ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok will invest billions of dollars in Southeast Asia over the next three to five years, as the Chinese behemoth moves to strengthen the presence of its hit video app in the region.

TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew said the company wants to “invest proportionately” to the opportunity Southeast Asia presents. TikTok has over 8,000 people in the region and close to 2,000 staff in Indonesia, he said during an event held in Jakarta on Thursday.

TikTok is betting on markets such as Indonesia to spur growth for its e-commerce arm — which lets users buy items while scrolling through an endless feed of short videos and livestreams. Gross merchandise value, which represents the total worth of goods sold through its TikTok Shop offering, surpassed $2.5 billion in Indonesia last year and topped $1 billion in the first three months of 2023, according to e-commerce research firm Cube Asia.

TikTok’s push into e-commerce is creating a growing challenge to rivals, including Amazon.com Inc. and Sea Ltd.’s Shopee. The Chinese-owned company aims to more than quadruple the size of its global e-commerce business to as much as $20 billion in merchandise sales this year as it expands into the US and Europe, Bloomberg reported last week.

ByteDance, founded more than a decade ago by Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo, grew into an internet leader worth more than $200 billion thanks to the virality of short-video platforms TikTok and Douyin. Though live shopping hasn’t caught on in the US and Europe despite attempts by Instagram and others, TikTok is basing its projections on the success of Douyin, a Chinese version of TikTok that has surged in popularity on its home turf.

--With assistance from Zheping Huang.