TikTok parent plans to invest billions in S'pore, add hundreds of jobs

ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video-sharing app TikTok, is controlled by billionaire Zhang Yiming (above). It is said to be planning to make Singapore its beachhead for Asia as part of its global expansion.
ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video-sharing app TikTok, is controlled by billionaire Zhang Yiming (above). It is said to be planning to make Singapore its beachhead for Asia as part of its global expansion. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

BEIJING • ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video-sharing app TikTok, is planning to make Singapore its beachhead for the rest of Asia as part of its global expansion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Beijing-based company is looking to spend several billion dollars and add hundreds of jobs over the next three years in the city state, where it has applied for a licence to operate a digital bank, said the people, who asked not to be identified because of confidentiality.

The investment would come at a crucial time as the technology firm is forced to sell TikTok operations in the United States under pressure from the Trump administration.

ByteDance, the world's most richly valued start-up, is ploughing ahead with plans to take its social media services deeper into Asia after setbacks in India and Britain, as well as the US.

The Internet phenomenon controlled by billionaire Zhang Yiming has long eyed the 650 million increasingly smartphone-savvy population in South-east Asia, a region where Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings are also making inroads.

The plans for Singapore include the establishment of a data centre, the people said. ByteDance's operations in the city include TikTok and Lark, an enterprise software business.

ByteDance currently has over 200 job openings in Singapore, for positions ranging from payments to e-commerce to data privacy, according to its job referral website.

The company already has 400 employees working on technology, sales and marketing in the city state, one of those familiar with the matter said.

A ByteDance representative offered no comment.

In China, ByteDance also runs news aggregation app Toutiao and TikTok's Chinese twin Douyin.

Collectively, its stable of products have more than 1.5 billion monthly active users.

ByteDance is said to have generated more than US$3 billion (S$4.1 billion) of net profit on more than US$17 billion of revenue last year.

Asia is a growth area for the company, especially when it is increasingly likely to miss the US government's deadline for the sale of its TikTok operations in the US.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he will not extend his Sept 15 deadline for the deal.

In India, TikTok is among more than a hundred Chinese-made consumer apps that are banned by the government on concerns over security. SoftBank Group is exploring gathering a group of bidders for TikTok's India assets.

Meanwhile, the British government will likely ban TikTok from moving local user data out of the country.

In Singapore, ByteDance is leading a consortium that has applied for a digital bank licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Other members of that group include a private investment firm owned by a member of the Lee family that founded OCBC Bank.

The regulator will award as many as five such permits to non-banks by December. Ant Group and Tencent-backed Sea have also applied.

BLOOMBERG

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 12, 2020, with the headline TikTok parent plans to invest billions in S'pore, add hundreds of jobs. Subscribe