Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Singapore’s state investment firm, Temasek Holdings Pte have agreed to invest $350 million in one of Indonesia’s biggest e-commerce companies, Tokopedia, a report from Bloomberg states.
Both companies could sign an agreement pertaining to the funding soon, but the officials have asked not to be identified discussing the deal before it is formally concluded, according to Bloomberg.
Tokopedia is one of Indonesia’s biggest e-commerce companies and also one of its most valuable startups along with Gojek. It secured an early backing from industry giants like Alibaba’s co-founder, Jack Ma and Softbank’s co-founder Masayoshi Son. The Indonesian e-commerce company is said to have approached world’s biggest internet corporations such as Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Microsoft Corp in the past. Google, the company behind world’s biggest search engine, and a government run Singaporean investment unit, Temasek’s investment in Tokopedia will symbolize a vote of confidence in the company and is going to help in its post-Covid-19 expansion.
The big companies and corporations in the West are seeking to invest more and more in Asia. The West has been facing an economic slowdown, and Asia on the other hand, has seen a tremendous growth in the smartphone industry and in the e-commerce business. This growth can be partially attributed to the Asian tech-savvy generation, and also to the push towards digitization, which has only accelerated during the pandemic. This provides the foreign firms with a huge investment opportunity, which they are quick to capitalize on.
Facebook Inc. has invested $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio, one of India’s largest telecommunications company and has also invested in Gojek, which is an Indonesian startup focusing on digital payment services. Back in 2018, America’s Walmart acquired a huge controlling share of India’s largest e-commerce company, Flipkart. The $16 billion Walmart-Flipkart deal remains the world’s biggest e-commerce deal.
This trend is very likely to continue as long as Asia offers more investment opportunities and proves to be lucrative. With the increase in investments and the creation of new startups will also lead to tough competition, which means that investments and controlling the Asian market is not going to be as easy in the coming future.
