Singapore-based recommerce unicorn Carousell Co-Founder Lucas Ngoo that he would step down from managing day-to-day operations at the Singapore-based online classifieds marketplace.

“After 11.5 remarkable years, I have made the personal decision to take a break and step back from day-to-day management of Carousell at the end of the month. I will still continue to participate as a co-founder and board director, and also as advisor whenever needed,” he said in a Linkedin post on Thursday.

Ngoo said he will continue to have full vested interests in the success of Carousell as a co-founder, board director and shareholder, and have full confidence in our business and leadership team.

“My passion has always been to build the future with technology. It has been an incredible journey working with our CarouTeam to make selling secondhand even faster with machine learning and piloting features that shape our current recommerce foundations,” he wrote.

“I believe there is more to learn, hence it is a personal decision of mine to take the chance to have a break to learn new areas of innovation and other industries, such as AI in biotech/healthcare, climate tech/energy transition and web3,” he added.

Carousell was founded by Siu Rui Quek, Ngoo and Marcus Tan back in August 2012 – whereby the focus is to give users the tools to solve problems- whether it’s decluttering or earning side income- there are possibilities for everyone.

Carousell Group is a multi-category platform for secondhand in Greater Southeast Asia on a mission to inspire the world to start selling, and to make secondhand the first choice, the company said in its Linkedin page.

Founded in August 2012 in Singapore, the group said it has a leading presence in seven markets under the brands Carousell, Cho Tot, Laku6, Mudah.my, OneShift, and Refash, serving tens of millions of monthly active users.

Carousell is backed by leading investors including Telenor Group, Rakuten Ventures, Naver, STIC Investments, 500 Global and Peak XV Partners (formerly known as Sequoia Capital India).

The group has offices across Southeast Asia, India, Taiwan and Hong Kong, its Linkedin page showed.

In May 2022, Bloomberg reported Carousell has ended talks to go public through a merger with blank-cheque company L Catterton Asia Acquisition Corp amid market volatility. The report cited sources familiar with the matter. The special purpose acquisition company (Spac), which has been conducting due diligence on Carousell over the past few months, has not been able to reach a merger agreement with the company, the reported added.

Carousell joined the “unicorn club” in September 2021 after it has raised $100 million in fresh funds that value the company at more than a billion dollars.

South Korean private equity firm STIC Investments led the investment round then.

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