Alibaba leads $1.1b round for Indonesia’s Tokopedia
Tokopedia, a venture capital-backed online marketplace in Indonesia, has received a $1.1 billion funding round led by Alibaba Group that will see the Chinese e-commerce giant become a minority stakeholder.
Tokopedia previously raised $100 million from SoftBank and Sequoia Capital in 2014, and counts CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures and Japanese internet player Beenos among its early backers. The company said a number of undisclosed existing shareholders also joined the latest funding round.
The partnership with Alibaba will enhance the scale and quality of Tokopedia’s services to its users, while allowing Indonesian merchants and partners to expand their businesses beyond the country, the company said in a press release.
“We have always thought of Alibaba as our teacher and role model,” said William Tanuwijaya, Tokopedia’s founder and CEO. “Today, we are excited to welcome them as a shareholder and we believe that our partnership will further accelerate the realization of our mission.”
Tanuwijaya started the business in 2009 after he received seeding from his former employer. The C2C platform allows individuals and companies to open their own online stores for free. At present, it has about two million merchants on its platforms and 35 monthly users with 150 million views.
Tokopedia is the second online e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia that Alibaba has invested, after committing about $1 billion to take its stake in Lazada from 51% to 81% last year. The deal provided an exit for existing investors including Rocket Internet, AB Kinnevik and Verlinvest. Prior to that, Lazada bought Singapore-based RedMart, an online grocer backed by several VC investors.
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