2020-03-01_Forbes_Asia

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MARCH 2020 FORBES ASIA

By Ulisari Eslita and Ester Christine Natalia Photograph by Ully Zulkarnain for Forbes Indonesia

an estimated 222 trillion rupiah last year ($16 bil-

lion). It has about 90 million users, roughly one-

third the country’s population of 260 million. To-

kopedia’s business model is similar to Alibaba's, a

marketplace where any business can easily set up

and sell their goods (and Alibaba is now one of To-

kopedia’s biggest investors). To date, Tokopedia

has 7 million merchants on its site, from small en-

trepreneurial firms all the way to large local firms

and multinationals. To further boost growth,

Tanuwijaya last year made a major acquisition,

buying the Indonesian e-commerce site Bridesto-

ry and its related Parentstory last June for a re-

ported $30 million. The two sites offer goods and

services for soon-to-be newlyweds and parents.

Tanuwijaya isn’t slowing down. In the last few

years, Tanuwijaya, who is CEO, has been expand-

ing Tokopedia far beyond its core e-commerce

services, into areas such as fintech, travel book-

ings and logistics. In 2018, he launched an am-

bitious plan to entrench Tokopedia even more

deeply into the Indonesia’s $1 trillion economy,

the largest in Southeast Asia.

That year Tokopedia launched the app Mitra

Tokopedia, which has been downloaded more

than 1 million times. The app is designed for own-

ers of warung, a small open-air store that typical-

ly serve a single neighborhood—of which there

are an estimated two million across the country.

The app gives warung

owners two big advan-

tages: one is to order

goods for their warung

that will be delivered at

prices lower than what

they pay local distribu-

tors, and second is to of-

fer products from Toko-

pedia to customers, es-

pecially those too poor

to afford smartphones

or internet services.

William Tanuwijaya, the

cofounder of Indonesian e-commerce giant To-

kopedia, says he had little love of his company’s

name for years. “I actually disliked the name To-

kopedia because it was too long. We initially used

it only as a project name,” says Tanuwijaya. “We

wanted to change it on our fifth or sixth anniver-

sary, but we still could not find any better name.

What can I say? It’s serendipity.”

Now Tokopedia’s name is hard to miss. It is

part of Jakarta’s skyline, plastered in one story-

high letters across the top of Tokopedia Tower,

a 52-storey building in central Jakarta, which

serve as the company’s headquarters (Tanuwi-

jaya’s office is also on the top floor). Jakartans

can see it both day and especially at night, when

the bright green letters are lit up.

Another hard-to-miss aspect of Tokopedia is

its $7 billion valuation, making it the third most-

valuable unicorn in Southeast Asia, behind only

Singapore’s Grab and Indonesia’s Gojek, accord-

ing to U.S. consultancy CB Insights. Tokopedia

also has a huge lead over its next closest Indone-

sian rival, Bukalapak, by almost every metric and

also in value, at about $2 billion, less than one-

third that of Tokopedia.

Tanuwijaya, 38, has been building Tokopedia

at a feverish pace. Its gross merchandise volume

(GMV) has grown 100-fold in the last five years, to

W

Game Changer

WILLIAM TANUWIJAYA built Tokopedia into Southeast Asia’s third-largest unicorn,

and he’s not done yet.

TECHNOLOGY

Tokopedia Tower,

a 52-story building

in central Jakarta,

which serves as

the company’s

headquarters.

COURTESY OF TOKOPEDIA