Heaptalk, Jakarta — TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, announced plans to slash employees in its e-commerce business unit in Indonesia, Tokopedia, six months after the strategic acquisition between its subsidiary TikTok and this e-commerce company. Insiders reported that the layoff is expected to affect around 450 workforces, accounting for about 9% of the total number in its department.
An anonymous source revealed that Employee reductions will begin as quickly as possible, starting this month. Nonetheless, the number of employees affected is still finalized and may fluctuate with the company’s current conditions. However, based on the company’s evaluation, around 70% of Tokopedia employees are deemed no longer needed. Of the approximately 2,772 Tokopedia’s workforces, this layoff resolution will impact hundreds of employees.
In early 2024, ByteDance invested over USD1.5 billion to merge GoTo’s e-commerce unit Tokopedia with ByteDance’s TikTok Shop into the existing Tokopedia entity. As a result, TikTok will own about 75% of the stocks. Following this strategic move, Chinese ByteDance has over 5,000 employees in these e-commerce business lines.
Besides maintaining ByteDance’s cost efficiency, this job termination is a part of TikTok’s parent’s extensive business reformation of the overall e-commerce units, which also expects to cut job redundancy. According to the anonymous source familiar with the matter, this job-cutting will involve the entire department, including advertising and operations. ByteDance will perform layoffs in several stages. The impacted employees in the early stages will get a waiting period of two months. During this period, affected employees will still receive full salaries without operational responsibilities.
In May 2024, TikTok also intends to hold major layoffs for its employees globally, affecting the operations, content, and marketing division. The company’s employees stated that this social media platform would reduce its workforce by about 1,000 employees. ByteDance’s TikTok will also diminish its global user operations team, which manages user support and communications. The rest will be transferred to other divisions, such as TikTok’s trust and safety, marketing, and product.
