Salim Group and Lotte Joint Venture E-commerce Platform Will Operate 2017

Indonesian conglomerate Salim has signed an e-commerce Joint Venture (JV) agreement with South Korean retail giant Lotte. This collaboration will leverage Lotte's retail network in Indonesia and the Salim Group network which is expected to start operating early next year (2017). The collaboration between Salim and Lotte will be the second Indonesia-South Korea JV in the e-commerce sector after Elevenia.

Based on the news medium South Korea yesterday (22/2), Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin and Salim Group Chairman Anthoni Salim have agreed to create a new business through a JV that will enter the e-commerce industry. In last September, Anthoni last September confirmed the plan of the Salim Group to enter the Indonesian e-commerce market, like a number of other conglomerates, and the partnership with Lotte became a reality.

It is never too late, his party targets to be able to reap the cake from the total industry value which is expected to be worth $20 billion by 2020. So far there is no mention of capital that will be disbursed for this JV, but seeing how Elevenia builds its business, at least 1,5 trillion Rupiah must be prepared for this JV to catch up compared to existing e-commerce services.

So far Lotte is recorded to have one department store, 41 retail stores, 31 fast food restaurant franchises, and others in Indonesia. Meanwhile, the Salim Group has various business branches such as food, infrastructure, logistics, telecommunications, media, and real estate. Salim also has 11.000 Indomaret outlets which will be part of the grand plan of this future e-commerce platform solution.

Through Indomaret, it seems that both parties will implement the O2O (online-to-offline) concept that is integrated with all Lotte retail stores and introduces the best and latest product line through the e-commerce platform.

Under Shin's leadership, Lotte has indeed aggressively targeted the Southeast Asian market, especially Indonesia as its key business market. Deal Street Asia elaborated that the scheme this time was based on the open opportunities of Indonesia's population and demography which was very potential. The momentum that is also used is the completion e-commerce roadmap which provides clarity and the future of this industry for the development of the national digital economy.