17LIVE Announces Alex Lien Promoted to Global CEO; To Focus on V-LIVER, Interactive Games, and Live E-commerce

TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 31, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- 17LIVE Group recently announced the formation of a new management team, in response to market changes and expansion. The group's current Global Chief Operating Officer, Alex Lien, has been promoted to Global Chief Executive Officer of 17LIVE Group, and Kenta Masuda, the Financial Director for the Japanese region, will take over as Global Chief Financial Officer. The company is now firmly established in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, with a global presence in its sights.

The board stated that Alex Lien has enhanced collaboration among the group's regions with a visionary outlook and solid plan since becoming the group's 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 the gaming industry from his tenure at Electronic Arts. Over the past six months, Lien has successfully driven 17LIVE's overall stability in performance and growth, particularly in profitability, despite global market turbulence.

At the same time, Kenta Masuda, former CFO of 17LIVE Japan Inc., has been appointed Global 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 overseen the financial affairs of 17LIVE Japan Inc. and is familiar with the operations of the group at HQ level, as 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 others from different regions around the world for their hard work. The board believes that, with the new management team of 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 grateful for the continued trust and recognition from the board. 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, but crises are often turning points for the better. In the future, 17LIVE expects that its platform will connect everyone with live-streaming technology, and expand this from entertainment to various life experiences.

According to Lien, 17LIVE Group will continue to focus on its core business of live-streaming technology and place more emphasis on integrating its services. Based on past experience and user feedback, the Group will accelerate its operational capabilities in V-LIVER; interactive games during live-streaming; and live e-commerce; to create a new live-streaming experience that more fully realizes 17LIVE Group's vision— "Life takes place in real-time connections."

Lien also stated that while promoting globalization combined with localization, the team discovered that V-LIVER can combine virtual and real interactions to foster 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 the Taiwan market in 2022, these features are being expanded to other markets. Currently, 17LIVE platform has games such as "Fruit Farm" and "Onmyoji", and new games will be launched this year to create a completely new interactive experience.

17LIVE also had significant achievements in e-commerce last year. The Japan HandsUP team, for example, sold three cars online in one hour through collaboration with a Korean brand, setting a precedent in Japanese industry, and growing market performance by approximately 125 percent over last year. 17LIVE Taiwan's e-commerce team, OrderPally, reached potential customers through strategic alliances, with performance growing by 11 per event over last year. And 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.

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SOURCE 17LIVE