Asia Digest: Sea Ltd to expand in Malaysia; Tokopedia apologises for voucher mishap

Sea Ltd is expanding its footprint in Malaysia, while Tokopedia has apologised for a voucher mishap over the weekend.

Sea sets up logistics warehouse in Malaysia

New York-listed Sea Ltd, the parent company of e-commerce platform Shopee, is expanding in Malaysia by setting up cloud services, data hosting and processing, and establishing a new logistics e-commerce warehouse.

Malaysia’s news agency Bernama reported that Sea Ltd’s plan to expand its investments in the country will create more than 2,000 jobs in the process.

Sea Ltd’s co-founder and group chief operating officer, Gang Ye, also said the decision is a significant development not just for the group but for the local digital ecosystem.

Additionally, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said Shopee will expand its footprint in Malaysia with a newly constructed two-storey mega warehouse. The warehouse in Bukit Raja, Klang, comprises an integrated logistics park with cloud infrastructure and spans 1.4 million square feet.

Sea saw its losses widen to $357.7 million for the third quarter of 2022, compared with $165.4 million a year ago. An 18% year-on-year revenue drop at the digital entertainment (DE) or gaming division Garena — $893 million in Q3 2022 versus $1.1 billion in Q3 2021 — weighed heavily on the company’s third-quarter results.

Tokopedia offers compensation for voucher glitch

Tokopedia, an e-commerce arm of Indonesia-listed GoTo, has apologised for a voucher mishap over the weekend that led to several transactions being declared void.

The company had launched a discount voucher worth 100,000 rupiah ($6.7) on a transaction of at least 150,000 rupiah for customers of UOB’s digital bank TMRW, but the glitch ended up allowing anyone to use it repeatedly.

“A number of transactions made through Tokopedia are unable to be processed because they do not meet the applicable promo terms and conditions,” Head of External Communications Tokopedia Ekhel Chandra Wijaya said on Monday.

“We apologise to users who were unable to continue these transactions. Unsuccessful transactions that have been previously paid by buyers have been fully refunded according to existing procedures.”

Tokopedia has reportedly offered 5,000 rupiah compensation per transaction to affected sellers. This, however, was met with complaints over social media as some sellers have already shipped their goods to customers.

Tokopedia declined to disclose the number of users and merchants affected as well as the losses incurred due to the mishap.

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