Quek Siu Rui

Quek Siu Rui is the co-founder and Group CEO of Carousell, the consumer-to-consumer marketplace he started in 2012 with university friends Marcus Tan and Lucas Ngoo. The product was prototyped during a Startup Weekend hackathon and launched on 13 August 2012 with its signature "snap, list and sell" approach. In May 2012 Quek dropped out of his Honours year to work on Carousell full time; he and his co-founders went without salaries for the first ~18 months. Carousell has since grown into a multi-category secondhand platform across Greater Southeast Asia, acquiring Mudah.my (Malaysia), Cho Tot (Vietnam) and OneKyat (Myanmar) in 2019, and reaching unicorn status in September 2021 after a US$100 million raise valued it at roughly US$1.1 billion.

He studied at the National University of Singapore, graduating in 2012 with a Bachelor of Business Administration (Entrepreneurship) as Reserve Valedictorian, and was twice on the Dean's List. He held the NUS Global Merit Scholarship and the NUS Overseas College (Silicon Valley) Scholarship, spending a year at Stanford and interning in Silicon Valley — an experience the founders credit as the inspiration for Carousell. Before Carousell he worked in marketing and product roles at telehealth startup VSee, Ogilvy & Mather and DBS Vickers.

Quek was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2018 and has been recognised repeatedly by Tatler Asia as one of "Asia's Most Influential." Notably, he turned down a reported US$100 million acquisition offer for Carousell in 2014 to keep building the company independently. Alongside running Carousell, he is part of a wave of Singaporean startup founders who have become active angel investors, backing early-stage companies across the region.

• Invests as an operator-angel at the seed stage, typically alongside other founders and early-stage funds rather than leading rounds.
• Sector tilt toward consumer internet, marketplaces and e-commerce (his own domain of expertise), plus EdTech, fintech and productivity software.
• Backs companies primarily in Singapore / Southeast Asia, with some US-based bets, per portfolio trackers.
• Brings hands-on marketplace, community-building and scaling experience from taking Carousell from hackathon prototype to unicorn — useful to consumer and platform founders.