Coffee Chat: What Rakuten Taught Me After We Got Acquired (Live Blog)

Currently onstage now is the founder of Thailand’s e-commerce site Tarad.com, Pawoot Pongvitayapanu or Pom. Interviewed by Willis Wee, Pom talks about the lessons he learned after Japan-based e-commerce giant Rakuten bought a majority stake of Tarad in 2009.

#15:02: Tarad is a marketplace and it was started in 2001. Pom said that it was the worst time to start a business because Thailand was having a crisis then.

#15:05: Pom said that – if based on newspaper reports – Rakuten bought majority stake on Tarad for US$3 million. He said that everything changed after Rakuten came in. Now that they’re working with Rakuten, everything has to be in numbers, everything has to be punctual. “We have morning meeting, each team has daily communication, and every person has to submit report every day,” said Pom.

#15:07: KPI tree is important, we break down our target numbers like traffic and buyer convertion. Each KPI belongs to each department, and each department’s KPI is broken down to each person.

#15:09: You can download Pom’s KPI spreadsheet through his personal website Pawoot.com. But it needs some translation effort.

#15:12: Most people work for money, but if you’re working for another reason which is bigger like to empower the society, it is better as you are more purpose-driven. “Rakuten made us believe that we can grow and change the lives of the society and country. It is important to us.” Before getting acquired, Pom didn’t have that way of thinking.

#15:14: Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani inspired Pom. “If you’re working in Rakuten, you know everything.” It is because the employees always communicate with each other every day.

#15:17: It was very hard to convince people to shop online, but after getting acquired by Rakuten, credit card has become the majority of online payment method on Tarad. If Pom had the chance to do it all over again, he would run his company just like Rakuten does.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Singapore 2013, our event running on April 4 and 5. For all our newest Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @techinasia, and on our Facebook page.