Carousell turns EBITDA positive as recommerce and AI become its next operating focus

Carousell Group says it reached positive EBITDA in FY25, marking a commercial milestone for a company that is trying to move beyond classifieds into a more transaction-led recommerce platform.

Why it matters

The Singapore-founded marketplace group said revenue rose 18% year on year to $141 million, nearly three times its FY21 level. It also said recommerce revenue grew 40% and accounted for 45% of total revenue in FY25, making it the company’s largest contributor to revenue growth.

For Southeast Asia’s commerce market, the useful signal is not only the profitability marker. Carousell is positioning recommerce as a more operationally mature business built around integrated payments and shipping, certified inspection for categories such as luxury goods and mobile devices, and programmes that let users sell directly to Carousell or recommerce partners.

That matters because secondhand commerce has often been treated as a consumer marketplace category. Carousell’s update frames it as infrastructure: trust, payment flow, inspection, fulfilment and physical-store coverage all become part of the model.

What to watch next

Carousell said it operated 29 physical stores across Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia by the end of FY25. The company linked that store network to more than 20% gross merchandise value uplift across its luxury, mobile phones and fashion businesses.

The company is also making AI part of the FY26 operating story. Carousell said it will continue investing in AI to strengthen marketplace trust, improve user experience and accelerate product development. It pointed to listing creation in as little as three seconds through List with AI and said more than 99% of transactions across its markets are completed without a scam incident.

The next signal to watch is whether those AI and recommerce investments translate into more visible transaction growth, category expansion and safer cross-market buying and selling.

Source note

SEA Connect based this brief on Carousell’s official press announcement and kept the article to the company’s stated FY25 results, recommerce operating model and FY26 AI priorities.