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We update you on the most essential news from Asia in tech, media, and business—the things you need to know that you probably haven’t heard in Western media.
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Pinduoduo Joins Nasdaq-100 as Fastest in History 📈
Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo just became the quickest company in history to reach the Nasdaq 100, which is an index of the top 100 largest companies on the Nasdaq stock exchange by market cap. This means that Pinduoduo has reached a new level of success that places them in the same list as Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet. Don’t forget—Pinduoduo is only five years old and was founded in 2015.
As I’ve written before, Pinduoduo has one of the most impressive growth stories in Chinese tech. They are one of the very few Chinese companies on the Nasdaq 100. Others include Pinduoduo’s rival JD.com and China’s largest search engine Baidu. Given tensions between the US and China, JD has opened a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Baidu has considered delisting from the Nasdaq. Whatever happens with Pinduoduo’s listing in the future, we should still take note of this world class achievement.
Douyin to Cut Off Third Party Sellers 🎩
Douyin is a short mobile video platform sometimes known as the TikTok of China, as it is owned by the same parent company Bytedance. Compared to TikTok, Douyin has a lot more advanced e-commerce features that plug directly into the user experience. One way people can buy products off Douyin is by clicking on a link during a livestream that directs them to e-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com. As of August 26, however, users will no longer see third party seller options like Taobao and JD.
With 500 Million monthly active users, Douyin is looking to sell products directly on their platform and cut out third party middle men. By selling directly from Douyin’s shop, they take a larger percentage of the sale. This is similar to a situation if Amazon were to kick out third party sellers from their platform. Many people look to Douyin as a future signal for TikTok’s product roadmap. Regardless of how TikTok’s sale proceeds over the coming weeks, we can expect deeper shopping and commerce integrations within the app, just like how things are already happening on Douyin.
Tokopedia Launches New Lending Platform 💳
Tokopedia, one of Indonesia’s largest e-commerce companies, has just released a peer-to-peer lending platform called Dhanapala. This allows small businesses around Indonesia to access loans and a set of different financial services to support their enterprise. This shift from e-commerce to financial services makes a lot of sense, but what’s interesting about the timing is that Tokopedia is currently being investigated by the Indonesian government about a security breach earlier in May that exposed the information of 15 Million users.
In the midst of this scandal, you can imagine that Tokopedia’s reputation for trust and safety will be at risk and might harm the success of Dhanapala. While it’s generally perceived that people in Southeast Asia have fewer privacy concerns compared to people in the West, especially in Europe, recent scandals like this one from Tokopedia are making privacy a more important issue to Asians. In a situation like this, the next step might be new government regulation around privacy and data security.
Update #60 - Pinduoduo's New Record, Douyin Selling, and Tokopedia's Complication