Telkomsel appoints Lionel Chng as marketing director following Derrick Heng's exit

Indonesian telco giant Telkomsel has appointed Lionel Chng (pictured) as its new marketing director, effective January 2026, following the departure of Derrick Heng, who has moved to Singtel.

Chng brings more than three decades of professional experience across marketing, sales, business transformation, and regional leadership. His career spans multiple industries, particularly telecommunications, technology, and consumer businesses.

Prior to joining Telkomsel, Chng held several strategic roles within the Singtel Group, most recently serving as managing director of customer success at Singtel. In that role, he led the end-to-end management of the company’s consumer and SME business portfolios, overseeing revenue performance and driving improvements in customer experience through the strengthening of both physical and digital channels.

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“His leadership was instrumental in advancing digital transformation initiatives and expanding the use of artificial intelligence across customer touchpoints, helping strengthen brand presence, improve sales conversion, and sustain business growth alongside high levels of customer satisfaction,” a release stated.

Before his time at Singtel, Chng built extensive regional leadership experience at HP, where he held several strategic positions across Asia and national markets. These included serving as managing director of HP Singapore. He also held regional responsibilities as consumer sales director for Asia-Pacific and Japan, and as chief of staff to the managing director of Greater Asia.

Across these roles, he led medium-term strategic planning, organisational transformation, and go-to-market strategy development, while helping accelerate business growth across key Asian markets, including Indonesia.

Chng has also held roles at multinational companies such as Samsung, Nokia, Maxis, and Procter & Gamble, where his work focused on marketing and sales strategy development, channel and retail transformation, and strengthening organisational capabilities across Southeast Asia.

With Chng’s appointment, Telkomsel is expected to further advance its marketing transformation and strengthen its customer-centric strategy in Indonesia’s highly competitive telecommunications landscape.

Previously, Heng, alongside Vivek Mehendiratta, joined Singtel in senior leadership roles after serving as marketing chiefs at Indonesia’s leading telcos. Heng was appointed chief commercial officer of Singtel’s International Digital Services (IDS) Group, while Mehendiratta, previously CMO of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, became chief customer officer (consumer) for Singtel Singapore.

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