Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) is in talks to make a major investment in Indonesia’s PT Tokopedia, people familiar with the matter said, potentially scoring a second deal to accelerate its expansion into Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
The Chinese company is in negotiations to lead a funding round in Indonesia’s largest online marketplace of up to US$500 million, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the deal is private.
Alibaba, which already controls Lazada Group SA, would be joining existing backers Softbank Group Corp and Sequoia Capital if the financing goes through.
An alliance with Alibaba would likely preclude a deal with JD.com Inc, which was also in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Tokopedia, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg in May.
Representatives for Alibaba and JD declined to comment. Tokopedia was not immediately available for comment.
China’s largest tech firms such as Tencent Holdings Ltd are accelerating their investments into Southeast Asia, the first step in concerted efforts to expand beyond their increasingly saturated home shores.
Alibaba has been the most aggressive of its peers, setting up not just e-commerce operations, but also digital payments networks in anticipation of Amazon.com Inc’s eventual debut.
Indonesia as an e-commerce market is expected to climb to US$65 billion by 2020 from just US$8 billion now, according to a report by Macquarie Research.
Tokopedia was cofounded by William Tanuwijaya, the son of a factory worker, in 2009.
The business model is similar to that of Alibaba’s Taobao emporium, matching customers with merchants instead of selling products from its own shelves.
It raised a then-record US$100 million funding round from Softbank and Sequoia Capital in 2014.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last