Kuala Lumpur, 26 January 2022 - Southeast Asia’s largest car e-commerce platform Carsome has appointed Ravi Shankar Mallavarapu as its Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to head multidisciplinary functions and continue driving Carsome’s leadership in all marketing-related aspects.

In his new role, Mallavarapu will oversee brand, marketing, digital, social media, public relations, growth, market research and customer experience. He will also work closely with Carsome’s Chief Brand Officer Derek Tan on brand, creative, production and sponsorships.

Carsome Co-founder and Group CEO Eric Cheng said that this appointment is an important move to continue strengthening Carsome’s leadership team to achieve greater heights. “Ravi is a data-driven marketer who balances creativity with excellent execution. We are very excited to have him onboard to accelerate our business growth and help establish Carsome’s mission in the market, which is to create a new standard of buying and selling cars,” Cheng added.

Mallavarapu brings with him close to 15 years of experience in digital, brand and growth marketing. He spent six years across multiple firms in India, before moving to Malaysia, where his last role was AirAsia’s Chief Growth Officer. At AirAsia, Mallavarapu successfully built an in-house digital marketing team and transformed it into a growth team, which runs ads to develop marketing products, in line with the company’s business direction of pivoting from an airline to a super-app.

“I am thrilled to be a part of Carsome’s journey of building a trusted car ownership ecosystem using data and technology. Being the industry leader, Carsome is in a good position to bring change to user behaviour in the Southeast Asian region, where most car transactions are done offline. We can move this online by establishing trust and the best customer experience at every touch point. I look forward to making Carsome the top-of-mind brand in this region and connecting the dots between brand, marketing, technology and data,” Mallavarapu said.

Mallavarapu’s appointment is timely for Carsome to streamline and expand its marketing and outreach efforts, with specific focus on its business-to-consumer arm Carsome Certified, an industry standard for car-buying with quality assurance and peace of mind.

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