The American companies, however, remain cautious, and are mostly investing in heavily funded tech companies rather than in fledgling start-ups. The Chinese companies are more experienced at building for emerging market consumers. For example Tencent and Alibaba is already investing in Gojek and Tokopedia, before the US investors enter Indonesian business scene.
Chinese and American investors also offer different types of capabilities to their Southeast Asian partners, although analysts said local investment partners would benefit from either approach. The Chinese companies are more experienced at building for emerging market consumers, meanwhile the Western players are better at building company culture, brands and global values. Prolonged tensions between the US and China, as well as New Delhi and Beijing, as one of the reasons for the pivot for US companies to move from India to Southeast Asia.
Pretext for this, India banned 43 more Chinese apps it deemed “threatening” to its “sovereignty and integrity”, bringing the total number of Chinese apps banned to 220. The latest ban includes Alibaba’s online store app AliExpress and on-demand delivery Lalamove. They joined ByteDance’s TikTok video-sharing platform in being sidelined in India. Meanwhile Indonesia contributes nearly half of the region’s internet-powered economy, with a market size predicted to reach US$44 billion this year.
(source: South China Morning Post)