How Tokopedia fought against the giants (Startup Asia preview)

Founded in 2009, Indonesian e-commerce marketplace Tokopedia has come a long way with quite a bit of good news to share this year. On its recent fourth anniversary, it announced that it sold over 13 million products last year. In June, the startup completed a financing round, with Softbank Ventures Korea in its latest list of backers (Note: East Ventures is one of its investor whom happens to be an investor of Tech in Asia. See our ethics statement here.). The startup also recently launched its Gold Merchant program, an attempt to monetize its marketplace by offering premium services to paying merchants.

While many folks may see Tokopedia’s growth as an easy ride from the outside, its founders William Tanuwijaya and Leontinus Alpha Edison have gone through multiple challenges, including competitors whom most would see as too big to take on.

In its first year of operation, Tokopedia tasted the fearsome partnership between Telkom-eBay’s Plasa.com. In its second year, it faced Rakuten Belanja Online, a joint venture online marketplace between Rakuten and MNC which we recently learned was terminated. In Tokopedia’s third year, Multiply came onto the scene, transforming itself from a social/blogging platform into an online marketplace. It is sadly now in the deadpool, though.

The challenges that Tokopedia has overcome are fascinating. So fascinating that we believe the story makes a really good fireside chat at our upcoming Startup Asia Jakarta conference on November 21 and 22, where we will have coffee with William on stage to dig deep into his experience.

While Tokopedia has had good traction, like many other startups, the online marketplace still hasn’t made a single dollar profit yet. So we are surely going to ask about William’s thoughts on monetization and how well has his Gold Merchant program has fared so far.

(Editing by Paul Bischoff)