Fireside chat: How e-commerce startup Tokopedia fought against the giants (LIVE BLOG)
Founded in 2009, Tokopedia has grown to become one of the largest C2C marketplaces in Indonesia, fighting against giants like eBay, Rakuten, and Multiply along the way. On its recent fourth anniversary, it announced that it sold over 13 million products last year. The startup also recently launched its Gold Merchant program, an attempt to monetize its marketplace by offering premium services to paying merchants. Today at Startup Asia Jakarta 2013, we interview its co-founder and CEO, William Tanuwijaya, to find out how his team did it.
09:35: Tech in Asia CEO Willis Wee and Tokopedia CEO take the stage to begin the interview.
09:40: “It’s like always standing on the edge of a cliff,” says Tanuwijaya. The biggest challenge is making money, recruitment, competing with bigger companies, and going international.
09:45: When Tokopedia came to Indonesia, there were no incubators or other help for startups. Tokopedia has gone through four rounds of funding so far, but convincing investors was difficult at the beginning. There were no previous stories of successful e-commerce businesses in Indonesia. Investors were also scared of international competition. In total, they’ve raised about $5 million.
09:50: In 2010 was the first time Tanuwijaya tried to raise money overseas, but his English was “broken,” and so was the Japanese investors’. It only took six months after launching for Indonesia’s largest telco to partner with eBay afterward. Then Rocket internet came. All of the major competition has more capital than Tokopedia. Still, it has the most customers and listings in Indonesia. The valuation of the company is above $20 million.
09:55: “It’s not something cool to work for. [...] Story is important,” says Tanuwijaya, referring to his difficulties recruiting for a web company when he started his business. Once he gained 30 employees, he started worrying about company culture, which was easy to manage with only 10 people.
10:00: “We are an internet company, we are not an e-commerce company. We are an internet company who helps other people do e-commerce,” says Tanuwijaya. “We believe we can have something like the Alibaba of China or the Amazon of the US.”
10:03: “Today we [ship] about 1.5 million products per month, and it’s growing 10 to 20 percent per month,” says Tanuwijaya. He says Tokopedia processes roughly 10,000 transactions per day. “We can only make money by helping other people make more money.” he says, in regards to Tokopedia’s new Gold Merchant subscription service for merchants. 10 percent of the merchants on Tokopedia have subscribed since launch three weeks ago.
10:06: “We believe the center of the ecosystem is an open marketplace model. It’s very similar to Taobao,” says Tanuwijaya. He hints at a “secret project” that also follows this model.
10:09: Tanuwijaya says Tokopedia will beat eBay’s Blanja, which just recently launched in Indonesia. He says if offered to be acquired by China’s Alibaba for $200 million, Tanuwijaya replies, “We’ll see.”
10:10: The interview has ended. Both Tanujiwaya and Wee exit stage right.
This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Jakarta 2013, our event running on November 21 and 22. For the rest of our Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @TechinAsia, and on our Facebook page.
(Editing by Terence Lee)
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