Indonesia’s Tokopedia raises $1.1 billion from Alibaba, Softbank
Indonesia’s leading e-commerce portal Tokopedia said on December 12 it has raised $1.1 billion in funding from investors including Japanese tech holding SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. It is understood that the deal is valuing the company at around $7 billion.
SoftBank and Alibaba are existing investors in the business – the latter led a $1.1-billion round last year, while SoftBank recently transitioned its shareholding in Tokopedia to the Vision Fund.
The latest financing round for Tokopedia, which lets users set up online shops and handles transactions, underscores a push by foreign firms to tap the Southeast Asian nation’s soaring online market. Major investors, also including Expedia and China’s Tencent, have been pumping billions of dollars into Indonesia’s tech start-ups to capitalise on a burgeoning digital economy.
Tokopedia, which was set up almost a decade ago, said it would continue to focus on the market in Indonesia, a sprawling country of some 260 million people with a swelling middle class.
According to co-founder and CEO William Tanuwijaya, Tokopedia is evolving its ecosystem to infrastructure-as-a-service, providing logistics, fulfillment, payments, and financial services technologies to empower online and offline commerce.
“This will broaden Tokopedia’s scale and reach while improving operational efficiencies for the millions of businesses and partners in our ecosystem and further our mission to democratise commerce through technology in Indonesia,” he said.
Regional expansion, however, is not part of the plan.
“We will go deeper and serve Indonesians better – from the moment they wake up in the morning until they fall asleep at night; from the moment a person is born, until she or he grows old,” Tanuwijaya.
Indonesia’s leading e-commerce portal Tokopedia said on December 12 it has raised $1.1 billion in funding from investors including Japanese tech holding SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. It is understood that the deal is valuing the company at around $7 billion. SoftBank and Alibaba are existing investors in the business – the latter led a $1.1-billion round last year, while SoftBank recently transitioned its shareholding in Tokopedia to the Vision Fund. The latest financing round for Tokopedia, which lets users set up online shops and handles transactions, underscores a push by foreign firms to tap the Southeast...
Indonesia’s leading e-commerce portal Tokopedia said on December 12 it has raised $1.1 billion in funding from investors including Japanese tech holding SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. It is understood that the deal is valuing the company at around $7 billion.
SoftBank and Alibaba are existing investors in the business – the latter led a $1.1-billion round last year, while SoftBank recently transitioned its shareholding in Tokopedia to the Vision Fund.
The latest financing round for Tokopedia, which lets users set up online shops and handles transactions, underscores a push by foreign firms to tap the Southeast Asian nation’s soaring online market. Major investors, also including Expedia and China’s Tencent, have been pumping billions of dollars into Indonesia’s tech start-ups to capitalise on a burgeoning digital economy.
Tokopedia, which was set up almost a decade ago, said it would continue to focus on the market in Indonesia, a sprawling country of some 260 million people with a swelling middle class.
According to co-founder and CEO William Tanuwijaya, Tokopedia is evolving its ecosystem to infrastructure-as-a-service, providing logistics, fulfillment, payments, and financial services technologies to empower online and offline commerce.
“This will broaden Tokopedia’s scale and reach while improving operational efficiencies for the millions of businesses and partners in our ecosystem and further our mission to democratise commerce through technology in Indonesia,” he said.
Regional expansion, however, is not part of the plan.
“We will go deeper and serve Indonesians better – from the moment they wake up in the morning until they fall asleep at night; from the moment a person is born, until she or he grows old,” Tanuwijaya.
