JAKARTA (Reuters) -Indonesia’s biggest tech firm GoTo Gojek Tokopedia said on Friday it was in talks with short video app TikTok over a potential e-commerce partnership in the Southeast Asian country.
No final deal has been reached, GoTo added in a statement. The company also said the discussions did not include a takeover plan or any sale of more than 50% of its shares to any party.
Indonesia in October banned online shopping on social media platforms to protect smaller merchants and users’ data, after which TikTok had to close its e-commerce service TikTok Shop. TikTok has 125 million users in the country.
Indonesia’s small and medium enterprises minister Teten Masduki told Reuters in November that TikTok had spoken to five companies including GoTo, Bukalapak.com and Blibli about possible partnership.
Bloomberg earlier this week said TikTok had struck an agreement to invest in a unit of GoTo, citing people familiar with the matter.
Indonesia’s e-commerce market is expected to grow to around $160 billion by 2030 from $62 billion this year, according to a report on Southeast Asia’s internet economy by Google, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings and consultancy Bain & Co.
(Reporting by Ananda Teresia and Bernadette Christina; Editing by Jan Harvey and Mark Potter)
