Carro drives off with new regional head of marketing

Southeast Asia automotive marketplace Carro has named Katherine Teo its regional head of marketing overseeing Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. Teo (pictured) oversees the company's brand, digital, social and PR efforts and reports to co-founder and CEO Aaron Tan. 

"It is an exciting time to be joining Carro as we have set our sights on the next milestone of the company," Teo told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE. Teo aims to build a game-changing brand that people love and trust. "When people think of used cars, ours should be the first name that comes to their minds," she said. 

Before Carro, Teo was M&C Saatchi Singapore's head of digital for more than four years, according to her LinkedIn. She also worked at Leo Burnett as social media lead for close to two years. At the same time, Teo also built up experience on the client side, working at Raffles Medical Group's corporate communications team for more than a year. 

In 2018, she co-founded a tech start-up named Create Collective. According to the company's LinkedIn page, Create Collective focuses on building communities for the digital age by humanising technology. Its first foray was Dayre, an online journal that is members-only and ad-free. Teo is currently an advisor to Create Collective. 

Teo's hire comes after Manisha Seewal left her role as Carro's CMO last August after three years with the firm. She joined Carro in 2018 and scaled up the marketing function across all four markets in Southeast Asia. In 2020 she took on the additional role of CEO of Indonesian C2C marketplace Jualo. During her tenure, she set up in-house marketing teams in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia which includes brand, PR, social, SEO, performance marketing capabilities, and an entire creative hub in all four markets comprising copywriters, videographers, video editors, graphic designers and journalists.

She also led several digital innovations such as the first car subscription service or the “Netflix of Cars”, first Facebook Live sale in Southeast Asia where a SG$61,000 car was sold in 85 minutes, and the first contactless car purchase service to combat COVID-19 restrictions. Seewal is now with eBay Classifieds Group as CMO for Gumtree Australia, CarsGuide, and Autotrader and is based in Australia. Meanwhile, it is understood that Jualo has yet to name a replacement for its CEO role.

Meanwhile, in August, the company also beefed up its branding team with the appointment of Annop (Michael) Kettratad as its chief branding officer. In his additional role, Kettratad is responsible for accelerating Carro’s brand in the retail business (B2C). Kettratad continues to serve as CEO of Carro Thailand, where he was appointed to the role in January 2021. As CEO, Kettratad has been instrumental in driving growth in the Thai market and overseeing all strategic operations for Carro Thailand.

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