Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce platform Carousell has fired about 110 employees, which amounts to 10 per cent of its total workforce. This step has been taken to reduce costs.

According to IANS, the co-founder and CEO of Carousell, Siu Rui Quek said that he takes responsibility for the "decisions that have led us here".

"Emails will be sent to everyone in affected business units, clarifying if your role was impacted. Parting with teammates, whom we are grateful to for joining us on this mission, is a very difficult decision. We will be sure to treat everyone impacted with compassion and to lend as much support as we can to them," he said in a statement.

The Singapore-headquartered company will offer 1 month of salary for every year of service, rounded up to the nearest half year, to each impacted employee. "We will ensure that every impacted teammate will have at least 3 months of compensation, topping up the difference where necessary," stated the CEO.

Siu Rui Quek said as we emerged from the Covid lockdowns of 2021 across key markets of the group, "we were optimistic about the recovery to come and eager to reignite growth in our core classifieds business".

"Looking back, I'd made critical mistakes: First, I was too optimistic about the pace of our impact versus our increase in investments. Second, while it is easy to blame market conditions, I also underestimated the impact of growing our team size too quickly," he added.

Carousell operates in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.