YouTube and Shopee join forces in Southeast Asian e-commerce partnership – Tech

Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and e-commerce platform Shopee said on Wednesday it is launching an online shopping service in Indonesia and plans to expand it to Southeast Asia as competition intensifies from rival operator TikTok.

As part of the partnership with YouTube Shopping, users will be able to purchase products viewed on YouTube via links to Shopee, owned by Southeast Asian technology conglomerate Sea Ltd.

Company executives told reporters they plan to expand the service to Thailand and Vietnam within weeks. YouTube Shopping is already live in South Korea and the United States.

The launch of the service was prompted by “the energy and speed at which Indonesia is developing online commerce,” Ajay Vidyasagar, YouTube’s Asia-Pacific director, said in Jakarta.

With YouTube Shopping, Alphabet Inc. and Shopee will compete with TikTok, the video app owned by Bytedance, which has stepped up its ambitions in the region after taking control of Indonesia’s largest e-commerce platform Tokopedia.

Asked about the size of the Shopee partnership, Vidyasagar said it was very significant, but declined to provide numbers. He said YouTube Shopping would be opened to non-Shopee partners “in a phased and sequential manner.”

Reuters reported last year, citing sources, that YouTube planned to apply for a license to operate e-commerce services in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

TikTok’s shopping service, TikTok Shop, was expected to reach $16.3 billion in gross revenue in Southeast Asia in 2023, nearly fourfold growth from the previous year, consulting firm Momentum Works said in a report.

40 percent increase. The strike has already halted production of the Boeing 737 MAX and other planes,

This has made the platform the second largest e-commerce platform in the region, after Shopee.

The region of nearly 700 million people is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets in the world. A Momentum Works report said the eight largest e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia were expected to collect $114.6 billion in gross merchandise value in 2023, up 15 percent from 2022.

Every Monday

for subscribing to our newsletter!