Singapore-based Carousell, a leading classifieds group operating in multiple countries, has lost the head of its crucial India development centre (INDC) which is pivotal in the company’s engineering efforts to develop better products and services.
Suresh Vasudevan, Carousell’s INDC site lead and senior director of engineering, is retiring from his post after playing a pivotal role in establishing the development centre in Bengaluru.
Igor Volynskiy, Carousell’s chief technology officer, said Vasudevan played an instrumental role in the growth of the three-year-old INDC.
“He has served as a deeply respected and valued mentor to the engineering org across Carousell, and we would like to thank him for his hard work and dedication to the company,” Volynskiy told iTnews Asia.
Commenting on the INDC, Vasudevan said Carousell has built a high-performance technology team that is “empowered to plan, design and build the right products for the domains we own, while also collaborating with global teams to contribute to overall tech initiatives across all brands”.
He added that the Southeast Asia (SEA) e-commerce landscape is still in its growth stage, and that it's exciting to innovate products for these new markets that can benefit tens of millions of monthly active users.
Under Vasudevan, INDC has grown to specialise in engineering efforts for three areas: trust; ad tech; and user acquisition, search engine optimisation (SEO) and marketing technology.
The engineering team is focused on the development of robust internal tools to combat fraud and support content moderation, the creation of innovative 'ad tech' solutions for Carousell Media Group, and on developing new customer acquisition and SEO solutions in the coming year, Volynskiy said.
Vasudevan, who joined Carousell in July 2020, brought with him over two decades of experience heading engineering functions in e-commerce and payment giants such Paytm, Amazon and Sify, where he led major projects such as building a wholesale commerce platform, a global certification platform for Alexa skills and one of India’s early e-commerce platforms (Sifymall).
Prior to Carousell, Vasudevan served as the CTO and vice president of wngineering at Paytm Money, leading engineering teams to build and scale the investment platform and wealth products.
Carousell has started an external search for Vasudevan's replacement.
The job posting states the company is looking for a “strong, customer-focused engineering vice president for a dual role: to lead Carousell product development, test engineering and client platform teams and serve as the senior tech leader for the INDC as a whole”.
The role will report directly to Volynskiy.
Founded in August 2012 in Singapore, Carousell has a leading presence in eight markets under the brands Carousell, Mudah.my, Cho Tot and OneKyat and Ox Street and serves tens of millions of monthly active users.
Carousell is backed by investors including Telenor Group, Rakuten Ventures, Naver, STIC Investments and Sequoia Capital India.
