How TikTok saved its ecommerce business in Indonesia

A year ago, TikTok’s ecommerce business in Indonesia was thriving. With its viral videos, TikTok had become a worldwide phenomenon, and it was translating its influence into a powerful new revenue stream by letting users buy and sell things while its videos played.

Indonesia was a critical market and the first place where TikTok rolled out this feature. The app, owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, had about 130 million users, nearly as many as it had in the United States. Since its launch here in 2021, TikTok Shop had become one of the most popular places for Indonesians to buy things online.