Is TikTok Shop poised to take over Indonesia?

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Hello reader,

I recently started listening to this Japanese singer called Yuuri, thanks to a good friend who first shared one of his songs called Dry Flower with me.

This guy just doesn’t miss.

With songs like Betelgeuse and Leo, it amazes me that I haven’t heard of this singer up until now.

It’s interesting to me because even though I listen to a fairly large range of music genres, learning about Yuuri helped me realize that there’s so many niches and smaller artists out there with ridiculously good songs and amazing voices, just that they’ve been relatively isolated for one reason or another.

In many cases, it can take a while before these lesser-known artists get big. Perhaps they need time for word of mouth to spread or just one big, lucky break. But once they do and you find out about them, it can be so refreshing.

Today’s story examines a similar situation. While TikTok itself is a veritable behemoth, its ecommerce platform TikTok Shop is a relatively small player in the Indonesian ecommerce market. Will it get the breakthrough it needs?

Today we look at:

• Whether TikTok Shop has what it takes in Indonesia
• The delays in Byju’s 2022 financial statements
• Other newsy highlights such as Ant Group expanding its coverage in Malaysia and FTX halting the sale of its US$500 million Anthropic stake.

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Shop till you Tok

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of social media platforms providing an ecommerce component. After all, I use social media for its, well, social aspects, not to make impulsive purchases. (Those happen mostly outside of social media scrolling.)

That said, TikTok Shop couldn’t care less about what I think – it’s the Indonesian market that it’s probably focusing on, especially since it’s seeing better performance recently.

Late to the party

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