Ox Street CEO Gijs Verheijke (L) and Carousell Quek Siu Rui
Singapore-based leading classifieds group Carousell Group has acquired Ox Street, an online marketplace for authenticated sneakers and streetwear in Southeast Asia.
This comes just a few weeks after Carousell received a US$100 million investment round, led by Korean PE firm STIC Investments, to become a unicorn.
This acquisition will accelerate the group’s re-commerce growth in Greater Southeast Asia. Post-acquisition, Singapore-based Ox Street will retain its brand, platform, and team.
Carousell also intends to deepen Ox Street’s reach and scale to become a fashion and luxury goods market leader. It will also allow both marketplaces to capture the growth of the Greater Southeast Asian market across sneakers and more emerging categories driven by Gen Z trends.
Founded in November 2019, Ox Street aims to make buying and selling second-hand goods “as seamless as a luxury e-commerce experience”. It inspects and authenticates every pair of sneakers before reaching its buyers.
Ox Street focuses on the 85 million Gen Z and Y consumers in Southeast Asia, who are expected to spend US$128 billion on fashion in 2025.
The sneaker company operates in five markets across Southeast Asia.
Also Read: Carousell enters unicorn club after a new US$100M round led by Korea’s STIC Investments
According to Carousell, it has advanced and intuitive technology, extensive reach, and marketplace liquidity across a wide range of categories. These features, combined with Ox Street’s authentication capabilities, will further propel the mutual goal of creating an experience where transacting second-hand is as convenient and trusted as buying first-hand.
“We see immense opportunity in bringing that capability and their learnings to double down on our re-commerce efforts. Most of all, we see this acquisition as joining forces to accelerate our shared vision of making second-hand the first choice,” said Quek Siu Rui, co-founder and CEO of Carousell.
“Our focus markets align nearly 1 to 1, and in these markets, Carousell was the first and remains the largest marketplace for sneakers and streetwear. With Carousell’s reach and technological capabilities, we can supercharge Ox Street’s ability to innovate and reach more buyers and sellers,” said Gijs Verheijke, the Founder and CEO of Ox Street.
Launched in August 2012, Carousell began in Singapore and is present in eight markets across Asia. As of last September, the firm had over 250 million listings across Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The marketplace has a diverse range of products across various categories, including cars, lifestyle, gadgets and fashion accessories. It also owns and operates Cho Tot (Vietnam), Mudah (Malaysia), OneKyat (Myanmar), and Revo Financial (Singapore).
Since its beginning, Carousell has raised over US$260 million via several rounds. They included US$80 million from a consortium of companies in September 2020 and US$56 million from OLX in April 2019. Carousell’s other investors include Telenor Group, Rakuten Ventures, Sequoia India and Naspers.
In 2019, it made a series of acquisitions to accelerate leadership in Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, including 701Search, the classifieds firm owned by Norwegian telco Telenor Group, and OLX Philippines.
In June, a Bloomberg report said citing undisclosed sources that Carousell was mulling public listing in the US via the merger with a blank cheque company. The listing could occur as soon as the end of this year.
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Image Credit: Carousell
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