Carousell co-founder Lucas Ngoo steps down

Carousell co-founder Lucas Ngoo is stepping down from day-to-day management after over 11 years at the company. This would come into effect on 29 February 2024. 

"Our co-founder Lucas Ngoo has made a personal decision to take a break from day-to-day management," said a Carousell spokesperson when MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reached out. As co-founder, Ngoo had launched the marketplace in 2012 in Singapore, before expanding it across eight markets across Asia.

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Under his leadership over the past 11 years, Carousell has become one of the largest and fastest growing marketplaces in Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong.  Ngoo also led and built up Carousell’s Tech function, before working with various business and engineering teams across Carousell Group to pilot recommerce projects and building up the Malaysia autos recommerce business.

Despite stepping down from day-to-day management, Ngoo will continue to have full vested interests in the success of Carousell as a co-founder and board director. In addition, Ngoo will play an advisory role while the Carousell Group leadership team will continue to drive the business forward. 

"Ngoo has been shifting towards an advisory role over the past months, and supporting the Carousell Group leadership team to drive the business forward when he takes a break from day-to-day management," said a Carousell spokesperson. 

According to a statement on LinkedIn by Ngoo, he will now focus on learning new areas of innovation and other industries such as AI in biotech and healthcare, climate tech, energy transition and web3. "I am grateful for all the support over the past decade, especially to our user community for supporting us to choose second hand, and sharing your inspiring stories and feedback to help us continually improve," said Ngoo. 

"This is just the start of our second decade of Carousell, and there is more to come. Please continue to lend your support to our CarouTeam, as I will," he continued.

Like many other tech companies, Carousell also faced a fair bit of departures in December 2022, having laid off around 110 employees. 

Last year it also opened its new regional headquarters in Singapore at LaunchPad@one-north, a start-up and incubator space. The HQ, dubbed Carousell Campus, will be dedicated to advancing recommerce capabilities as part of its goal to make buying and selling secondhand items more trusted and convenient, according to the group in a statement.

At the launch, Carousell group CEO and co-founder, Quek Siu Rui said that the space marks a coming-of-age for Carousell as a group. "Recommerce means bringing the best things that we know and like from e-commerce and availing it for second hand products. We have been building up our recommerce business in recent years. We believe in contributing back to the local startup community and cementing Singapore as the region’s startup hub,” he said

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