Cover Carro co-founder and CEO Aaron Tan
Carro co-founder and CEO Aaron Tan
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From teaching himself to code as a teenager to building Carro into one of Southeast Asia’s leading automotive marketplaces, Aaron Tan has always followed his curiosity. The co-founder and CEO reflects on trusting his instincts, learning from missteps and what continues to drive his entrepreneurial ambitions.
Aaron Tan was barely a teenager when he began teaching himself programming. Fascinated by search engines such as AltaVista, Lycos and Yahoo, he wanted to understand how they worked. With limited resources at his disposal, he turned to the public library near his home, teaching himself to code using borrowed books.
There was also a more personal impetus behind his early entrepreneurial ambitions. His parents had divorced when he was young, leaving his mother to raise him and his siblings under difficult circumstances. “I felt that I needed to do something for the family,” he recalls. When he was 13, he started his first company, a network hosting business. Three years later, he launched an advertising technology company specialising in pay-per-click search advertising.
Now, nearly three decades later, Tan is the co-founder and CEO of Carro, the Singapore-headquartered automotive marketplace he established in 2015 with Aditya Lesmana and Kelvin Chng. Carro has since expanded beyond used-car sales into vehicle financing, insurance and aftersales services, establishing itself as a major player in the region’s automotive industry. Its proprietary artificial intelligence tools streamline processes ranging from vehicle inspections to pricing, financing and ownership transfers, addressing long-standing concerns over transparency and complexity in the used-car market.
The company achieved unicorn status in 2021 and has since expanded across Southeast Asia and into Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia. Its acquisition of Australian used-car platform CarPlace in June this year extended its footprint to eight markets, while its workforce has grown to around 5,000 employees. For its 2025 financial year, Carro reported $1.2 billion in revenue and a positive EBITDA (a key metric used to measure core operational profitability) of $43 million.
Yet, for Tan, whose entrepreneurial journey began partly out of a desire to support his family, financial success is no longer his primary motivation. Instead, he finds fulfilment in pursuing the goals he sets for himself and seeking new opportunities to learn.
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Above An entrepreneur since the age of 13, Aaron Tan credits his innate curiosity and appetite for learning as driving forces behind his success
An entrepreneur since the age of 13, Aaron Tan credits his innate curiosity and appetite for learning as driving forces behind his success
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A former Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (now the Infocomm Media Development Authority) scholar who studied computer science at Singapore Management University and Carnegie Mellon University, Tan began his career exploring emerging technologies before moving into venture capital. Today, despite the demands of running Carro, he is pursuing a doctorate in business with a specialisation in artificial intelligence, exploring its potential applications.
An enduring intellectual curiosity, he believes, has been central to his journey. Tan recalls how journalists interviewing him as a teenage entrepreneur would assume he came from a privileged or technically accomplished family. “Your dad must be a CEO or programmer,” he remembers them saying. The reality, he explains, was quite different. “It has all to do with your own, I guess, intellectual curiosity and upbringing.”
That belief in the value of learning informs his commitments outside Carro as well. Tan serves on the board of the National Library Board, an appointment that holds particular significance given the formative role public libraries played in his childhood. “I feel indebted to the library,” he shares. “It’s more than just a place where communities or people gather. It’s a treasure trove of knowledge [accessible to anyone,] no matter their background.”
An independence of thought has also become increasingly important in how Tan leads Carro. In its early years, the company faced considerable pressure from investors to prioritise rapid expansion over profitability. Tan acknowledges that the need to secure their continued backing sometimes influenced his decisions, particularly when Carro was still finding its footing. “At times, I would do things just to please them so we could raise the next round,” he admits.
Experience has since given him greater confidence to pursue strategies that may not always align with investors’ expectations. While he recognises the value of their advice and the pivotal role their backing played in Carro’s growth, he has become more discerning about whose judgement to trust. “One of the biggest changes I’ve [made] over the past two to four years [is to] listen to the team, to the market, myself, more than the investors,” he reflects.
The courage of conviction
Carro’s expansion into developed markets offers a case in point. Having established a strong presence in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Thailand, Tan began looking further afield. While investors saw considerable growth potential in the region’s emerging economies, he believed that markets such as Japan, Hong Kong and Australia presented equally compelling opportunities.
Australia was particularly attractive. With more than two million used-car transactions annually, it offered a sizeable market with relatively high purchasing power and a population heavily reliant on private vehicles. Carro’s acquisition of CarPlace in June 2026 established an immediate presence in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria. For Tan, the priority was to build a strong operational foundation rather than pursue expansion for its own sake. As he puts it, “I always believe in having a strong grounding”. The approach appears to have paid off: within two months, he says, Carro had more than doubled the size of its Australian business.
Beyond its domestic potential, Australia also strengthens Carro’s Asia-Pacific vehicle trading network. Japan, where Carro already operates, is a major exporter of used vehicles, while markets such as Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia share the same right-hand-drive configuration. This creates opportunities for Carro to source vehicles in one market and sell them in the others, leveraging its presence across the region. “By connecting Australia to this whole right-hand-drive ecosystem that we’ve now built, [we gain] tremendous network effects,” Tan explains.
Notably, Tan is equally willing to acknowledge when he has underestimated an opportunity. During the Covid-19 pandemic, several major Chinese automotive brands approached Carro about selling their electric vehicles (EVs), but he was initially sceptical. “Why would I buy a Chinese EV?” he recalls thinking. “I was very wrong.” Although Carro has since expanded beyond used cars to include new electric vehicles, Tan admits he wishes he had embraced the strategic pivot sooner. Still, “better late than never”, he says.
Above For Carro co-founder and CEO Aaron Tan, learning to trust his own judgement has been one of the most important lessons in leadership
For Carro co-founder and CEO Aaron Tan, learning to trust his own judgement has been one of the most important lessons in leadership
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As Carro has grown, Tan has also had to rethink his approach to leadership. In the company’s earliest days, he favoured a more hands-on style, taking responsibility for most decisions himself. As the business expanded, he became more directive. Today, with a workforce of around 5,000, he increasingly recognises the importance of building consensus and empowering others to lead. “I can’t run it that way myself, so I need to have a group of leaders under me,” he explains.
For Tan, this has meant placing greater trust in his leadership team and recognising that Carro’s long-term success cannot depend on any one individual, including its founder. He is candid about the importance of cultivating leaders who may eventually be better equipped to take the company forward. “I always believe that at the end of the day, I’m not the best man to run a company forever,” he reflects.
His personal ambitions, however, remain undiminished. “I don’t think money motivates me that much anymore, to be very frank. Nor am I motivated by power,” he says. Instead, he derives deep satisfaction from achieving the milestones he sets on his own terms, whether through Carro or his involvement with educational institutions such as the Singapore University of Social Sciences, where he serves on the Board of Trustees. Ultimately, what moves him is simple: “In essence, what drives me is a constant belief in doing better for myself. Innately, I just like to win.”
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Photography: Darren Gabriel Leow
Art Direction: Jeremy Ang
Grooming: Benedict Choo
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