Airbnb's regional MD exits to join Carousell

Shopping app Carousell has hired Chai Jia Jih as vice president, international. He will start his new role on 2 March 2016.In this role, Chai will lead international growth to accelerate Carousell’s expansion worldwide, as well as support financial strategy and planning. He will be based in Carousell’s HQ in Singapore and will work closely with the co-founders as part of the leadership team.Chai was most recently managing director, Southeast Asia, and the head of APAC host operations at Airbnb. Chai joined as the first employee in Southeast Asia and he helped chart Airbnb’s rapid growth in Asia over the past 3.5 years. Chai set up operations for Airbnb’s Asia hub in Singapore, and led the team to grow the inventory of homes, accelerate guest growth and build the brand.“Carousell’s not just a marketplace - It’s a community where meaningful stories are taking place every day through thousands of transactions. Carousell has tremendous potential and I’ll be working very closely with all my new teammates to steer the company towards achieving its vision,” said Chai.Chai brings with him over 12 years of leadership and growth experience in tech. Prior to his roles at Airbnb, he was a junior partner at McKinsey & Company where he advised leading tech and telco companies across Asia. Early in his career, he worked in tech as a software engineer and product manager at a software startup.“As the very first employee in Airbnb Southeast Asia, Jia Jih understands the challenges of early-stage hypergrowth, and having contributed so vitally in building Airbnb up to the esteemed brand that it is today, we firmly believe that he will be able to help us navigate our growth and capture opportunities as Carousell scales even quicker than before,” added Marcus Tan, Carousell co-founder.Last year Carousell also made its entry into the Malaysia market.