Carousell acquires Singapore used car marketplace Caarly, hires new CFO and GM

With this new development, the mobile classifieds platform’s strategy now is to implement a sustainable monetisation model

Winnie Khoo (left, top row centre) and the Caarly team

Fresh off an acquihire of Malaysia-based personal safety app Watch Over Me, leading Singapore p2p marketplace Carousell today announced that it has gobbled up another company: Singapore-based used car marketplace Caarly.

“Carousell has grown over the last 4.5 years, and so have our users. Over 50 per cent of them in Singapore are now over 25 years old, and have significantly more purchasing power. We’ve seen how their evolving needs have resulted in more listings and greater demand in higher value verticals like cars,” said Siu Rui Quek, co-founder and CEO of Carousell, on the motive underpinning the acquisition.

Caarly, founded in 2014, will see all 11 of its team — with some equipped with more than nine years of experience in the automotive industry — absorbed into Carousell.

The team also includes full-stack engineering programmers who will help accelerate Carousell’s technological growth. Carousell intends to leverage on Caarly to expand its reach in other markets.

All listings pooled from Caarly’s 200 used car dealers will be integrated into the cars marketplace section of the Carousell platform. Existing Caarly users will be able to cross post their listings into Carousell with one tap.

Also Read: Carousell officially launches in Philippines, passes 41M listings globally

The acquisition marks a renewed focus for Carousell to finally generate revenue — which is a major talking point among curious observers in the regional tech scene. For context, in a previous interview with e27 in June, Carousell’s VP of international expansion and growth Jia Jin Chai said that monetisation in the near term was not a priority yet.

“The Caarly acquisition paves the way for a monetisation strategy that includes value-added services on top of what our users already enjoy, such as premium listings, subscriptions and so on,” said Siu.

In related developments, Carousell has announced two new additions to its leadership team. They are Winnie Khoo, a former Property Guru MD; and Rakesh Malani, a former Komli Media CFO.

Khoo takes on the General Manager role and will help fully integrate the Caarly team into the Carousell platform, while Malani joins as CFO. Malani will be helping Carousell deepen its reach in high value verticals starting with cars. He will also grow the platform’s monetisation models.

Having raised a large US$35 million Series B round in August, Carousell is now on the prowl for new investments. There are, however, no plans to go public.

“A big focus for us now is on improving discovery to better match demand and supply given that we have more than 41 million listings on our marketplace. Some areas which we are looking into are machine learning, data science and AI to improve discoverability and overall community engagement,” said Siu.

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Image Credit: Carousell

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