Game Changer

William Tanuwijaya made Tokopedia a $7 billion company, plans to grow further beyond ecommerce.

- Ester Christine Natalia and Ulisari Eslita

The “e-Conomy SEA 2019” report by Google, Temasek Holdings Pte, and Bain & Co lists Indonesia as the largest and fastest-growing digital economy in Southeast Asia. The report calculates that the country’s digital economy size has grown fourfold since 2015 to $40 billion in 2019, with an average growth of 49% annually. By 2025, Indonesia’s digital economy size is forecasted to reach $130 billion. It is followed by Vietnam, which has become the second fastest-growing digital economy, growing 38% annually since 2015 and amounting to $12 billion in 2019.

Tokopedia is one of the key players in Indonesia’s digital economy. The company is valued at $7 billion after receiving a $1.1 billion Series G funding round led by its existing investors Softbank and Alibaba in 2018. The business that started as a modest e-commerce site has already expanded beyond a platform for trading goods. William Tanuwijaya, 38, the founder and CEO, even claims that the company is no longer just an e-commerce company, but an ecosystem or a digital city. Besides hosting merchants who sell consumer goods, the platform also caters to financial needs like bill payment, electronic money top-up and investment, entertainment needs like hotel booking and vouchers for events or amusement parks, as well as logistics needs with warehouses for sellers.