Local app Carousell gets US$6 million in funding

Carousell, through a partnership with Sequoia India, has secured US$6 million in Series A funding.The company’s existing investors include Rakuten Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, 500 Startups and serial entrepreneur, Darius Cheung, also participated in this round of funding. The funding will be used to accelerate international expansion to countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan.“The company has grown with practically no marketing to become a leading destination for consumers to buy and sell goods across all categories. Tens of thousands of products are listed and sold on Carousell everyday by consumers," said Shailendra Singh, managing director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.The lifestyle marketplace app’s top priority through the funding is to grow its engineering, product and community teams to make buying and selling on Carousell simpler and safer, said the company. It describes itself as a mobile-first C2C marketplace targeted at the smartphone generation.Quek Siu Rui (pictured left), one of the three co-founders of Carousell said: “Going mobile-first is necessary as there are now 2 billion people accessing the Internet via smartphones, many of whom are increasingly using smartphones as the primary means of connecting to the Internet. It’s a big and important mission, and we’re thrilled to welcome Sequoia to the family to learn from their extensive experience having backed global companies like Apple, Google and WhatsApp.”The app was first launched in 2012. To date, over two million items have been sold on Carousell, with an average of eight transactions happening every minute.