TikTok Lays Off Thousands of Indonesian Staff, Tokopedia Said to Be Fully Managed from China

TikTok has carried out another wave of mass layoffs at Tokopedia and shifted nearly all of the e-commerce platform’s operations to China. TikTok Shop-Tokopedia now has only 35 employees in its technology division, down from approximately 1,100 before the acquisition by TikTok. According to a CNBC Indonesia source, TikTok Shop-Tokopedia laid off more than 450 employees in the technology unit during the latest round of job cuts. The latest wave leaves only about 10 percent of the 2,500 employees who were working at Tokopedia when the e-commerce company was acquired by TikTok from GoTo. The majority of the remaining staff work in business, trust and safety, and technology units. “Before ByteDance took over, there were 1,100 tech employees. In the last batch, around 500 tech staff were laid off. Now only 35 tech staff remain,” the source said. According to another source, all the technology behind the Tokopedia and TikTok Shop platforms is now managed by ByteDance employees in China. “They previously said they wanted to co-exist and help Indonesian talent. The reality now is that everyone handling Tokopedia’s tech is no longer in Indonesia; it is all in China now,” the source stated. A TikTok spokesperson confirmed the layoffs at Tokopedia, stating that the adjustments were made by aligning R&D functions in areas deemed capable of supporting sustainable growth for the company’s business, the creator community, and sellers on its platform. “We are aligning our research and development organisation to focus on areas that can drive long-term sustainable growth for our business, creator community, and sellers on our platform,” the TikTok spokesperson said in a statement received by CNBC Indonesia on Thursday. GoTo sold a 75 percent stake in Tokopedia to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, in January 2024. Since the acquisition, the e-commerce company has become the operator of the Tokopedia and TikTok Shop e-commerce platforms. The acquisition occurred after the Indonesian government banned TikTok, as a social media company, from operating e-commerce services due to potential monopoly concerns. TikTok Shop had even temporarily halted its services. TikTok became a 75.01 percent shareholder in Tokopedia by absorbing new Tokopedia shares, while GoTo retained a non-dilutive 24.99 percent stake. As part of the agreement, GoTo remains entitled to receive cash flows from its associate entity Tokopedia in the form of e-commerce service fees paid quarterly, and the company absorbs profits or losses borne by Tokopedia proportional to GoTo’s share ownership in the e-commerce giant. Additionally, the value of the e-commerce service fees received by GoTo reached IDR 820 billion in 2025, a 32 percent increase compared to IDR 622 billion in 2024. The latest Ecommerce in Southeast Asia 2026 report from Momentum Works shows Tokopedia’s position at the very bottom among major players in 2025. Overall, the region’s e-commerce market reached a value of US$157.6 billion in 2025, growing 22.8 percent year-on-year. Based on 2025 GMV data, Tokopedia recorded the smallest figure at only around US$9 billion, placing it at the bottom of the competition among large platforms in Southeast Asia. Shopee still leads with US$83.2 billion, followed by TikTok Shop at US$45.6 billion, and Lazada at around US$18 billion. Interestingly, TikTok Shop has become the new star, recording a GMV surge of more than double compared to 2024. When combined with Tokopedia, which is now under its control, TikTok’s overall e-commerce GMV in Southeast Asia reached 65.7 percent of Shopee’s.