Pinduoduo’s Temu jumps into S-E Asia e-commerce arena

TEMU, an e-commerce platform affiliated with Chinese tech company Pinduoduo (PDD), entered South-east Asia first via the Philippines on Aug 26, then Malaysia on Sep 8. This adds another competitor that incumbents Shopee and Lazada have to square off against.

The platform has a different business model to the incumbents here, being a cross-border e-commerce play. Rather than host a marketplace for local merchants, Temu operates on a consignment basis with merchants in China.

This was something another new entrant, TikTok Shop, was reportedly attempting to do in Indonesia. But TikTok Shop appeared to backtrack in response to concerns from an Indonesia government minister. It is also likely to be curtailed by new rules to separate social media and e-commerce in Indonesia.