TikTok said it plans to invest billions of dollars in the Southeast Asia region, which has proven to be one of the short video platform's key markets.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said, “We intend to invest billions of dollars in Indonesia and Southeast Asia over the next few years,” Agence France-Presse reported via the South China Morning Post. ” he said.
“From a humble team of about 100 people, we now have nearly 8,000 employees in Southeast Asia.”
According to Reuters, Chu did not elaborate on exactly how much money the company plans to spend in the region of 630 million people, half of whom are under 30.
TikTok's CEO was speaking at a forum hosted by TikTok in Singapore, where the Bytedance-owned platform leveraged TikTok's strengths as a commerce platform to sell participants.
Chew's comments came on the same day that Singapore-based consulting firm Momentum Works released a report that found TikTok has made significant strides as an e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia. This shows how far it lags compared to its competitors in some regions.
Overall, the report found that TikTok is the fastest growing e-commerce platform in the region, with gross revenue (GMV) on the platform soaring. $4.4 billion compared to 2022 $600,000 This made it the fastest growing e-commerce platform in the region.
However, TikTok still lags far behind Shopee, a platform owned by Singapore-based Sea Ltd., with GMV $47.9 billion In second place is Lazada, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group headquartered in China. $20.1 billion At GMV.
Indonesia is by far the largest e-commerce market in the region; 52% According to the Momentum Works report, the total GMV percentages are as follows:
The report says there is ample potential for TikTok to expand its e-commerce presence. We predict that gross merchandise value on e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia will approximately double over the next five years. $100 billion Every year from today to that time $175 billion and $232 billion By 2028.
Expanding its role as an e-commerce platform isn't TikTok's only plan. The platform has also expanded into the music business, which has sometimes put it at odds with major music industry players.
Earlier this year, TikTok struck a deal with Snoop Dogg to have the hip-hop artist's catalog appear exclusively on TikTok for a period of time before appearing on other streaming platforms.
Around the same time, it was revealed that some Australian TikTok users would not be able to use some music licensed from major labels in their videos. This was apparently an experiment by TikTok video producers trying to prove that they don't need major label music. To produce videos. (Music is often the driving force behind video discovery on TikTok.)
“We intend to invest billions of dollars in Indonesia and Southeast Asia over the next few years…From a humble team of about 100 people, we now have approximately 8,000 employees in Southeast Asia.”
Shu Gee Choo, TikTok
A year earlier, TikTok launched its own music distribution platform SoundOn, allowing creators to upload their music directly to other services like TikTok, ByteDances' music streaming app Resso, and Spotify.
Last month, the company launched what it calls the Artist Impact Program, which allows artists to opt-in to TikTok's commercial music library. One million Rights-cleared song provided by an “extensive network of partnerships.”
But TikTok's plans to expand its involvement in e-commerce and music are being challenged by political issues facing the company amid rising tensions between China and the West.
Chu faced a four-and-a-half-hour standoff outside the U.S. Capitol this spring, during which the CEO was repeatedly asked to assure lawmakers that the personal data of TikTok's U.S. users was not transferred to China.
Chew highlighted TikTok's “Operation Texas,” an ongoing project to migrate U.S. users' data from servers in China to Oracle servers in Texas. But he acknowledged that the Texas facility is not yet fully operational and that some ByteDance engineers in China are accessing user data in the United States.
Many governments around the world have banned employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, citing security concerns. These include the United Kingdom, France, Australia, the United States, some U.S. states, and the European Commission.
But Montana has gone a step further, with the governor signing a bill that completely bans TikTok in the state. The law penalizes app stores that make apps available to users in the state, but the penalties are limited to app stores and not app users.
TikTok has filed a First Amendment (free speech) challenge, and a group of TikTok users in the state has filed their own legal challenge on similar grounds.world music business
