Indonesian e-commerce company Tokopedia is expanding its one-day delivery guarantee to almost all of its products as it prepares to battle Amazon and other foreign rivals.
Backed by Alibaba Group and SoftBank, Tokopedia’s greatest strength might lie in the fact it is a 100-per-cent Indonesian focused company, unlike its rivals – and shareholder – which are simultaneously trying to build share in many different markets simultaneously.
“We focus on Indonesia,” Tokopedia founder and CEO William Tanuwijaya said in an interview in Tokyo. “Our mission is really to solve the Indonesian customer problem. And we see the room for growth is still tremendous.”
Online shopping in Indonesia is expected to grow by more than 400 percent within the next five or so years, to US$53 billion. That sort of growth is attracting Amazon, which opened in Singapore two years ago and subsequently launched in Australia, along with existing Indonesian rivals including Alibaba-backed Lazada and Shopee.
Tokopedia already offers same-day or one-day delivery for about 65 percent of the products it sells. Expanding that to almost its entire catalog would be made possible by alliances with 11 logistics companies covering the most populous of the country’s 17,000 islands.
The company is a marketplace, linking more than 5 million sellers with the nation’s largest database of online shoppers. It has no inventory of its own.
Tanuwijaya admitted getting more than 90 per cent of goods delivered within 24 hours was a goal that might take two years or more to achieve.
