William Tanuwijaya Says Tokopedia Plans to Hold Pre-IPO

Tokopedia Founder & CEO William Tanuwijaya started to mention the latest fundraising and plans go public. He admitted that he could not confirm the time, but said he already had plans for a pre-IPO.

"If all goes as planned, next year our EBITDA will definitely be positive. So we are planning for a pre-IPO and go public," William said in response to a moderator's question at the 2019 Tech in Asia Conference in Jakarta.

Pre-IPO itself is the phase where a company makes a stock offering to a number of individual investors before actually taking the floor on the stock exchange. The value of shares offered in the pre-IPO is lower than those in the IPO. This phase was taken partly because of the high enthusiasm for the company's IPO.

This pre-IPO step was previously carried out by Alibaba in 2014. Alibaba, which went to the stock exchange in September that year, did a pre-IPO a few months earlier.

As is well known, all digital giants in Indonesia, including Tokopedia, have not yet been listed on the stock exchange. Even though he is already planning a pre-IPO, William doesn't seem to really think about it go public.

"It's not really necessary. We're lucky to have Shareholders established ones like Alibaba, Softbank, Sequoia Capital. So we have no pressure to do exit. We will do what is right for our company and for the market."

William is confident about Tokopedia's financial condition. The support of large investors plus the belief that he will soon get positive EBITDA makes William ready to compete with international players.

"Basically we have capital that can last forever. So what is the funding we get for? Namely for investment in the ecosystem. If we find something like Bridestory or anything that is in line with the company's vision and mission, we can use that capital," concluded William.

Previously, Tokopedia often stated that: 1,5 percent economy Indonesia moves through Tokopedia. One percent is said to come from sales per month which penetrated Rp. 19 trillion with more than 90 million monthly users. They also target this year's transactions to reach US$15 billion.