Zuhrotul Aprilia enjoys rambling on for hours about kitchenware from a studio in the Indonesian port city of Surabaya.
Most days, she turns on her iPad and peddles pots and pans to an enthusiastic online audience. As she talks, live messages — some questions, some compliments, and some criticism — crowd her chat.
On a good day, a couple hundred people watch. Aprilia puts on a show and makes more money than ever helping them shop.
“I have female fans who watch me regularly,” the 25-year-old told Rest of World.
Aprilia and her online groupies are part of a wave of e-commerce washing over the archipelago: live commerce, also known as live shopping or livestreaming e-commerce.
It’s a potent mix of streaming, chatting, and shopping. Imagine thousands of QVC channels broadcasting live, with viewers interacting with the hosts. The temptation to shop is turbocharged with algorithms like that of TikTok Shop, enticing people to try more channels and products.
Online retail in Indonesia was worth $65 billion in 2024 — nearly 40 times its value a decade earlier, according to an estimate by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company. A rapidly rising share of that market belongs to live commerce on the platforms of regional heavyweights like Shopee and Lazada, as well as global giants such as TikTok and YouTube.
Live commerce was initially huge in China and has evolved into something distinct in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. It is creating jobs — primarily for women, which isn’t the norm in a country where women make up less than 40% of the workforce. Live commerce is also giving some mom-and-pop retailers a chance to at last profit from the e-commerce disruption that has put many out of business.
The new way of shopping clicked with Indonesians, many of whom still prefer traditional markets where they can haggle over purchases, Andri Firmansyah, founder of Superstar Agency, a Surabaya-based company that manages rising live-commerce stars, told Rest of World.
“They can see the products, complain, and bargain” with live commerce, he said. “The one thing they can’t do is touch the goods.”
The viral shopping trend has its challenges. Some shoppers are addicted to the shoppertainment. Some hosts face abuse. As artificial intelligence-generated video bots start their own live commerce streams, many sellers worry they might soon lose their jobs.
Indonesia has been a poster child for the power of combining social media and sales. When TikTok Shop launched in 2021, it was so successful that the government was worried it’d put small, family-owned shops out of business.
In 2023, Jakarta banned social media companies from engaging in online retail, concerned that foreign social media companies operating e-commerce platforms were using predatory pricing and harming small and medium-sized businesses.
TikTok found a workaround by buying a local e-commerce company, Tokopedia, the following year. Today, TikTok Shop remains a top live commerce platform, but transactions are routed through Tokopedia.
Live commerce utilizes thousands of human hosts who introduce and discuss the products they sell. The best hosts cycle from product to product, answering viewers’ questions and keeping them entertained with promotions, discounts, and sometimes jokes, singing, or dancing. They receive a commission for promoting the products.
Hot sauce brand Little Dragon Chili generates more than a third of its domestic sales through purchases made during live commerce shows. The best hosts create a bond with viewers and get them to buy, Cindy Natalia Tantri, the company’s social media manager, told Rest of World.
“Each host has their own distinct ways of handling customers,” she said. “For instance, when customers check out, some do a little dance to say thanks.”
With possibly hundreds of thousands of hosts peddling products online, live commerce has become an unexpected new source of employment — sometimes for the same people who saw their businesses shrink due to e-commerce.
Linda Yulisman/Rest of World
Amrizal has had a toy store in Jakarta for 15 years, but recently, it has been struggling: More customers buy their toys online and kids pick video games over physical toys.
To supplement his income, he started selling on TikTok Shop last year. He creates at least 10 videos per day promoting backpacks, bags, and other products that will earn him a commission, he told Rest of World. At night, his wife sells plush toys through livestream commerce. They now make more online than they do through their toy store, he said.
“When sales are high, I can make a lot of money,” said Amrizal, who goes by a single name.
As with anyone trying to entertain the masses, live commerce influencers often have to deal with trolls. Aprilia said she could be demonstrating something as uncontroversial as a wok and still some viewers abuse her in the chat.
“They get angry if they think I misread their questions,” she said. “Some even intentionally try to upset me.”
The big cloud on the horizon for live-commerce sellers is competition from AI. Some companies are already experimenting with AI-generated hosts who can hawk products on livestreams without tiring or creating controversy. Their success mirrors that of the virtual news anchors and government communicators, which Indonesians have readily embraced.
Already, AI hosts are hawking sweet snacks, Korean cosmetics, and spicy sauces.
The creators of virtual influencer Lentari Pagi claim she is the first virtual idol from Indonesia. The AI-generated influencer has hundreds of thousands of social media followers to whom she occasionally tries to sell cough medicine, lip gloss, and other products.
In a recent video on TikTok, she played a football video game with an AI-generated version of Argentine player Lionel Messi.
“I’ll join your team,” said the Messi clone in Bahasa Indonesia, holding up his phone to show the game.
Currently, the cost of building and streaming an AI host that can interact with viewers remains high. It’s relatively expensive to design and train a video chatbot, and then having it answer questions and chat with consumers costs more in data charges than hiring a human, Edho Pratama, chief executive of Social Bread, a company that builds the bots, told Rest of World.
“We are ready with the technology,” he said . “But no one can afford to pay.”
Social Bread is considering having clients use AI hosts just for overnight slots when humans don’t want to work, he said.
While some Chinese companies have claimed their AI bots consistently outsell their human sellers, in Indonesia the bots underperform because they are not as good at the banter that keeps viewers glued to their screens.
Imagine8 Studio, the creators of Lentari Pagi, admit she looks “odd” sometimes.
“The face is still inconsistent and the contours of her body sometimes also change,” chief executive Aldo Tan told Rest of World. “But we can increasingly tackle these issues.”
As the technology improves and becomes more affordable, it is only a matter of time before a swarm of AI hosts enters the market, industry experts say.
Aprilia said she is up for the challenge.
Though she researches her brands and products for hours, she said she can’t compete on knowledge because the AI hosts will have downloaded every detail. But her AI rivals are unnatural and unappealing, so she instead plans to compete with her personality.
“Our job now is to project personality, entertain viewers, and get them to comment as much as possible,” Aprilia said.
