Eric Cheng, Co-Founder of Carsome, Focus on Your Dream

April 14, 2023

S.E. ASIA'S LARGEST INTEGRATED CAR E-COMMERCE PLATFORM

The most important thing for an entrepreneur is to first discover a real need in the marketplace for a service or product and then to come up with an idea to meet that need. That was what Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling did with Grab. This is what  Eric Cheng and Teoh Jiun Ee did with Carsome.

Carsome is a digital platform that handles the entire car-selling process from C2B2C (Customer to Business and Business to Customer) with transparency and ease. They promise selling your car within an hour with the best price possible in the country via online bidding or selling it to Carsome directly.

You can buy a used car with only 3 clicks. Delivery will be to your doorstep. Carsome will take care of validating specifications, inspection, financing, ownership transfer, insurance, warranty, and after-sales service. No more dealing directly with used car dealers or transacting with strangers.

The idea was brilliant but if there was no funding, it could not have taken off the way it did. A visit from Thomas Tsao, founding partner of VC firm, Gobi Partners, (manages US$1.5 billion assets) to the small Kelana Jaya office of Carsome in 2015 changed the destiny of the duo.

Gobi started the ball rolling with US$350k seed money, investors poured in thereafter - US2m (2016), US$6m (2017), US$27m (2018), US$30m (2020) and US$290m (2022).

Today Carsome is S.E.Asia's largest integrated car e-commerce platform.

Highly successful for a 2nd year University drop-out (Eric Cheng, 37) who tried various jobs for years, went through a Hikikomori (social recluse) bout, and fought failures before he found success together with a friend Teoh in Carsome.
"I had a lot of sleepless nights" said Eric. "Focus on your dream" come what may.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  1. Carsome. About us. https://www.carsome.my/about-us
  2. Reuters. 1 September 2021. Anshuman Daga. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/malaysias-carsome-raises-170-mln-reach-13-bln-valuation-2021-09-02/
  3. Forbes. Asia. 10 Jan 2022. Simran Vaswani.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/simranvaswani/2022/01/10/malaysian-unicorn-carsome-raises-290-million-to-fund-southeast-asia-expansion-plans/?sh=641d6ab92c45
  4. Financial Review. 13 July 2021. Jessica Sier. https://www.afr.com/technology/malaysia-s-carsome-buys-icar-asia-in-200m-deal-20210712-p5891n 
  5. TechinAsia. https://www.techinasia.com/carsome-doubles-fy21-revenue-losses-widen-7x
  6. Business Today. 5 October 2022. Cynthia Ignatius. https://www.businesstoday.com.my/2022/10/05/an-interview-with-eric-cheng-co-founder-and-gceo-of-carsome/
  7. TechNode Global. 14 September 2021. Stephanie Frances Augustin https://technode.global/2021/09/14/how-carsome-became-malaysias-largest-tech-unicorn-with-a-little-help-from-a-friend/
  8. Carsome. 19 May 2021. Jasmine Andria. https://www.carsome.my/news/item/carsome-ceo-eric