CIO Care’s inaugural TechMavericks talk show gathered 80 participants from various tertiary educational institutions, technology practitioners and youth community leaders on the 8th of December at SMU Labs. Marcus Tan (Co-founder & President, Carousell) shared about Carousell’s evolution and the growth potential of the global mobile e-commerce.

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2. IS MOBILE E-COMMERCE THE NEW GOLD RUSH?
CIO Care’s inaugural TechMavericks talk show gathered 80 participants from various tertiary educational institutions, technology practitioners and
youth community leaders on the 8th of December at SMU Labs.
After a brief introduction from David Chin, Head of Relations for CIO Academy Asia, the programme kickedoff with an insightful sharing session.
Marcus Tan (Co-founder & President, Carousell) shared about Carousell’s evolution and the growth potential of the global mobile e-commerce.
Salient points covered in Marcus’ Sharing:
- The market potential of smartphone enabled e-commerce globally and Carousell’s journey in addressing this market (now across 7 major cities).
- Balancing carefully the online and offline efforts in community building, whilst developing the app’s capabilities to manage growing app traffic.
“We are less than 1% done.” said Marcus at the end of his sharing.
A panel discussion soon followed, as Marcus, joined by Ash Goh (General Manager, FastFast), Jobert Uriarte (Regional Solutions Architech, NetApp -
Clustered Data ONTAP, APAC) and Markku Lepisto (Principal Technology Evangelist, APAC, Amazon Web Services) shared their perspectives on the
critical role of data in enabling innovation and enhancing business performance.
Moderated by David Chin, the panel addressed the emerging business opportunities derived from the rise of mobile e-commerce and ways to
overcome inherent challenges in data management as e-commerce platforms grow and expand, below are the key learning takeaways from the
panel discussion:
Sparking opportunities for value added services in the mobile e-commerce industry
Ash Goh shared about the increasingly important role that FastFast plays in enhancing the post-purchase customer experience for online shoppers
through it’s unique app platform for urgent deliveries, with Marcus stressing on the importance of caring for every touchpoint in the customers’
journey on Carousell.
- Ballooning C2C transactions in the region translate to an addressable market for 3PL companies like FastFast
- Partnerships and collaborations expedite the development of web/app based functionalities to enhance the customer experience, especially for
fast growing companies like FastFast and Carousell.
Data as a mission critical asset
Data for all organisations is a critical asset that is growing in its complexity. Attention was given to Joubert and Markku, as the duo from leading
organisations in global data solutions provide understanding about how their business enables other organisations of all sizes to scale their
operations quickly.
- Data is unarguably the most valuable asset to any organisation. As the organisation grows, so must it’s data storage infrastructure be developed
to offer higher storage capacity and maintain high-speed data transfer.
- Robust architecture is required to store, organise and secure large volumes and wide varieties of data types at affordable costs. This technology
is further developed to cope with the slew of unstructured data and rich multimedia, inherent with the rise in user generated content.
- The “ABCs” to data management at scale covers Analytics, Bandwidth and Content. Robust data infrastructure allow companies to store as
much data as required, be able to access data conveniently and lastly, never to lose the data.
Addressing tightening regulations around data
- Start-ups are not spared from data protection laws, both Marcus and Ash had to pay special attention to data protection rules like the personal
data protection act (PDPA) enacted in Singapore and similar legislations across different countries as their start-up expand.
- Data infrastructure providers are also required to adhere strictly to compliance requirements in order to render their services to end-users.
CIO Academy Asia would like to thank our panelists and delegates for their valuable contribution and participation. We would also like to acknowledge Singapore
Management University, School of Information Systems; NetApp and Amazon Webs Services for supporting this event.
*Photos of the event are available at the CIO Academy Asia Facebook Page: facebook.com/ciocare. Do show us your support by hitting the “Like” button on our
facebook page!
Marcus Tan, Carousell