Airbnb regional managing director joins Carousell

CAROUSELL on Monday announced the appointment of Chai Jia Jih as vice-president, international, with effect from March 2, 2016.

In this role, Mr Chai will lead the mobile technology company's international growth to accelerate Carousell's expansion worldwide, as well as support financial strategy and planning. He will be based at Carousell's headquarters in Singapore and will work closely with the co-founders as part of the leadership team.

Mr Chai was most recently managing director, South-east Asia, and the head of Apac host operations at Airbnb. He joined as the first employee in South-east Asia and helped chart Airbnb's rapid growth in Asia over the past three-and-a-half years. He also 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.

Mr Chai brings with him over 12 years of leadership and growth experience in technology. Before 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.

Quek Siu Rui, Carousell's co-founder, said Mr Chai has been a good friend and mentor to Carousell for a long time, as well as a "great cultural fit" to the company.

Marcus Tan, Carousell's co-founder, added: "As the very first employee in Airbnb South-east 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."