JAKARTA—Short video app TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, said on Thursday it would invest billions of dollars in Southeast Asia over the next few years, as it doubles down on the region amid intensifying global scrutiny over its data security.
Southeast Asia, a region with a collective population of 630 million—half of them under 30—is one of TikTok’s biggest markets in terms of user numbers, generating more than 325 million visitors to the app every month.
But the platform has yet to translate the large user base into a major e-commerce revenue source in the region as it faces fierce competition from bigger rivals of Sea’s Shopee, Alibaba’s Lazada, and GoTo’s Tokopedia….