Carsome Pursues Profitability in Indonesia and Thailand Through New CFOs

Carsome, a used car marketplace platform in Southeast Asia, announced the appointment of Juliet Zhu as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) since January 1, 2020. Zhu is believed to be able to help strengthen Carsome’s position in Southeast Asia while achieving profitability targets this year.

Carsome has so far benefited from its operations in Malaysia. This startup then targets to achieve operational benefits in this country and also in Thailand by the end of this year.

Zhu has experience in the areas of capital planning and growth strategy. Previously he worked for various well-known venture capital companies such as Fozun RZ Capital, which is under the auspices of Fosun Group from Hong Kong, as well as Jubilee Capital Management and Cento Ventures in Southeast Asia.

Carsome Co-Founder and CEO Eric Cheng claimed to have been about Zhu since 2016. He said Zhu’s presence at his company would also bring strategic thinking and leadership to the team. And bring the Carsome platform to a better position in Southeast Asia.

Zhu said, while still with Fosun RZ Capital, he had made a comprehensive comparison of the opportunities for each sector and business model in China, the United States, India, and Southeast Asia. According to him, the used car market in Southeast Asia is one of the industries that have the most promising business opportunities but has not been much glimpsed.

“The used car industry is one of the few spaces in Southeast Asia that is comparable in size to China, where there are more than US $ 100 million (around Rp1.4 trillion) of the untapped market potential in terms of sales and financing alone,” he said.

In 2019, Carsome Collaborates with P2P Lending from Malaysia and Received Series C Funding from many Investors

For the record, in November 2019, Carsome partnered with a peer-to-peer lending platform from Malaysia called the Malaysian Funding Societies. Through this partnership, the company offers financing of up to US $ 200 million (equivalent to Rp2.7 trillion) to the local scale used car dealers and buyers.

In December 2019, Carsome raised US $ 50 million in Series C funding (around IDR 684 billion) from many investors, such as Endeavor Catalyst, Ondine Capital, MUFG Innovation Partners, and Daiwa PI Partners. The latest funding made Carsome’s total funds reach US $ 85 million or around Rp1.1 trillion.

The used car industry has indeed become one of the growing sectors in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Besides Carsome, there are currently several used car marketplaces operating in Indonesia. They have various business schemes ranging from B2B to C2C.

Corporate action was also quite lively this vertical coloring last year. One of them is the acquisition of iCar Asia for Carmudi Indonesia worth US $ 3 million (Rp42 billion), and Carro’s acquisition of the sello.com marketplace.

Carsome Has Also Partnered with JBA to Expand Its Target Market

Since being present in Indonesia in 2016, Carsome has 1,600 partner dealers in Greater Jakarta, Bandung & Surabaya. Meanwhile, JBA has 4,800 dealers in major cities and 18 JBA branches throughout Indonesia.

The collaboration between Carsome & JBA was carried out through cross-distribution of car stocks and dealer network partners respectively. With a referral system, if the seller has not been able to sell his used car in Carsome, the seller can entrust his car to take part in an auction at JBA.

And vice versa, car requester who has not succeeded in winning the auction at JBA can use a used car sales service from Carsome. Thus, used car sellers will have more choices for selling used cars.

Both are optimistic that this cooperation can maximize the potential of used markets in Indonesia. Buying and selling used cars online offered by Carsome and the auction system that is the JBA selling method allows users to sell their cars quickly.