Over the past two weeks, Carro marked two milestones in its growth as a global company. First making its entry into Hong Kong through its acquisition of the country’s leading used car platform Beyond Cars.

Second is the rebranding of Malaysia’s fastest growing used car ecosystem MyTukar into its parent company Carro, a milestone five years in the making since Carro’s investment into MyTukar in 2019.

This rebranding comes as Carro is on track to hit an all time best EBITDA of US$40M in FY24, 10x what it achieved for FY23, and further builds up its IPO readiness.

With both milestones still fresh on the news, we’re also refreshing our post a year ago on insights from Carro’s global strategy:

1️⃣ Not just a Singapore company, or just a Southeast Asia company, but a global company. From early on, the company saw value in more developed markets outside of Southeast Asia (Japan, Taiwan, and most recently Hong Kong), recognizing the market potential of capturing even a small portion of these markets, let alone having market leadership.

2️⃣ Working with the best. The company has sought out partnerships with used car market leaders, from MyTukar to Beyond Cars, or working with strategic partners like Softbank to make their market entries across the Asia Pacific.

3️⃣ As much as it would be ideal to have a repeatable playbook across markets, for a business like a used car ecosystem with multiple moving gears across marketplace sales, financing, aftersales, there needs to be a balancing act figuring out which parts of the ecosystem need to be prioritized in developing the presence of Carro experience in a specific market.

For example, in one market it may start with rentals, in another, more investments may be needed into aftersales if the local partner already has a strong marketplace presence.

4️⃣ Running a tight ship with leadership. In order to maintain a consistent company culture across various country cultures, leadership were often trained and developed in Singapore even before expansion would be implemented.

5️⃣ All roads lead to Carro. Especially as the company has been laying down the blocks to become IPO-ready, it has been important to build up a unified narrative from the various approaches the company has taken towards market expansion.

Shaping this narrative is not just about branding but also financials — something that lines up with the recent rebranding.

👉 Insights taken from our coverage of Carro’s story since 2019 and many conversations we’ve had with their leaders over the years