About Quek Rui
Quek Siu Rui, co-founder and CEO of Carousell, has emphasized the company's focus on recommerce and sustainable growth. In late 2024, he described Carousell's mission as making "secondhand the first choice" and noted that the company has been operating for 12 years while still being "less than 1% done." He stated that the company is investing in trust and convenience through initiatives such as a "Certified" authentication program for luxury goods and the Refash clothing resale service, which allows users to drop off unwanted clothes at physical stores. Quek said Carousell is "well capitalized" and on track to profitability, with revenue growing over 60% in the prior year and an expectation to "healthily reduce" losses.
Quek has also discussed the long-term challenges and opportunities of operating in Southeast Asia, describing the region as "highly fragmented" in language, culture, and logistics. He cited the global trend toward sustainability and the circular economy as a "major tailwind" for recommerce. Reflecting on the company's journey, Quek said that "meaningful things do take time" and that the "best years are ahead of us." He has credited the company's early focus on a mobile-first "snap-sell" experience and a disciplined approach to product-market fit as foundational to its growth.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Quek Rui's recent appearances.
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Transcript (1 segments)
Q
Quek Rui0:00
Being relentlessly resourceful, so we just have to find ways to work around constraints and be relentless about it. Some examples would be like in our early days, we had a product-market fit issue where we didn't figure out what we need to build or who to focus our time and energy on, which segment we need to go deep in. The mega trends of sustainability and circular economy are here to stay. It's become increasingly a government agenda, a corporate agenda, and I think consumers are becoming a lot more aware of their own impact on the environment. You think first principles and you think empathy for your users, and you meet good teams that are very aligned with your mission. What at least I'm thinking we are doing is impactful when it starts with that purposeful. I think it starts with the fundamental wake-up reason, right? You're just being anchored by core purpose and knowing that the future we're going to create is a meaningful and inevitable one. And realizing that these meaningful things do take time, I guess, just gives us that additional motivation to keep going, right? And don't squander away that past 10 years of compounded learnings and mistakes that we've made and capabilities to build up, teammates with whom we actually now have the chance to partner with. So we actually think the best years are ahead of us.
