Miguel Cordon · · 2 min readByteDance to lay off 450 employees in Indonesia: report
Photo credit: ByteDance
TikTok owner ByteDance plans to cut jobs in Indonesia following TikTok Shop’s US$1.5 billion merger with GoTo Group’s Tokopedia, Bloomberg reported. The layoffs, which sources say may happen as early as this month, would potentially affect 450 jobs – or about 9% of the staff – though the number may still change.
Tech in Asia reached out to ByteDance, but the company declined to comment.
According to the report, this decision will mainly affect the advertising and operations teams, with ByteDance aiming to eliminate duplicate roles following the TikTok Shop and Tokopedia merger. In total, ByteDance’s combined ecommerce team in Indonesia is around 5,000-strong.
Indonesia was a successful market for TikTok Shop early on. There, the platform faces stiff competition from rivals like Sea Group’s Shopee and Alibaba’s Lazada.
Merging with Tokopedia had been a key strategy shift for ByteDance to adhere to local regulations.
The planned job cuts reflect a broader trend in the Chinese tech industry as well, the report noted. An economic downturn has led to massive job cuts in large tech companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent Holdings.
TikTok also reportedly slashed jobs last month, with hundreds of employees being let go from the global marketing and operations teams as part of a larger overhaul of the businesses.
See also: Shopee’s mimicry of TikTok Shop is starting to pay off
Editing by Putra Muskita and Dhania Putri Sarahtika
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