Canva appoints ex-Bukalapak CEO to lead its South-east Asia operation

[SINGAPORE] South-east Asia is quickly becoming a key market for the Australia-based design platform Canva, which recently appointed Indonesian tech industry veteran Willix Halim to lead its growing operations in the region.

Halim, the co-founder and former CEO of e-commerce platform Bukalapak, is expected to translate his knowledge of the region into further growth for Canva in his role as South-east Asia CEO.

He was advising Canva for about a year before joining the company in a full-time capacity about three months ago. 

Some areas where he is expected to provide further support include market localisation strategies for Canva and his expertise on a mobile-first mentality in South-east Asia. 

Halim told The Business Times: “In e-commerce, and with all the industries, the mobile app-first mentality has to apply in South-east Asia. The replication of that from e-commerce into software-as-a-service applications is similar, and Android and iOS are a big part of users in developing markets.”

According to Canva, one in two presentations in South-east Asia starts on mobile; in Indonesia, the figure is two in three, and in the Philippines, three in five. 

Canva, which is still private, disclosed to BT that annual recurring revenue for its South-east Asia business has more than trebled since 2022, and that monthly active users more than doubled in the same period. 

Halim argued that South-east Asia’s revenue contribution will keep growing exponentially for Canva even if the individual economies are at differing stages of growth.

“When the GDP per year is growing at 5 per cent, that means the disposable income is also growing, which means being able to spend more, so that will be exciting (for Canva) over the next few years,” he said. 

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The company declined to reveal its revenue and user base, but cited the performance of its markets in South-east Asia and Canva’s investments in the region. 

Cameron Adams, Canva’s chief product officer and co-founder, said: “Indonesia consistently ranks in the top three in terms of monthly active users. The Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand are consistently in the top 15.”

The Philippines is home to Canva’s second-largest campus globally and ranks in the top 10 in terms of monthly active users.

The company has a significant base of small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs in South-east Asia using Canva for daily business needs, ranging from social media content to marketing and branding.

It also noted that Singapore’s PropertyGuru uses Canva on a group-wide level. 

Education is a promising sector for Canva in the region. The firm partners education regulators in the region, including Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, to provide Canva Education solutions. These partnerships form an active user base of at least 60 million monthly active users. 

GenAI competition

The optimism over South-east Asia for Canva comes at a time when the company has faced challenges posed by advances in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), and changes to government regulations linked to the rapid pace of AI advancements.

Adams said that Canva has been investing heavily to ensure that the advancements in GenAI are made available in Canva’s products.

He added that the company has 300 people dedicated to its AI products, and that a third of the team works directly on models and in-house AI capabilities. 

Canva has also moved beyond offering design solutions to include productivity tools in its suite. The company recently released an update that deepens integration across its design applications; such moves have helped the company keep pace in the current environment. 

Adams said: “The rise of OpenAI and Anthropic has changed how people work, but we’re still seeing positive growth signals. We’ve had over 100 per cent year-on-year growth for our enterprise revenue, and we are continuing to see markets grow as well, and I think we’re keeping pace with those newer AI-first companies.”

GenAI-powered applications from other software providers now also offer users the ability to create designs, eating into Canva’s market.

Canva started in 2013 as an alternative to the Adobe Suite, and with a proposition to make graphic design and creation arguably simpler and more accessible for businesses and individuals. 

The changing landscape has led to investors reassessing that valuation. In August, Blackbird and Airtree cut their estimate of Canva’s value to US$34.9 billion, down 17 per cent from 2025’s US$42 billion.

Separately, US investment firms Tim Rowe Price and Franklin Templeton have revised their valuations of Canva downwards. 

The drop in valuation has raised some doubts over the company’s plan to go public, which Canva executives have said could happen in 2027.

Neither Adams nor Halim would comment on this in the interview, though Adams said two years is a “good window” and that Canva needed to pick its moments as the markets are “going through a lot of change at the moment”.

“I think we’re very happy with our current situation of being a private company because it gives us the ability to think long term, and you really need to think long term through this period because stuff changes day by day.”