PropertyGuru’s second act begins with doing less

When Lewis Ng departed his role as chief business officer of PropertyGuru in 2019, he had a feeling he would be back – though returning as CEO of the property marketplace wasn’t how he envisioned it.

In the six years he was away, Ng took on various C-suite roles, including at classifieds marketplace Carousell and jobs platform Seek.

During that time, PropertyGuru went through a series of major changes. It went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2022, only to be taken private by EQT Capital two years later. In 2025, a month before Ng officially rejoined the firm, the company axed over 170 employees as it pulled back on what Ng calls “distractions,” including its property financing and home services businesses.

Since then, PropertyGuru appears to have found its footing under Ng’s leadership. It has refocused on its core service of facilitating property transactions in four markets: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Between June 2024 and June 2025, the firm logged a double-digit percentage growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA. As AI changes the way people search and discover, PropertyGuru is taking a measured approach to adopting the technology.

Ng might not look like your typical tech company CEO. For our interview, he’s dressed in a deep maroon blazer and thick-rimmed glasses – a look that hints at the creative career he once imagined for himself.

The executive, who was born in Australia and studied digital media at the University of New South Wales, harbored dreams of becoming an artist. Instead, he’s found himself at the helm of a 1,100-strong company matching home-seekers with real estate agents and sellers.

Ng sees his non-technical background as a strength. “I’m very bad at product and tech and being technical, but I think that’s an advantage because that lets me see things a little bit from a distance, which then allows me to remember and connect with what we are trying to do in the first place,” he tells Tech in Asia.

He speaks to us on a range of topics, from his younger ambitions to career advice and to PropertyGuru’s unfinished mission, in this interview.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

You wanted to be an artist before. What happened, and how did you end up at PropertyGuru?

I always was creative since young, and I just remember it was something Asian parents weren’t too happy about. I studied digital media in Sydney, where I grew up, and I aspired to be in the arts field.

But I quickly learned the harsh realities of life: I needed to pay the bills. I had moved out, had rents coming, and phone bills to pay.