TikTok helps boost business in Indonesia

JAKARTA — Andri, a 40-year-old clothing seller at Tanah Abang shopping center in Central Jakarta, was busy packing the 460 packages to send to his online buyers.

"You can see that not a single soul comes here, but hundreds of people check out my products on my online shop account every day, thanks to this technology called online shop," he said.

The online shop app Andri used the most and attracted the most customers was Tokopedia, he said. Since going online, he has seen his monthly earnings increase from 4 million rupiah ($255) to 30 million rupiah ($1,910).

Tokopedia — a business entity of Indonesia's largest internet technology company GoTo Group, which merged with Chinese social media platform TikTok in December — is focusing on helping local sellers to benefit micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, or MSMEs, in Indonesia.

"Since online shops gain popularity, offline merchants are increasingly losing customers. But then I realized that technology does not defeat us; it is us who have to keep up with the technology development. At that time, Tik-Tok e-commerce provided easy features for us sellers to sell our products online," Andri said.

Similar to Andri, 39-year-old Hana Maulida Rompas, who sells handmade female accessories, said she no longer needed to rent a shophouse since going online on Tokopedia, TikTok Shop and a few other e-commerce apps.

"I can just sell my products at home. I can gain more buyers without needing to pay for a monthly shophouse rent," she said.

Rompas said she learned a lot about product marketing from the training provided by TikTok. The platform routinely provides free online classes and offline training every quarter of the year to help MSMEs understand the digital marketing ecosystem, so that they can develop their marketing skills.

The training is supported by the Indonesian government and has been running since 2021.

Xinhua