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TikTok Plans to Increase E-Commerce Sales to $20 Billion This Year

Written by Abdullah Shahid ·  1 min read >
TikTok Shop
Expecting to quadruple the size of its ecommerce operations, TikTok is relying mostly towards the growth of the South Asian market, while also trying to expand into US and Europe

Chinese short video platform, TikTok, has just announced that it hopes to increase the sales of its worldwide e-commerce operations to $20 billion in merchandise sales, relying mostly on ecommerce growth in Southeast Asia.

TikTok, which is widely used amongst teens and young adults all over the world has its own ecommerce platform named the ‘TikTok Shop’, which allows its users to buy products by following links on the video application.

TikTok Shopping
TikTok Shop: a shopping feature accessible directly on the TikTok platform

Last year, TikTok had a total of $4.4 billion in gross merchandise value, which also represents its total sales for the year. Expecting to quadruple the sales in just one year, the company reported that it is betting on growing markets such as Indonesia.

TikTok announces its ambitions at a time where the company is already going through a tough scrutiny from European and US regulators who are investigating the application over suspicion of involvement with the Chinese government.

US and European regulators are starting to believe that the short video application might be sharing data that is sensitive to national security with the Chinese government thus posing a massive threat to the country.

TikTok, however, is trying to fight these accusations, denying any involvement and calling the backlash against the application to be a political move.

Despite all the scrutiny, TikTok still plans to work in the European and American, saying that it is also working on expanding sales in those markets.

 

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