Org Chart: The people leading Carousell

Org Chart maps out the people at the top of Asia’s most prominent tech companies. Who are the key decision-makers? How are the teams organized? What does it tell us about the company’s priorities? We continue this series with Singapore-based online classifieds giant Carousell.

Established in May 2012, Carousell began as a novel idea conceived by co-founders Siu Rui Quek, Lucas Ngoo, and Marcus Tan at a Startup Weekend Singapore pitch event. Since then, the classifieds marketplace has come a long way since selling its first item: an Amazon Kindle e-reader for S$75.

The Singapore-based company has sold over 70 million items, and it has more than 250 million listings in eight markets, with revenue crossing US$40 million in 2020. A year later, Carousell entered the unicorn club when its valuation rose to US$1.1 billion after a US$100 million funding round led by South Korea’s Stic Investments.

An IPO is also rumored to be on the cards.

See also: Unpacking Carousell’s next big move: recommerce

The trio of Quek, Ngoo, and Tan continue to be at Carousell’s helm, leading several divisions such as people, product, recommerce, and media. But other responsibilities have been divided among top executives.

For instance, the country managers for Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and the Philippines report to the COO, Bryan Teo. The Malaysia country head, however, reports to Gaurav Bhasin, the Malaysia CEO. This structure underscores Malaysia’s importance as one of the biggest and oldest markets for Carousell after Singapore.

Meanwhile, all the product employees report to the CTO, Igor Volynskiy, who serves the firm’s “business and technology needs.” Before Volynskiy, co-founder Ngoo was the CTO.

In June 2021, Carousell appointed former Razer executive Edwin Chan as its CFO, whose roles include corporate development, fundraising, as well as mergers and acquisitions. The company has since made five acquisitions so far, with a sixth one, Singapore-based real estate firm 99 Group, on the anvil.

It goes without saying that Carousell’s business has gone beyond recommerce. Last year, it launched Carousell Media Group, a marketing platform that offers advertising solutions across the company’s family of brands – Carousell, Mudah, Cho Tot, and OneKyat. Following this, it also entered the used-car space with Carousell Auto, which can rake in higher ticket sizes compared to the other goods sold on the platform.

The Carousell Media Group has ambitions to generate over 30% of the company’s revenue. In March, it added three hires in newly created roles – regional strategy head, Singapore sales team lead, and Hong Kong sales initiatives head – to help manage its growth in the region.

See also: Can Carousell crack Google-Facebook duopoly with big ad bet?

But even with its diversification, Carousell’s focal point continues to be recommerce. The company appointed Penny Cox to the newly created post of head of recommerce in 2021. Cox was previously senior vice president for growth at the company.

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