Carousell is one of the mobile listing platforms that serve across Southeast Asia. However, the platform founders have a bigger vision to expand the business and serve the world. The Company has raised almost $85 million series C funds from investors like Rakuten Ventures and Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDBI) to do more project research and accelerate the growth process. Carousell’s core vision is to make a consumer-to-consumer connection for direct sales of second-hand goods. Rui, the co-founder says, there are plans to integrate the Artificial Intelligence system into the Carousell to make it more effective and accurate. The partnership with large companies has earned Carousell enough revenue to raise top-tier talents and do more research and development. Carousell faces fierce competition from prominent e-commerce platforms like Alibaba and Aliexpress. However, Rui maintains that the platform can gain a firm competitive ground through funding and further expansion beyond Southeast Asia.
Quek Siu Rui is one of the ingenious entrepreneurs in Singapore who has devoted much of his life to his dream. Rui says that every accomplishment hasn’t been enough and works continuously to ensure his dreams are better and effective. His entire effort is to get focused and work tirelessly on his mission. He doesn’t have resting time, even during the weekends. Rui ensures he gets a reminder to avoid issuing work and sending emails to the employees during the weekends. He says Carousell is a priority in his life.
During his early days at school, Rui embarked on how businesses operate though he was excellent academically. At Ngee Ann Polytechnic, he spent the most time in an overseas internship to gain practical knowledge. He was committed to chair assembling, deliveries, and housekeeping in an adventure restaurant in Guilin, China. Rui got inspired by an Apple co-founder speaker after giving a great speech entitled ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.’ He printed the entire speech and kept it as an everyday inspiration reference. Rui kept the spirit and enthusiasm to become a successful entrepreneur. While at the National University of Singapore, he applied for a one-year Silicon Valley internship program. He gained knowledge from various tech hubs as he pursued his courses in entrepreneurship at the University of Stanford.
Rui got motivated by the most prominent tech speakers in the world. While at Stanford University, he got a chance to listen to Jack Dorsey, the Twitter founder, and Aaron Levie of cloud storage. From their speeches, Rui realized such renowned entrepreneurs are no different from him, and he too can start a company to solve a specific problem in society. When he returned to Singapore in 2012, Rui and his old schoolmates Tan and Marcus at Silicon Valley collaborated to develop a mobile app that would enable users to list used digital devices on a marketing platform within 30 seconds. The idea came about after they realized how hard it was to sell their second-hand gadgets online. He says their mind-blowing app, Carousell, would allow anybody to sell their used digital gadgets online without many hustles. read more
