SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – September 23, 2023 – Carousell Group, Greater Southeast Asia’s leading multi-category second-hand platform, celebrates the start of its second decade with a return to LaunchPad @ one-north, its office site inaugural. The Group today announced the official opening of its new regional headquarters, Carousell Campus, dedicated to developing recommerce capabilities as part of its goal to make buying and selling second-hand items more reliable and more practical.
Carousell’s new regional headquarters at LaunchPad @ one-north
At the Carousell Campus launch event today, CEO and Co-Founder of Carousell Group, Mr. Quek Siu Rui, expressed his excitement for the journey ahead, sharing: “This space marks the transition to adulthood for Carousell as a group. Recommerce means bringing the best of what we know and love about e-commerce and leveraging it for second-hand products. We have grown our recommerce business in recent years and become the leading recommerce group in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, with tens of millions of monthly active users and 80 million new registrations per year . As we take the lead in advocating for recommerce and a circular economy in the region and beyond, we believe in contributing to the local startup community and cementing Singapore as a hub of leading startups in the region.
Building the Future of Pre-Owned by Advancing Recommerce with Trust and Convenience Capabilities
Carousell Campus is also home to the Group’s first capabilities center, which brings together the Group’s brands and subsidiaries in one location to streamline operations, integrate authentication and inspection capabilities, as well as enable more effective collaboration.
(Please refer to Appendix A) The Group focused on building stronger recommerce foundations and setting new standards in trust and convenience for second-hand transactions in the region. For example, Carousell Group launched the
“Certified” program this year, which uses the expertise and technology shared by the different entities to authenticate and inspect used items in the program sold by official Carousell stores. Mobile phones are inspected using our proprietary AI-based diagnostic technology to eliminate human errors during assessment. Luxury bags are authenticated by a team led by our lead authenticator, a veteran of luxury houses such as Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Chanel. Vehicle inspections are performed by experienced auto inspection and repair companies. (Please refer to Appendix B for the complete list of recommerce programs within the Carousell Group.)
To make peer-to-peer transactions even more secure, the Group has also rolled out enhancements to secure payment features across its Singapore and Vietnam platforms, and plans to continue in other markets, starting with Malaysia. here at the end of September. For example, when Carousell users transact using the
“Buy” buttonthey can pay securely via a
one-click payment on the platform, and also benefit from
Buyer Protection policies and
integrated door-to-door delivery (D2D) choice. This is in addition to ongoing platform enhancements as part of a multi-layered strategy to increase trust and security across the Group’s platforms. To increase the convenience of Singaporeans selling items they have decluttered on a daily basis, Carousell Singapore will be the first C2C marketplace in Singapore to offer a
paperless D2D shipping option to occasional sellers. By the end of September, users will only need to note their tracking number on the package, will have access to competitive paperless D2D shipping rates and will also avoid the hassle of printing the shipping label. shipping for the courier.
“Centralizing our Singapore-based entities on Carousell Campus has enabled us to strengthen the excellence of our operations. Our strategic focus on key growing product categories has streamlined our efforts to deliver more compelling user value propositions and facilitate more collaboration opportunities to innovate on ways to increase adoption of the circular economy. This has allowed us to roll out a variety of recommerce programs and features across multiple platforms and marketplaces this year, providing an ecommerce-like experience. We will continue to invest in growth and technology across our platforms to make buying and selling used items as reliable and convenient as buying new items,” said Quek.
Nurturing the talents behind the Group’s recommerce success
Carousell Campus reinforces the Group’s commitment to innovation and building a diverse and skilled team by serving as a central link for its eight regional offices to converge on strategic planning. A key part of developing talent into a world-class team is focusing on regional collaborative sharing of best practices and capabilities as a group. The CEOs and senior managers of the different Group entities take on additional roles to mentor cross-entity commercial teams and provide strategic direction, or guide the development of operational capabilities in collaboration with the different entities.
The Group’s technology leaders also work together on technology initiatives and knowledge sharing across the Group to better utilize existing technologies and drive innovation. This has enabled the Group to more quickly adopt generative AI technologies to power platform functionality at scale. For example, Carousell recently started using a Large Language Model (LLM) to extract product details to improve search relevance, so shoppers can better find what they want and thus increase views Announcements and discussions for sellers.
Contributing to the next generation of tech startups
More than just a return to Carousell’s roots at BLOCK71, the decision to install the Carousell Campus at LaunchPad was a deliberate choice to signal the Group’s commitment to being an integral part of this ecosystem by paving the way for the next generation of pioneers of technology. Recognizing the challenges young startups face, Carousell Group offers a helping hand by providing access to world-class speakers from tech giants, facilitating connections and networking opportunities with startup founders and providing a space to host their own customer discovery events to find the right product. -market fit. Therefore, Campus Carousell was intentionally designed to host events to facilitate such support, with space for over 100 people.
Since its return, the Group has hosted a host of free events, informative sessions and learning experiences, and plans to host more collaborative events involving local startups and small businesses. Startups interested in using the Carousell Campus space can contact Carousell Group at [email protected] to discuss collaboration opportunities.
Hashtag: #Carousell #start-up #recommerce #secondhand
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