The Indonesian government has launched a national online store on e-commerce platform Pinduoduo (NASDAQ: PDD) on Saturday in a move to boost its trade with China, about two months after the platform announced that its users reached 683 million, accounting for about half of the country’s population.
The Consul General of the Republic of Indonesia in Shanghai, Deny W. Kurnia, livestreamed on Pinduoduo on Saturday, promoting various products including packaged food, bird nest supplements, and cotton and silk garments known as Indonesian batik, according to Chinese media outlet huanqiu.com. The livestreaming session lasted from 5:00 p.m. Beijing time to 10:00 p.m. and attracted 450,000 viewers in total, and saw more than 10,000 Indomie Mi goreng instant noodles sold.
The store stocks 500 products made by different companies, with over 100,000 items sold since the launch two days ago, data from the Pinduoduo app shows.
China is an important trading partner for Indonesia as its exports to China were worth USD 27.88 billion in 2019, according to the United Nations’ database on international trade.
Minerals, oil, and distillation products are the most exported commodities, however consumer goods are also gaining traction in China.
Many Indonesian products sold on Chinese e-commerce platforms have received positive feedback. For example, Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) selected Orang Tua Group’s Tango Waffle Crunchox as one of the special packages on Alibaba’s Single’s Day Festival in 2019. To promote the snack, Alibaba worked alongside top Chinese influencer Viya on a Taobao livestream viewed by more than 43 million people. Other popular Indonesian brands are Yan Ty Ty bird’s nest, Richesse wafer, and Indomie instant noodles.
And they are now also available on Pinduoduo, allowing the company to increase its product variety for its huge user base, which is second only to Alibaba in China, which has 742 million annual active users on its retail marketplaces including Taobao and Tmall.
Pinduoduo has started to team up with different countries to establish national stores since July, starting with the South Korean government and the Chilean government.
Pinduoduo’s rival JD.com (NASDAQ: JD) has initiated the plan of hosting national stores as early as 2018, with Southeast Asian sultanate Brunei opening the first national shop on this platform in April 2019, KrASIA reported. However, the Indonesian government has not yet opened a national store on JD.com