STIC leads $100m round for Carousell at $1.1b valuation

It follows an $80 million investment in September last year led by Korean internet conglomerate Naver that valued the company at $900 million.

Carousell attributed the traction to a pandemic-driven rise in online shopping and growing affluence in Southeast Asia. This has facilitated a shift toward a stronger focus on luxury goods and bigger-ticket items such as cars. An auto division was launched earlier this year and is now said to have the largest inventory of certified cars in Malaysia.

“We are highly confident that Carousell will be at the center of the secondhand economy in this region at a time when an increasing number of socio-economic and environmentally conscious consumers are shifting towards a circular economy,” Jason Cho, a managing director at STIC who will join the Carousell board, said in a statement.

Carousell’s mobile-first strategy helped reinvent and rapidly popularize shopping for secondhand goods via classifieds in Southeast Asia, where 70% of the regional population is now online and the digital economy is expected to triple in size to $300 billion by 2025.

The company is active across the region, having recently made acquisitions in Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines as part of a merger with the Southeast Asia subsidiary of Norwegian telecoms giant Telenor Group. That transaction delivered Telenor a 32% stake in the company, making it the largest minority shareholder.

Previous investors also include Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, 500 Startups, Golden Gate Ventures, Sequoia Capital India, DBS Group, Naspers, and Quest Ventures. Total funding to date comes to at least $300 million.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Expansion
• Consumer
• Singapore
• STIC Investments
• e-commerce
• TMT