- Premium Content It takes our newsroom weeks - if not months - to investigate and produce stories for our premium content. You can’t find them anywhere else.
Jofie Yordan · · 7 min readToco was a ghost town. Then Tokopedia’s sellers showed up
Toco, a little-known marketplace that launched in Indonesia just last August, is quietly cashing in as Tokopedia and TikTok Shop fumble their integration.
Over the past three weeks, many Tokopedia sellers have migrated to Toco, drawn by its policy of lifetime free admin fees. In comparison, admin fees for sellers on Shopee or Tokopedia can reach up to 8% of each transaction.
These merchants were frustrated by the complex integration process and found the TikTok Shop seller app unintuitive.
Image credit: Timmy Loen
Toco’s number of sellers jumped from a few hundred in early May to 45,000 by June 11, according to the company. Traffic? Up 40% in a week.
“I didn’t expect Toco to grow this fast,” its founder and CEO Arnold Sebastian Egg tells Tech in Asia. “It’s a blessing because we haven’t done any marketing.”
Egg is no stranger to the ecommerce world. In 2005, he co-founded Tokobagus (now classifieds platform OLX), one of Indonesia’s first digital marketplaces.
In 2010, he sold Tokobagus to South African consumer internet group Naspers for an undisclosed amount. He then left the company in 2012.
Now, the sudden surge is putting his latest venture to the test. Is Toco ready for the heat, and can it turn momentum into something real?
The surge no one bet on
Santo Lim, who sells plastic packaging products, recently moved from Tokopedia to Toco during the integration shake-up. He says rising admin fees on Tokopedia and Shopee have eaten into margins.
“The integration with TikTok is a hassle. I’ve run into a bunch of issues such as trying to upload products for ads,” Lim adds. The free admin fees on Toco made him interested in setting up a shop on the platform.
Hone Mac (not his real name), who sells secondhand Apple goods, also shuttered his Tokopedia shop after eight years. “Dealing with disputes on Tokopedia has gotten really frustrating. It’s like talking to a bot now,” he says.
Earlier this month, he joined Toco after learning about the platform from another seller on Facebook.
See also: From marketplace to mess: Tokopedia unravels after merger
Sellers showed up; customers, not so much
A big test worth doing for Toco?
Stay ahead in Asia’s tech landscape
This is premium content. Subscribe to read the full story.
Indonesian ecommerce upstart Toco is suddenly in the spotlight. Find out what its founder is doing differently and whether the hype will last.
We know this is not ideal. ⌛ Sign up in 20 seconds. Cancel anytime.
Our subscriber community includes professionals from these companies:
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
