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Hello reader,

I recently started listening to this Japanese singer called Yuuri, thanks to a good friend who first shared one of his songs called Dry Flower with me.

This guy just doesn’t miss.

With songs like Betelgeuse and Leo, it amazes me that I haven’t heard of this singer up until now.

It’s interesting to me because even though I listen to a fairly large range of music genres, learning about Yuuri helped me realize that there’s so many niches and smaller artists out there with ridiculously good songs and amazing voices, just that they’ve been relatively isolated for one reason or another.

In many cases, it can take a while before these lesser-known artists get big. Perhaps they need time for word of mouth to spread or just one big, lucky break. But once they do and you find out about them, it can be so refreshing.

Today’s story examines a similar situation. While TikTok itself is a veritable behemoth, its ecommerce platform TikTok Shop is a relatively small player in the Indonesian ecommerce market. Will it get the breakthrough it needs?

Today we look at:

Whether TikTok Shop has what it takes in Indonesia The delays in Byju’s 2022 financial statements Other newsy highlights such as Ant Group expanding its coverage in Malaysia and FTX halting the sale of its US$500 million Anthropic stake. Premium summary Shop till you Tok

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of social media platforms providing an ecommerce component. After all, I use social media for its, well, social aspects, not to make impulsive purchases. (Those happen mostly outside of social media scrolling.)

That said, TikTok Shop couldn’t care less about what I think – it’s the Indonesian market that it’s probably focusing on, especially since it’s seeing better performance recently.

Blood in the water: Although Indonesia is TikTok’s second-largest market in terms of active users, TikTok Shop isn’t that big in the country… yet. According to an executive from a major local ecommerce firm, TikTok Shop poses a real threat to existing marketplaces like Shopee and Tokopedia. Glow up: Lifestyle and beauty brands are enjoying their time on TikTok Shop, especially since sales on that platform have started to exceed sales in other marketplaces, at least in Indonesia. Go low to gain high: Much of TikTok Shop’s growth is driven by promos and discounts. It’s also seen lots of new sellers joining, attracted by discount subsidies and low transaction fees.

Read more: Can TikTok Shop catch up with Shopee, Tokopedia in Indonesia?

News spotlight Late to the party

I’m really bad with procrastination, but if it came down to completing financial reports detailing hundreds of millions in revenue and losses, I’d probably be a little nervous. It has to at least be a little anxiety-inducing for the people over at Byju’s, as the edtech firm is once again planning to submit its financial statements with a delay.

Same time last year: Byju’s plans to submit its financial report for FY 2022 by September. This is the same as last year, which saw it filing its FY 2021 statements in September 2022. Nothing to worry about: Despite the delay, CEO Byju Reveedran said that most of the company’s verticals are performing well. Signs of trouble?:Deloitte recently resigned as Byju’s auditor after it said that it was unable to complete its audit of the edtech firm’s FY 2022 financial statements due to delays. Three of the company’s board members have also stepped down.

See also: Series SEA: Who’s investing in the region’s education startups?

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Quick bytes

1️⃣ Expanding the colony Mobile wallets within Ant Group’s Alipay+ network can now be used as payment options across all 2,400 7-Eleven stores in Malaysia. Customers of the convenience store chain are now able to transact using AlipayHK, GCash, Kakao Pay, and TrueMoney.

2️⃣ Welcome to the future Malaysian energy major Petronas has announced the 20 startups in the third cohort of its FutureTech accelerator program. Five startups within Petronas’ other internal programs will also be joining the accelerator.

3️⃣ Stop right there It’s amusing that FTX is still somehow causing problems, but it’s back in the news for pausing the sale of its stake in Anthropic, a US-based AI startup. The bankrupt crypto exchange had previously made a US$500 million investment in Anthropic, and multiple potential buyers have been assessing the stake for several months. Anthropic is currently valued at US$4.6 billion.

4️⃣ Genie in a bottle Alibaba Cloud has teamed up with Fudan University, a research university in Shanghai, to launch a new intelligent computing platform. Known as Computing for the Future at Fudan, the platform trains large AI models for scientific research.

5️⃣ Bad news for Byju’s It’s not looking too hot for the edtech major as Prosus, which holds the largest stake in Byju’s outside of its founder, has downgraded the value of its holdings in the firm. Prosus currently values its 9.6% stake in the firm at US$493 million, a steep decline from the US$6 billion value it had for the stake in November last year.