Latest update: 09.07.2024 | by Lili
What is Tokopedia
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Tokopedia is one of the most popular marketplaces in Indonesia. Founded in 2009, Tokopedia is based in Jakarta and solely serves the Indonesian market. The company claims to be available in 99% of cities in the country while offering 865 million products by over 14 million merchants.
Tokopedia currently has around 158 million monthly visits and an annual revenue of $947 million.
As a highly popular general marketplace, Tokopedia offers all kinds of products ranging from electronics to fashion, beauty, household items, toys, furniture, groceries, automotive products and even discount vouchers for popular fast food restaurants.
Screenshot of Tokopedia.com’s homepage
In early 2024 social media giant TikTok bought the Indonesian e-Commerce platform. This step was done so TikTok could keep up its selling efforts in the country after the social commerce platform TikTok Shop was not allowed to enter the market.
Find out everything about TikTok’s acquisition of Tokopedia!
How does Tokopedia work
Similarly to Lazada and Wish, Tokopedia uses the popular tile format known from social media. The marketplace is available as a desktop and smartphone app, making it easy for shoppers to choose the version best suited to their habits.
Tokopedia often uses discounts, flash sales and other perks like free delivery to entice consumers to shop. Payment is fast and easy on the platform, since Tokopedia offers several popular payment options including credit cards, bank transfer and even cash on delivery.
Furthermore, Tokopedia utilises innovative payment solutions like e-Wallets and GoPay, as well as GoPayLater Cicil that allows customers to pay for their purchases in monthly installments.
Screenshot of random listings for products on sale on tokopedia.com
Regarding its business model, Tokopedia started out as a C2C marketplace allowing consumers to sell their items amongst each other. Later on, it introduced a B2C branch where brands and sellers were able to establish official stores on the platform.
Today, as mentioned before, Tokopedia works with third party sellers. Besides providing a selling platform, Tokopedia offers other types of support to its vendors, including marketing, logistics and even fulfillment.
Find out all about fulfillment and how it affects your IP rights.
Tokopedia and IP rights
Since the marketplace works with third party sellers (86.5% of whom are new merchants), the danger of IP infringements is higher. Unfortunately, Tokopedia had a history of counterfeits being offered on the platform, as noted by the United States Trade Representative’s 2022 Report on Notorious Markets.
According to this document, Tokopedia is most vulnerable to counterfeit clothing, beauty products, accessories and even pirated textbooks. However, the report notes that lately there have been some improvements regarding the protection of IP rights, and we at globaleyez can certainly attest to that. This is also certified by the 2023 edition of the Report on Notorious Markets where Tokopedia is not mentioned anymore.
Tokopedia's new IP platform
Tokopedia’s old IP protection methods were slow and hard to follow for rights holders. It often took around 14 days for the platform to act on our takedown notices and remove offending listings from the marketplace.
The platform recognized the need for a new and improved IP policy, which is why in 2022 they introduced the Brand Alliance Program, and globaleyez was among the first few business partners Tokopedia invited to join.
With the program comes a new IP platform where reporting of infringing content found on the marketplace is much easier than before. Also, Tokopedia’s response time has gotten significantly better: now, a maximum of 3 days is required for an offending listing to disappear.
Furthermore, Tokopedia offers education material to its sellers about the nature of IP rights and why their protection is necessary. This may be important, as a number of new sellers on the platform may not be experienced enough to know about IP rights and could violate them simply due to ignorance.
Screenshot of Tokopedia.com/intellectual-property-protection displaying seller education options
In addition, Tokopedia has introduced penalties for sellers who repeatedly violate the platform’s IP policies, including penalty points and eventually prohibition from selling on the marketplace.
What should brands expect from Tokopedia
Due to its popularity and wide reach in the country, Tokopedia is an inevitable platform for brands wishing to expand to the Indonesian market.
Find out all about Indonesia’s buzzing e-Commerce market.
But bear in mind that whatever your intentions about entering this market, fraudsters may have other ideas, meaning that fake, lookalike or grey market versions of your products may already be present on Tokopedia and other Indonesian marketplaces.
Luckily, as our excellent cooperation with Tokopedia and other platforms in the region proves, our marketplace monitoring service is perfectly suited to discovering unauthorized product listings on Indonesian e-Commerce platforms.
Then, should a test purchase prove that the listing is indeed in violation of your IP rights, we can enforce them and demand the removal of the listing from the platform.
Contact us if you have any concerns about IP rights issues on Tokopedia, Indonesia, or any other marketplace and region in the world.