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Xavier Kong · · 2 min readCarsome to lay off 10% of staff, leadership to forgo salaries for rest of 2022
Malaysian unicorn Carsome has started an “employee base optimization” exercise that will see the used-car firm let go of up to 10% of its staff.
Photo credit: Carsome
According to a company note seen by Tech in Asia, the exercise is “either completed or currently ongoing” in Thailand and Indonesia, and is set to begin in Malaysia as well as across Carsome’s regional roles.
Tech in Asia has reached out to Carsome for comment.
The company has promised that all impacted employees will receive their full severance package, along with support on their job searches. The executive leadership team will also be forgoing their salaries for the rest of 2022 to contribute to the severance packages that the firm will be giving out.
The exercise is meant to harden Carsome against the current global economic slowdown. The firm is also optimizing its acquisition strategy and accelerating integration with iCar Asia and WapCar, which it bought in February and May, respectively. Carsome had also acquired Singaporean car marketplace Cartimes in March.
CEO Eric Cheng and CFO Juliet Zhu will also be offering “a significant portion” of their combined personal ESOP shares. This will be awarded to “employees who not only demonstrate strong ownership in their contributions, but also go the extra mile meeting our business goals.”
The development follows the unicorn posting its results for the 2021 financial year, which saw Carsome doubling its revenue to US$656 million compared to 2020. However, its losses also widened over 7x to US$138.6 million. These increased losses were attributed to fair value adjustments that are non-cash expenses and are unrelated to Carsome’s operating performance.
Meanwhile, the group also managed to build up a war chest of about US$340.4 million, which reflects its US$170 million series D2 round in September 2021.
Earlier this year, Carsome raised another US$290 million, which pushed its valuation up to US$1.7 billion.
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Lorenzo Kyle Subido
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The used-car firm has already started letting people go in Thailand and Indonesia and will now bring the effort to Malaysia and its regional roles.
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