Rakuten Branches Out to Asia (Startup Asia Preview)

Japanese B2B2C e-commerce company, Rakuten, isn’t new to Asia expansion. Besides Japan, to date it has operations in Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. Its China venture, Lekutian, with Baidu, unfortunately, wasn’t as smooth. Well, admittedly, China is a tough market with local competitors like Alibaba Group’s Tmall and 360buy enjoying the lion’s share.

Nonetheless, Rakuten has remained focused in its Southeast Asia expansion, especially with a newly setup Rakuten Asia headquarters in Singapore. Rakuten has also recently confirmed with us that it has established a $10 million Rakuten Fund for Southeast Asia. The fund will strategically invest in startups which Rakuten believes will help in its e-commerce or online travel business.

Shin Hasegawa, director and assistant chief marketing officer at Rakuten Asia

There are still a lot of questions which we haven’t had the chance to understand from Rakuten Asia. Hopefully, we will be able to get some very good answers at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 where we’ve invited Shin Hasegawa, director and assistant chief marketing officer at Rakuten Asia, for a coffee chat interview. His session is scheduled on April 4, 11.00 to 11.30am, titled “Rakuten Branches Out to Asia.”

In that coffee chat interview, we’ll attempt to understand more about Rakuten’s expansion plans in Southeast Asia, its $10 million strategic fund, and also its plans (if any) to re-enter the China market.

If you haven’t grabbed your tickets, do so today, and join the crowd. We will see you at Startup Asia Singapore on April 4 and 5.

And of course, don’t miss any of the other speakers at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 either. That list includes:

• Kee Lock Chua (Group President and CEO at Vertex Venture Holdings)
• Ole Ruch (Managing director APAC at Airbnb)
• Steve Melhuish (Co-founder at PropertyGuru)
• Stefan Jung (Co-Founder and Managing Director SEA, Rocket Internet)
• Nobuaki Kitagawa (Managing Director at CyberAgent Ventures)
• Daphne Lee (International business director at Taobao)
• Darius Cheung (Co-founder at BillPin)
• Tetsuya Mori (Managing Director at DeNA Asia Pacific Holdings)
• Evan Spytma (Regional Director at Popcap Games)