Is it time for Ninja Van to quit e-commerce logistics?

PRICE wars and the grip of J&T Express and Sea’s SPX are pushing the region’s third-party logistics (3PL) players to the sidelines. Ninja Van is no exception.

Earlier this month, the Singapore-headquartered company announced that it would cease all express delivery services in Vietnam, including B2C and B2B operations.

After laying off 12 per cent of its employees in the city-state in August, Ninja Van is reportedly in talks to raise US$80 million. The funding round, which will be led by existing investors B Capital and Monk’s Hill Ventures, is expected to halve the firm’s valuation to about US$1 billion.

Ninja Van was valued at some US$2.1 billion in 2021, according to data from Alternatives.pe. A Bloomberg report said that the company was valued at well beyond US$1 billion after a series E round that year.

An executive of an Indonesian logistics firm, who spoke to Tech in Asia on condition of anonymity, shares that Ninja Van has been losing ground in e-commerce deliveries across the region.

Initially, the company still got a fair share of shipments from TikTok Shop. But since early 2025, J&T has been dominating deliveries on the social commerce platform, the executive added.

Ninja Van has, in fact, shifted its focus to B2B and cold-chain logistics since 2024, though its success in these areas remains unclear.

During a press briefing held in April of that year, CEO Lai Chang Wen admitted that the company’s “mistake” was viewing e-commerce as “the only path”.

The recent job cuts in Singapore and the retreat from Vietnam are part of Ninja Van’s “restructuring plan”. However, the bigger test is whether the firm can continue offering e-commerce deliveries while its side bets keep the IPO dream alive.

Tech in Asia reached out to Ninja Van, B Capital, and Monk’s Hill Ventures for this story but did not receive any responses.

Can a late B2B and cold-chain pivot work?

Renewed interest in Ninja Van from B Capital and Monk’s Hill stems from the company’s potential in B2B and cold-chain logistics, the Indonesian logistics firm executive believes.

In January 2025, Lai told Tech in Asia that entering both sectors would be a “significant contributor” to Ninja Van’s profitability in the near future.

As he drummed up optimism in both business segments, Lai also mentioned that margins in them were around 3x higher than in ecommerce. The CEO also said that he expected the company to achieve Ebitda breakeven by June.

Still, profitability in today’s climate is a tall order. To achieve it, Ninja Van’s pivot needs to be expedited.

According to an ex-employee, who worked at the company for over five years, e-commerce makes up a “very large” share of its revenue.

If margins for e-commerce logistics cannot support the volumes and operational costs, “other business units can be very profitable and high-margin, but it’s not going to cover that hole”, the ex-employee explained.

They added that Ninja Van’s cross-border logistics business, which includes door-to-door delivery for both customers and enterprises, was making “good margins” as at 2024. It is not clear how the segment has performed so far this year.

The company’s B2B services support restocking with real-time parcel tracking, serving clients such as health and beauty retailer Watsons, shoe brand Skechers, and stationery manufacturer Faber-Castell.

Meanwhile, its clients in cold chain logistics include food company Gourmet Food Holdings, pet meal brand Omakase, and baby meal delivery service Little Barn.

Linh Phan, former chief strategy officer at B2B logistics firm Zyllem, believes Ninja Van’s B2C experience could provide an advantage in this strategy shift, having been “exposed to a wide range of use cases”.

However, cold chain logistics requires specialised set-ups such as cold boxes and trucks with real-time temperature monitoring, demanding heavy investment.

It’s also highly regulated, Phan pointed out. In pharmaceutical distribution, a service Ninja Van offers, medicines or vaccines must be kept within strict temperature ranges. Failure to do so can void the delivery.

The Indonesian logistics firm executive argues that Ninja Van is entering the B2B space “a bit late”, given how quickly it lost ground in ecommerce. Plus, the segment is already crowded with multinational incumbents such as FedEx and DHL.

They note that serving enterprise clients is very different from courting e-commerce sellers. B2B also comes with a “longer sales cycle” tied to contracts, unlike in B2C, where sales flow continuously with deliveries.

Rivals such as Paxel, Anteraja, and Fresh Factory have already built cold-chain businesses over the past two to three years, on top of competition from legacy players.

Reining in costs

To date, Ninja Van has raised a total of US$1 billion in disclosed funding. While it does not have the deep pockets of J&T, which has raised US$5 billion, it’s still a major VC-backed player.

As at June 2024, Ninja Van had US$94 million in cash, giving the company roughly a year of runway, according to its financials.

Assuming cash flow used in operations has remained constant, the additional US$80 million in capital could extend its runway by close to another year and provide more breathing room to support its transition to B2B and cold chain.

In an internal town hall following the July 2024 layoffs, many employees pushed for an internal evaluation and post-mortem to assess what went wrong and how to fix it.

Management, however, “glossed over the questions”, said a former staff member who worked at Ninja Van for over three years.

There was also a lack of focus on optimising the cost structure, which made the company resort to retrenchments, according to the ex-employee mentioned previously.

Ninja Van’s cost per parcel, for instance, was “very high” compared to J&T’s, with tech costs being one of the big components, the ex-employee said.

Its recent layoffs appear to be in line with this. The cuts affected tech and IT, as well as the operations department in Singapore – all of which were part of the company’s regional team. Of a few dozen employees in its tech and IT team in the city-state, only a handful remain.

The former staff member, who worked at Ninja Van for over three years, felt the firm could have moved faster, as Sea blitzscaled SPX Express. The latter, after all, had been “very public” about its plan to use the logistics arm to support the fulfilment of its own ecommerce orders.

“That should have been a warning sign for Ninja Van to look at building something else for the business, [but] I don’t think they started till much later,” the former staff member added.

Leaving e-commerce for good?

In South-east Asia, consumers have been spoilt by free delivery and ultra-fast shipping. This makes it “almost impossible” for smaller logistics players to compete in the e-commerce sector, according to Zyllem’s Phan.

“During peak times, only the big players have enough staff and fleet capacity,” he said.

Regulations could put an end to this price war. In Indonesia, Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs Meutya Hafid has issued a regulation giving her the authority to impose lower tariff limits for logistics shipping costs. But so far, it seems no such limits have been set.

Phan thinks Shopee’s – and by extension SPX Express’ – ability to localise its business, having invested in local talent and execution, has been the key to the firm’s dominance across the region.

The Indonesian logistics firm executive believes Ninja Van will eventually exit e-commerce logistics, saying that that while B2B and cold-chain markets still offer room for new players, the company must move fast to build internal capabilities.

To pull this off, an M&A could be a solution. This way, Ninja Van won’t need to build infrastructure from scratch.

Either way, success on these fronts could weigh on the company’s IPO plan, with investors closely watching whether its transformation can deliver both profitability and scale.

But while some see B2B as a necessary pivot, others point out that e-commerce logistics can still be viable.

“J&T has shown that it is possible to run ecommerce logistics at scale [and] with profitability,” explained the ex-employee who worked at Ninja Van for over five years. “It’s up to the various players to replicate.”

However, J&T itself has an edge from its long-standing partnership with Oppo, which gave it massive shipment volumes early on. Its co-founders include Jet Lee, a former Oppo executive, and Tony Chen, who is still the smartphone company’s CEO.

“At the end of the day, if the company focuses on profitability and figures out how to optimise operations, then it would still be able to chug along – just not at (its previous) valuation,” the ex-employee added. TECH IN ASIA