; Singaporeans cared about getting the best price; in Manila, safety and trust were the top concerns.

The company listened and adapted, learning to localize its product and operations – from enabling motorbike deliveries to weave through Bangkok’s traffic jams, to tweaking pricing in Singapore’s competitive landscape, to overhauling driver background checks and customer support in the Philippines. That local sensitivity became a competitive advantage.

City by city, Lalamove earned trust by proving it understood local needs.

Through these parallel expansions, Chow also learned a valuable lesson in building his team. As Lalamove grew from a scrappy dozen employees to hundreds and then thousands, he became intensely focused on maintaining a strong team culture.

He often says he values passion over pedigrees when hiring. “I probably would not hire someone who never downloaded the app prior to the interview,” he said. The candidate had to genuinely believe in Lalamove’s mission, not just have a great résumé.

As the company’s headcount grew, Chow also emphasized the outsized importance of the founding team’s vision. “The ceiling of the company is determined by the potential of the founding team,” he likes to say. “You need to believe in the people running the company, not necessarily like them.” In other words, it’s okay to have disagreements or differing styles, as long as everyone is united by conviction in the mission and in each other’s commitment.

This philosophy extended to Lalamove’s way of working. Startups operate on a far faster timescale than established businesses, and Chow embraced that reality. “Things change quickly for a startup. You don’t plan for years — you plan a few months ahead,” he said.

Beyond Growth: Building for the Long Game

By the early 2020s, Lalamove had become a global logistics force. But Chow was already looking beyond hypergrowth.

The former poker pro who once measured success only by the size of the pot had evolved into a CEO who measured success in broader terms: sustainability, impact, shared value.

A major milestone in this journey was the publication of Lalamove’s 2024 Sustainability Report, which was the company’s first voluntary climate-related disclosure under IFRS S2 standards. While such comprehensive reporting remains rare among private tech unicorns, Lalamove saw it as essential for responsible growth and setting a leading example in the logistics sector.

“We have always been focused on fostering a more sustainable future wherever we operate,” said Bill Li, Lalamove’s Director of Corporate Affairs. “This step is not just about compliance – it’s about building resilience, fostering trust, and creating value for our customers, partners, and the communities we serve.”

Beyond words, the report detailed concrete progress. In China, for example, Huolala accelerated the adoption of New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) – electric vans and trucks – raising NEV usage from about 50% of all van orders in 2023 to roughly 60% in 2024. The company also deepened partnerships with carmakers to expand EV access to drivers and invested in expanding charging infrastructure.

Lalamove’s sustainability vision extends beyond its own operations. In late 2024, the company participated in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), engaging with global leaders on climate action. It’s also exploring collaborations with organizations like the UN to tackle climate challenges on a larger scale.

Internally, Lalamove has bolstered its governance, forming dedicated teams to monitor ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) goals. This is all part of what Chow sees as “playing the long game” – ensuring Lalamove not only grows fast but grows right.

New Frontiers

By the early 2020s, Lalamove’s business fundamentals were undeniably robust. The company had raised nearly US$2.3 billion across eight funding rounds, including from HSG, and in 2022, it turned profitable – a rarity in a sector where profitability often lags scale.

Expansion remains a priority. In 2024, the company pushed into two of its most ambitious markets yet: Japan and Turkey.

The August 2024 Tokyo launch marked Lalamove’s entry into Japan, one of the world’s most sophisticated logistics markets. Three months later, Lalamove launched in Istanbul, its 13th market globally and a key bridge into the EMEA region. Turkey offered both a strategic gateway and a thriving market of its own, with over three million SMEs and surging e-commerce demand.

In May 2025, the company entered the UAE (Dubai and Sharjah), targeting high-growth regions where urbanization and digital commerce are booming, and where the orange Lalamove vans can become as familiar a sight as they are in Hong Kong or Singapore.

As of October 2025, Lalamove operates in 14 markets worldwide. In the first half of 2025, it facilitated over 455 million delivery orders globally, with a gross transaction value reaching US$5.96 billion. Its service now ranges from motorcycle couriers zipping through Dhaka to nine-ton trucks hauling pallets in Guangzhou, and they have even experimented with drone deliveries in Hong Kong to explore future tech.

In parts of Southeast Asia, Lalamove has expanded beyond packages into ride-hailing, leveraging its driver network during off-peak delivery hours. In Malaysia, for example, Lalamove rolled out a pilot program, marking its first step toward a broader mobility-as-a-service model.

Each new market brings its own challenges – local regulations, entrenched competitors, the task of building a two-sided network from scratch. Yet, Lalamove’s playbook of data-driven iteration and local empowerment is translating well. The company invests significantly in training and incentivizing its driver-partners in new cities and often partners with local organizations to navigate regulatory and cultural hurdles.

For Lalamove, every city launch is both a calculated risk and a learning opportunity – much like every hand in a poker game can inform the next.

The Unfinished Game

Chow’s journey began not in a tech hub, but in a blue-collar district of Hong Kong, far from where startups typically sprout. He often notes how one success can change a community’s mindset. “Once you have someone build a successful tech company in Hong Kong,” he said, “others will think it’s possible.”

With Lalamove’s rise, Chow proved that Hong Kong startups can go global by solving local challenges with world-class execution.

These days, he speaks on international stages about innovation and AI in logistics, but remains humble and aware that the game isn’t over.

In 2009, at the peak of his poker career, Chow walked away because he realized he could only make “marginal improvements” if he continued. He chose to quit while ahead and seek a new challenge. Now, with Lalamove’s dominance, he applies the same discipline and humility.

Competition in logistics tech is fierce. Rival platforms – from regional players to well-funded global companies – are constantly emerging, armed with the latest tech. To stay ahead, Lalamove will need to continue innovating and adapting without compromising the trust of its users, drivers, and regulators.

Chow is the first to admit that luck played a part – catching the mobile internet wave and entering emerging markets at just the right moment. “In the short run, luck matters,” he said. “But in the long run, if you consistently make the right decisions, you will win.”

His plan is to keep making those right decisions. That means investing in people, technology, and trust, even at the expense of short-term gains. “In a startup, you can’t hide behind others,” he said. “If you do it right, you can put a dent in the universe.”

From one city to a global footprint, from a secret poker bankroll to a multi-billion dollar unicorn, Lalamove’s story reads like a startup legend. But for Shing Chow, it’s simply the opening chapters.

The cards are still being dealt, and he’s still at the table – only now, he isn’t playing to beat the house. He’s building a platform where everyone has a seat at the table. Where drivers in Bangkok, small business owners in Manila, and students moving dorms in Singapore can all share in the win.

And if there’s one lesson from his poker days that still applies, it’s this: in the long run, smart decisions win. Chow is still making them, one move at a time.