Carsome launches data center of excellence, appoints new chief data officer

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Following the company’s endeavor to launch a new data center of excellence (COE) in response to the digitalization of the company’s business decisions for the used car industry, Carsome has recently appointed Piyush Palkar as the company’s latest chief data officer.

The former head of data at iflix and subsequently WeTV iflix brings to Carsome a vast experience in data and analytics across banking, energy, media and entertainment, and retail. Despite being a construction engineer by qualification, he ventured into data since his varsity days.

Palkar will lead data maturity, data engineering and management, ML/AI-based data-driven innovations, business intelligence, insights and data analytics in Carsome. He will also embed data culture in the organization to support organizational efficiency and agility through data.

Speaking about his announcement, he stated, “I am very excited to be part of the team that digitalizes the used car industry, now further strengthened by cutting-edge data technologies, as democratizing data and providing near-real time insights to different business functions are vital in driving innovation and efficiency. We will leverage data to improve customer experience via personalization, customer segmentation and propensity models.”

Palkar’s appointment by Carsome will also aid the company in its quest to use data, which allows Carsome to power its business at all stages while supporting strategic decisions. The combination of auction and market data, and machine learning (ML) model backs Carsome’s proprietary vehicle pricing optimization and inventory support system. It also helps the company in understanding different user personas and their journey as a customer, and allows for analytics-backed inventory acquisition and liquidation strategy.

Carsome co-founder and group CEO Eric Cheng explained that the company has amassed a wealth of data after six years in business, where data of hundreds of cars pass through Carsome’s platforms every single day. “By setting up our data COE, we are on full throttle in implementing data science solutions, along with data-driven insights to increase operational efficiency.”

“Our in-house data capabilities and machine learning automations increase work efficiency and enhance timely, evidence-based decision-making abilities, which in turn helps our customers get good quality services from Carsome,” Cheng added. 

The company also believes that data helps in digitalizing workflows and processes by improving internal products with artificial intelligence (AI) and ML capabilities. Application of AI and ML include automating various operations tasks, such as car number plate masking and car scoring engine; these reduce the time an inspector takes to inspect a car and therefore promote better efficiency internally while providing faster car-selling process for consumers.

Carsome is on track to hit an annualized US$1 billion in revenue by the end of the second quarter (Q2 2021). The company is also expected to complete a number of major merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions that will further cement its market leadership position in the next six months.