Indonesia says it will audit TikTok and Tokopedia’s trial e-commerce tie-up. On Tuesday, the trade minister of Indonesia said that China’s TikTok and Indonesia’s GoTo (GOTO.JK) will conduct a trial e-commerce cooperation for several months. This will allow authorities in Indonesia to evaluate the impact of the relationship on small merchants in Southeast Asia.
TikTok said on Monday that it had reached an agreement to purchase the majority of Tokopedia, the e-commerce subsidiary of GoTo, for a total of $840 million. This decision came after Indonesia outlawed online shopping on social media platforms in September, claiming the need to safeguard small companies’ and consumers’ privacy.
On Tuesday, the two businesses announced that they would start working together and then conduct a trial phase under the guidance of appropriate regulators and in close coordination with them.
Because technology is not a simple thing to deal with, we will provide a trial term of three to four months. The Indonesian Minister of Trade, Zulkifli Hasan, stated that it is possible that efforts to improve it would be required. This statement was made during an event that kicked off the partnership, a national online shopping festival dubbed Beli Local Initiative.
“The main purpose (of the trial) is to help sellers… so they… can run their business again (after suspension of TikTok Shop),” added the representative.
After the trial, Zulkifli stated that the ministry would audit and evaluate the collaboration. He also mentioned that the rule is intended to safeguard small enterprises, which are responsible for employing 90 percent of the workers in the nation.
TikTok has been working towards transforming its 125 million user base in Indonesia into a substantial source of income from e-commerce. This is because the gross merchandise value of e-commerce in Indonesia is anticipated to quadruple and reach 160 billion dollars by 2030.
As a result of the agreement with Tokopedia, which is Indonesia’s largest e-commerce platform and has around 67 million users, analysts believe that TikTok will be able to become a more formidable opponent to established competitors such as Shopee, which is owned by Sea, which is headquartered in Singapore (SE.N), and Lazada, which is owned by Alibaba, which is a Chinese e-commerce behemoth (9988. HK).
Given Indonesia’s rapid development rate, analysts from Jefferies predicted that the trial program would give users the same experience they had previously with TikTok Shop.
They stated that the total value of all online transactions conducted through TikTok Shop had increased to $6 billion this year before the ban, a milestone that Tokopedia had to attain after ten years of effort.
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