Malaysia-headquartered used car platform Carsome has announced a group-wide accelerated profitability plan to achieve its target of positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) within the next few quarters.

This plan includes accelerating its integration with the newly-acquired iCar and WapCar ecosystem of companies, as well as “employee base optimization”, and automation of processes to further increase group efficiency, Carsome said in a statement on Thursday.

In light of macroeconomic challenges, this is crucial to continuously enable Carsome to adapt to customers’ changing needs, the Malaysia-based unicorn said.

As part of the “employee base optimization”, Carsome said it will focus on improving productivity across the business, aligning resources with contributions to the bottom line, and enforcing stricter performance management.

“This strategy will impact a certain number of employees, who will receive their full severance package and extended health benefits until the end of the year, together with support on their job search,” Carsome added.

In addition, the executive team is forgoing their salaries for the remainder of 2022 to help contribute to an ex gratia payment for departing team members, the company said.

“The company remains highly appreciative of its past and present employees and will navigate the macroeconomic headwinds with them,” it added.

It is understood that less than 10 percent of the workforce will be affected.

With operations across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, Carsome said it aims to digitize the region’s used car industry by reshaping and elevating the car transaction and ownership experience.

Together with Subsidiary Brands iCar Asia, WapCar and Cartimes, Carsome provides end-to-end solutions to consumers and used car dealers across the decision funnel, from car content consumption, car inspection, ownership transfer to financing and other ancillary services, promising to bring trust, transparency, and choice to our customers. Carsome currently has more than 4,000 employees across all its offices in Asia.

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