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Leighton Cosseboom · · 2 min read

Demystifying Indonesian ecommerce (#StartupAsia preview)

Remco Lupker, Tesong Kim, William Tanuwijaya, Daniel Tumiwa

Daniel Tumiwa, VP of digital business and ecommerce for Garuda Indonesia.

The retail market in Indonesia is estimated at US$134 billion per year, of which only 0.7 percent – worth US$1 billion – is facilitated online. That’s still microscopic when compared to the five percent ecommerce split in the US.

But in many ways, ecommerce in Indonesia is very much like the early days of the ecommerce boom in the US. Customers are not sure that they trust online payments, the logistics infrastructure is not quite there yet, and local giants like eBay have yet to emerge.

A few names have actually done quite well in the world’s largest archipelago. Traveloka, for example, is receiving 250,000 visitors per day, while Tokopedia’s marketplaces is selling 24 million items per year. But these are still only a couple of success stories in Indonesia.

See: These numbers from Asia’s half-trillion dollar ecommerce market will blow your mind

Far more often, local ecommerce companies chug along and perform mediocre at best. So what’s the secret? How can local online retailers hack Indonesia’s market and join the ranks of their international counterparts?

Daniel Tumiwa, VP of digital business and ecommerce at Garuda Indonesia will speak at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014 to share data and insights on Indonesia’s ecommerce outlook.

Join us at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014 this November 26 to 27. Register here, and use the code ILOVESTARTUPASIA to receive a 20 percent discount.

Editing by Steven Millward

(And yes, we’re serious about ethics and transparency. More information here.)

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Leighton Cosseboom

Leighton Cosseboom is an American media entrepreneur in Southeast Asia. He is the former English editor of Tech in Asia's Indonesia chapter, and recently co-founded Content Collision (C2), a media enabler and technology platform looking to help brands and publishers in the region.