Quek Siu Rui

Quek Siu Rui is the co-founder and chief executive of online consumer-to-consumer marketplace Carousell, a venture he started in 2012 with his friends and business partners Marcus Tan and Lucas Ngoo. Positioned as being a fuss-free tool that lets sellers make a sale quickly and easily, Carousell’s “snap, list, and sell” competitive edge helped it to become one of Singapore’s newest unicorns after it raised US$100 million in a funding round in September 2021, taking its valuation to US$1.1 billion. A unicorn is an unlisted start-up that is valued in excess of US$1 billion.

The September funding round was led by South Korean private equity firm STIC Investments. Carousell’s other investors include Singapore’s Economic Development Board’s investment arm, EDBI; along with Temasek unit Heliconia Capital as well as other venture capital firms such as Sequoia India, Golden Gate Ventures, and 500 Startups.

With one in three people in Singapore signed up as users, Carousell has arguably become the country’s most popular e-commerce marketplace. The brand has also established a robust foothold in the Southeast Asian region, having acquired online classified marketplaces Mudah.my in Malaysia, Vietnam’s Cho Tot, and Myanmar’s OneKyat in 2019. Apart from its core consumer-to-consumer digital emporium, Carousell has expanded into the used-car marketplace, offering services such as reselling second-hand automobiles and car rentals.