After Acquisition, Laku6 Supports Carousell Presents Features for Buying and Selling Used Electronics

Carousell launched a new feature "Sell to Carousell" to make buying and selling used electronics more reliable and convenient. This feature comes thanks to integrating the expertise of the official Laku6 team acquired in 2022— and Carousell Group's proprietary AI diagnostic technology.

Quek Siu Rui, Co-founder & Group CEO of Carousell Group, said that there is great potential for the used electronics market in Southeast Asia, which is estimated to grow by more than 2,5x to $18,6 billion by 2026. The company is also confident of its current position. it is timely to strengthen this leadership in the region.

He continued, together with the Heliconia Capital unit as a unit of Temasek, the two have made one of the largest capital investments in the region for the industry. re-commerce by allocating $25 million to continue the expansion.

“We have seen strong results in recent months. Laku6 continues to maintain its leading position in the market online mobile recommerce Indonesia, has inspected and transacted more than half a million mobile phones. Carousell has seen 55% growth in the last half year alone in mobile phone transactions." press release, last week (31/1).

Laku6's Diagnostic Center team for the Singapore market, as well as the Laku6 team in Singapore, are now co-located with Carousell's Singapore office and regional headquarters to centralize operations and facilitate collaboration. Later, both parties will work together to improve the experience re-commerce for customers across Carousell's platforms.

"Sell to Carousell" feature

This new feature is new to Singapore, enabling users to have an instant option to sell their phones direct to Carousell in less than 24 hours. Furthermore, if interested users are required to fill out a short form about the condition of their cellphone on the application or site to get an estimated selling price quote. These prices are generated by a smart pricing algorithm developed by the Group.

Users can then choose whether they want a Carousell agent to visit their home for device inspection and instant payment or to drop them off at 20 o iStudio anywhere to complete the process. iStudio is reseller official from Apple in Singapore.

Sell ​​to Carousell offers fast on-the-spot diagnosis with the use of Laku6's proprietary AI diagnostic technology, which can check the condition of a used phone in less than two minutes, and intelligent pricing algorithms to confirm final offers. The process is fully automated to eliminate any human error during grading, and users are free to change their minds about whether to sell after receiving the final offer.

Laku6 founder Alvin Yap said that almost 60% of Laku6 users said they did not consider selling their old phones because they felt it was too much of a hassle to do so. Therefore, the company seeks to develop solutions tailored to local market needs, using Laku6's proprietary technology, to provide additional choices in the industry.

“Since the initial launch in September 2022, the program has shown signs product-market-fit strong with thousands of cell phones that were successfully processed,” said Yap.

Going forward, the Sell to Carousell feature will continue to be developed for the Carousell business in Vietnam and Malaysia. In both countries, according to Rui, Carousell has a strong position in the classifieds business through Cho Tot and Easy.my, making the recommerce market more accessible there.

“In addition, our next achievement as a Group is providing advanced options to buy certified phones with warranty for users who want to buy used phones with the peace of mind and convenience of buying a new phone. This will give our users more choice and flexibility in how they want to shop second-hand,” said Rui.

Train re-commerce

When contacted by DailySocial.id, representatives of Carousell were not willing to go into details about plans to bring it to Indonesia and the company's future strategy in this country. They simply said they were focused on making progress on redefining it re-commerce in South East Asia.

“Our goal is to be a leader re-commerce in the region, overcoming the barriers of second-hand sales and purchases, with trust and convenience at the forefront, and accelerating the secondhand wave in Southeast Asia. We are excited about the opportunity for a new service like Sell to Carousell in the region, and are excited about its trial in Singapore and further development," the company said.

Actually, this kind of solution has been done by Tokopedia, which cooperates with Laku6 in presenting the Trade-In feature. Cooperation between the two companies has been going on since 2019 until now. In fact, Tokopedia released an additional Direct Laku feature that allows users who want to sell their cellphones directly without having to trade in the new cellphone they want.

Since acquiring Laku6, Carousell Group, the leading multi-category platform for used goods in Greater Southeast Asia has doubled down in increasing its market re-commerce electronics across the region, with a scale of two million listings registered in the electronics category each quarter.

Quoting from a Carousell report titled Carousell Recommerce Index 2022, in commemoration of the company's 10th anniversary, it was revealed that during this period the company has extended the life cycle of millions of goods, including: 76,8 million fashion items; 33,9 million electronic goods; 26,6 million hobby goods and toys; 11,1 million household appliances and furniture; and 10,6 million baby and child equipment.

The report also highlights some of the main trends in Indonesia:

1. Most popular categories for selling preloved items: Fashion, Baby & Kids, Health & Beauty;
2. Most popular preloved categories searched for: Fashion, Electronics, Health & Beauty;
3. Most used search keywords for preloved items: Zara, H&M, Uniqlo.

Currently Carousell operates in seven countries with each brand, namely Carousell, Cho Tot, Laku6, Easy.my, OneShift, Ox Luxe, Ox Street, and Refash, serving tens of millions of monthly active users.