Carousell Group, the Singapore-based multi-category platform for secondhand, has integrated the Laku6 team’s expertise and proprietary artificial intelligence (AI)-first diagnostic technology with Carousell Group’s tens of millions of monthly active users across Greater Southeast Asia to launch new features to make selling and buying secondhand electronics more trusted and convenient.

In a statement on Thursday, Carousell said that Laku6’s dedicated Diagnostic Centre for the Singapore market, as well as their Singapore team, are now housed in the same space as Carousell’s Singapore office and regional headquarters to centralise operations and facilitate collaboration.

Additionally, both the group and Laku6’s tech teams have been working closely to continually enhance the recommerce experience for our customers across the group’s platforms.

“There is huge potential for electronics recommerce in Greater Southeast Asia, which is slated to grow over 2.5 times to $18.6 billion by 2026, and Carousell Group is well placed to cement our leadership,” said Quek Siu Rui, Group Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Carousell Group.

“Together with Temasek unit Heliconia Capital, we had made one of the largest capital investments in the region for electronics recommerce, by earmarking $25 million for the expansion of electronics recommerce. We have seen strong results in the past few months,

“Laku6 has continued to maintain its leading position in Indonesia’s online mobile recommerce market, having inspected and transacted over half a million mobile phones. Carousell has seen a growth of 55% in the past half year alone in mobile phone transactions,” he added.

According to the statement, one of the new features from the Laku6 integration is the launch of end-to-end service Sell to Carousell in Singapore, where users have an advanced option to sell their mobile phones directly to Carousell in under 24 hours from the comfort of their homes or by dropping-off their phones at any iStudio outlet.

The exclusive partnership with iStudio, the largest Apple Premium Reseller in Singapore, provides Carousell access to over 20 drop-off points across the island, significantly optimising logistics, and in return, provides iStudio with new selling opportunities.

With Sell to Carousell, users fill in a short form about their phone condition on the app or website to get an estimated quote generated by the Group’s smart pricing algorithm.

They can choose if they want to have a Carousell agent visit their home for device inspection and instant payout or visit a physical store themselves to complete the process.

Sell to Carousell is able to provide quick on-the-spot diagnosis with the use of Laku6’s proprietary AI-first diagnostic technology, which can inspect the condition of secondhand mobile phones in under two minutes, and smart pricing algorithm to confirm the final quote.

This process is fully automated to remove the element of human error during assessment, and users are free to change their minds on selling with no obligations upon receiving the final quote.

“Almost 60 percent of users in our user research say that they do not consider selling their old phones as they felt it was too much of a hassle to do so,

“Hence we have been working on developing solutions tailored for local market needs, using Laku6’s proprietary technology, to provide additional choices on top of our current open marketplace,” said Founder of Laku6 Alvin Yap.

According to him, since the soft launch in September 2022, the program has shown signs of a strong product market fit with thousands of phones processed.

Quek also said that the firm has seen how Sell to Carousell has been able to unlock new user segments by reaching out to time-starved buyers who want to sell secondhand phones.

“We will soon launch similar products in Vietnam and Malaysia, where we have a leadership position in classifieds through our brands Cho Tot and Mudah.my respectively, and continue to make the recommerce market more accessible in the region,

“Additionally, our next milestone as a Group is to provide an advanced option to buy certified mobile phones that come with warranty for users who want to buy secondhand phones with the peace of mind and convenience of buying a new phone. These will give our users more choice and flexibility on how they wish to shop secondhand,” he added.

Singapore’s Carousell Group cuts 10% of total headcount, Co-Founder says ‘deeply sorry’