The Rakuten Indonesia site.

Nikkei first broke the news last month that the joint venture between MNC and Rakuten (JSD:4755) is over in Indonesia. We reached out to both MNC and Rakuten but no one wanted to speak about the situation on the record. The e-commerce site Rakuten Belanja Online is still running, though who knows what’s going on behind the scenes with MNC and Rakuten. This morning Rakuten finally broke the silence, sending us an official statement from Toru Shimada, senior executive officer and head of Asia HQ, who said:

Two years ago, Rakuten launched Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia with our JV partner MNC Group. We are very pleased with the growth of the business, where today we offer the widest range of products from Indonesia’s top merchants, as well as the tremendous response we have seen from Indonesian merchants and consumers alike.

From the beginning, we recognized Indonesia’s potential to become one of the biggest e-commerce markets in Asia, and our confidence in the market has only increased in the last two years. With the launch of Rakuten’s regional headquarters in Singapore last year, we are now able to accelerate the growth of our businesses around the region and will be increasing our investment in this exciting market.

We believe that through deepened focus and investment, we’ll be well positioned to not only accelerate the value that our B2B2C model and e-commerce platform brings to both empowering merchants and consumers, but also help spur the evolution of the Indonesian e-commerce landscape.

It’s a pity it doesn’t explain exactly what happened between MNC and Rakuten. But at least we now know Rakuten will still continue to be in Indonesia.

Rakuten told the media that it will not be commenting further on this issue. But the company did say that more of its APAC plans will be shared at its Q2 2013 earnings conference call on May 9.

Fresh from launching a new USD 10M fund to invest in Asia’s startups, global internet and e-commerce giant, Rakuten is making a new move to engage the region’s entrepreneurs. The Rakuten Startup Challenge’13 is a new competition targeted at aspiring e-commerce entrepreneurs based in Singapore who are interested to actually create online stores under hands-on mentorship from Rakuten itself. The overall individual winner will also win an all-expenses paid trip to Tokyo and the opportunity to be meet and be mentored by the Rakuten HQ team.

The entire Challenge will take place over 3 months, and the deadline for application is May 24th.

Judges are some of the big wigs here: Toru Shimada (CEO, Rakuten Asia), Shin Hasegawa (Marketing Head, Rakuten Asia), Jacob Levine (Producer, Rakuten Web Services Group) and Saemin Ahn (Managing Partner, Rakuten Ventures).

After the application, a set of participants will be selected to move on to the actual building round. In this round, participants will build an actual e-commerce store, using APIs that grab Rakuten products from their global database, and under the mentorship of a Rakuten Business Team member. The final round will see an event narrower set of participants pitch at the final Challenge.

You can sign up for the Rakuten Startup Challenge here. Submit by May 24th 2013.

Disclaimer: Rakuten is a client and partner of SGE.

The post The Rakuten Startup Challenge 2013 appeared first on SGE.

Things are looking up for the region’s e-commerce scene with a recent spate of activities involving the 3 Rs — Rocket Internet, Reebonz, and Rakuten. Rocket Internet and Reebonz have come under the spotlight for their massive funding rounds, while Rakuten –  a Japanese e-commerce giant with USD 4.7B revenue — has made a USD 10M commitment to invest in startups from Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Although Rocket and Reebonz are somewhat known entities within the startup crowd in the region, Rakuten is just starting to make its presence felt, at least outside Japan.

To get a better picture of its regional plans, we spoke to two senior Rakuten executives: Toru Shimada (Thomas), the company’s Asia CEO, and Anh Sae Min, managing partner of Rakuten Ventures.

SGE: Where do you see Rakuten in two years?

Thomas: Rakuten will continue to accelerate our global expansion to include like-minded companies to join our family as we expand our scope, scale and geography.

We will look for partners and investments which will help us move faster than we could through organic growth, and make strategic allocations of corporate resources and active investments in high-growth areas such as e-books to generate mid-to-long term income opportunities.

For example, Rakuten brought Kobo into the fold for expertise in ebooks, Wuaki.tv for its relationships with content providers, ADS for its warehouse automation technology, and companies like Buy.com, PriceMinister and Play.com for their large, loyal customer bases.

You can expect us to continue to make similar moves. Our aim for the near future is to recreate the success we have had so far globally in more countries with our unique B2B2C “virtual shopping center” model combined with our culture-based, high-service mindset (which we call “omotenashi”).

Rakuten Asia will become an even more important and bigger driver of Rakuten’s global business.

It made the decision to invest more in Asia 5 years ago. We first expanded our Asia footprint in Taiwan in 2008, followed by Thailand the year after, Indonesia in 2011 and Malaysia in 2012. Based on our success to date and the current market opportunities, Rakuten will continue to deepen our focus and invest more in Asia in the next few years to speed up the growth of our business in the region.

We will stay committed to keeping pace with Asia’s evolving Internet landscape and become more competitive in the region and achieve our goal of becoming the number one internet service company in the world.

How do startups fit into Rakuten’s overall business strategy?

The worldwide spread of the Internet and the developing shift in social foundations across the world means that the Internet continues to be a major engine for worldwide economic growth. The e-commerce market, complemented with accelerated usage of smartphones, tablet devices and accompanying consumer lifestyle changes, will see continuous growth.

In Singapore alone, the country saw 56,778 new businesses in 2012 (according to the Singapore Department of Statistics) and the number is growing every year.

Some startups may have a good product but may have problems distributing or marketing it across the region and in Japan. Rakuten is in the best position to assist. Rakuten will also share its experience in dealing with millions of consumers online.

Where do you see the future of the APAC’s start-up scene?

Sae Min: Judging from how dynamic the market is, it will be very hard to predict what the startup scene will be like in Asia in 5 years, much less 2 years. What Rakuten sees as very significant is the bevy of great technology-based startups coming out of Southeast Asia.

If we look at the more developed markets such as South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong, we will see many great entrepreneurs disrupting existing and entrenched players related to payment and content consumption or creation.

In South Korea for example, the issue of cyber security via the smartphone in connection to financial transactions is becoming increasingly important and thus spurring a lot of innovation in product and service ideas.

In Hong Kong, we will see various startups looking at the securities market in a different light — they apply different interaction tiers and various pricing regiments to fundamentally change how consumers and users see the system.

For many years now, and for many years to come, Asia has and will continue to overshadow western economies and will remain one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.

With so many opportunities in Asia now, it is no doubt a great time to invest here. These are exciting times for entrepreneurs and investors alike.

Which industries will the USD 10M fund be invested in?

Rakuten is always on the lookout for like-minded companies to join our family. This means our USD10M fund will be used to support like-minded startups in the region, incorporate them into Rakuten’s strong e-commerce ecosystem and establish synergy.

We are looking for great teams, great technologies and great leaders. We are looking for people with passion and the will to change the status quo of things. We want companies that have strong technology stacks which are pliable and scalable using existing business platforms.

We do not have a bias in investment size and are willing to work with other investors. Diversity never hurts in such an environment.

For me personally, I am interested in verticals like payment infrastructure, disruptive financial services and content consumption/creation platforms.

The fund itself is a little more than two months old so Rakuten is working hard to build our own investment perspectives in the market.

The post An inside look at Rakuten’s expansion and investment plans for wider Asia appeared first on SGE.

Ryota Inaba, President Director and CEO of PT Rakuten-MNC

Rakuten’s (JSD:4755) Indonesian e-commerce site, Rakuten Belanja Online (RBO), turns two-years old today. Coinciding with today’s anniversary, RBO also announces its cross border e-commerce platform that promises users a better user interface and more products coming from overseas. It’s scheduled to be launched on June 3 in Indonesia.

With the global cross-border platform for Rakuten users in Indonesia, merchants in the country are also able to do cross-border trades in different Rakuten marketplaces backed up by an enhanced language support via its translation and review process. So far the same global e-commerce platform has already been launched in Malaysia. We asked Rakuten about how it will tackle logistics and payments across border barriers and will update when we hear back.

RBO also sees an upgrade in its payment process by partnering with Veritrans, a payment gateway company headed by founder Ryu Kawano. RBO was previously using Doku for this, but Ryota Inaba explained that trust, chemistry, and Veritrans’ fraud detection system has won them over.

So much for the Rakuten and MNC split-up story. Ryota Inaba, president director and CEO of the Rakuten-MNC joint venture, started his presentation at the RBO office at MNC tower this afternoon by emphasizing that Rakuten is here to stay in Indonesia. Inaba says that Rakuten and MNC are still a team and insisted that the split up story is a rumor. He also highlighted Rakuten’s financial strength that it will be able to finance RBO to success in Indonesia. He said in the statement:

Rakuten is confident that Indonesia has the potential to become the biggest e-commerce market in Asia. The launch of our new Global E-Commerce Platform and payment gateway signifies Rakuten’s continued and deepened commitment to merchants and customers in Indonesia

In Indonesia, RBO says that it is experiencing fast growth. Its gross merchant sales grew by more than 115 percent year on year (YoY), paid orders grew by 257 percent YoY, and the number of online shops increased by 129 percent YoY. RBO also sees huge growth in mobile orders, seeing 438 percent of growth YoY. No absolute figure was revealed, unfortunately.

Today DigitalNewsAsia reports that Japan-based e-commerce site Rakuten (4755:JP) is making solid progress in Malaysia. Not only is the company recording strong growth on its Rakuten.com.my site, but they also revealed their plans in the Asia-Pacific region.

Since opening its shopping platform in Malaysia in November last year with 11,000 goods, the Rakuten Malaysia site now boasts 40,000 products with a 30 percent monthly total product growth. The site now has 130 merchants using the open platform, and is seeing a 25 percent monthly member increase. When it comes to online orders, the site has surpassed 400 percent growth.

What are Rakuten’s strategies inside the Malaysian market? The same report cites Ueno Shimada as saying that they are investing most of their resources to educate the merchants and bring them seamlessly into the digital commerce world. For example, Rakuten has a team of in-house consultants dedicated to help merchants set up their stores on Rakuten Malaysia.

The team is now looking for more strategic partnerships to help its marketing effort in Malaysia. Some of them include an official Rakuten Malaysia account on messaging app Line, and buddying up with Malaysian telco Celcom. Rakuten targets 50 percent growth to its merchant acquisition as well as nailing its target growth in 2013.

Asia-Pacific adventures

The report also talks about Rakuten’s plans in Asia-Pacific as a whole. After making its presence felt in Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia, as well as setting up its headquarters in Singapore, Rakuten is now focusing on strengthening its financial and human resources. The acquisition of more payment partners is also on the roadmap.

The company has had a rather more unstable presence in neighboring country Indonesia with a reported split up with its joint venture partner MNC. But Rakuten has since dismissed that claim and told everybody that they’re doing fine in Indonesia as well. Besides Southeast Asia, the e-commerce company is also pushing its e-store platform in the US having recently changed its name from Buy.com.

(Source: Digital News Asia)

The e-commerce battle is getting even hotter in Indonesia with many major players looking to take the top spot here. Who’s the latest entering the field? eBay. We spoke with Widi Nugroho, the CEO of news portal PlasaMSN (a joint venture between Telkom Indonesia and Microsoft) today, who revealed to us what eBay has in store for Indonesia. Widi also oversees the progress of Telkom’s other joint venture with eBay, the e-commerce site Plasa.com ¹ – and that’s where the marketplace will be popping up.

Major e-commerce players like Kaskus, Tokopedia, and Rakuten should brace themselves to hear what Widi shared with us: eBay’s Plasa is going to launch its marketplace in Indonesia in one or two months’ time. And naturally, because it’s a joint venture with big-hitter eBay, the marketplace aims to be the number one consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-store in the country.

Since the partnership with Telkom Indonesia last year, a 20-man team from eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) has been quietly developing the marketplace platform as well as doing research about the Indonesian market. In that year, Plasa’s been keeping afloat mostly with revenue from the B2B side of the business, rather than from B2C. The upcoming marketplace can definitely spark life into the joint-venture site.

Plasa’s marketplace won’t have auctions

What can we expect in the upcoming marketplace? Widi says that it can of course be used by consumers and businesses to sell their products online, but that eBay’s Plasa marketplace will not have the much-loved auction feature inside. Widi explains that based on their research, the auction feature isn’t actually suited to Indonesian users.

What makes the news even more interesting is that the country’s largest social forum, Kaskus, is going to launch its marketplace with eBay-like auctions later this year. Let’s see who’s right and who’s wrong.

Battle to be Indonesia’s number one

Other players looking to grab the top marketplace spot in Indonesia are Kaskus, Tokopedia, and Rakuten Belanja Online. Kaskus recently told us that its hasn’t spent a dime of the money raised from GDP Ventures back in 2011, and that it’s being saved to use in case eBay makes a huge move here. With eBay indeed making a big move in the nation, Kaskus might start using those funds this year.

Tokopedia, on the other hand, would like to position itself as being more like China’s Taobao rather than eBay – and we all know what was the result of eBay’s battle with Jack Ma’s Taobao in China. With consistent funding raised every year, will Tokopedia be able to replicate that feat?

Rakuten Belanja Online, an Indo-Japanese joint venture, is battling through a rumored split with joint partner MNC Group, but has since reinstated its focus on succeeding in Indonesia. The company even lets merchants use Rakuten’s cross border platform to sell their wares overseas.

How PlasaMSN fits in

During the conversation, Widi told us that PlasaMSN is recording higher traffic than the e-commerce compsection of Plasa at the moment. The former site boasts 2.5 million unique visitors, with 80 million page-views every month. Last year the portal site generated IDR 11 billion ($1.1 million) in revenue, and is now on track to record IDR 25 billion ($2.5 million) in revenue this year.

Those are quite good numbers considering that the site was still in beta mode in late 2011. The site’s business model is simple: it curates and aggregates content given by its 35 content providers, and then shares the revenue generated, such as from ads and product references. PlasaMSN was built to help promote the e-commerce venture, Plasa.

(Editing by Steven Millward and Anh-Minh do)

E-commerce site Rakuten Taiwan has partnered with visual search platform ViSenze today to bring the startup’s visual search technology to Rakuten’s fashion shopping discovery feature. Claiming to be the first of its kind in Taiwan, we found that the feature is definitely fun to use.

The photo search works on the Rakuten Taiwan ‘Funsearch’ page (pictured below) or on the OShare Fashion Finder page. You can upload a photo or insert an image link and then you will be shown tons of similar product recommendations. The ViSenze team says that the visual similarity is assessed based on type of clothing, style, colour, and patterns. The visual search feature will also be rolled out on Rakuten’s other sites in Asia, says Toru Shimada, CEO of Rakuten Asia.

Without knowing the name of the product, users can search for similar ones on Rakuten by using an image, either by uploading or inserting an image link.

After hitting the search button, a list of similar products will appear. We have uploaded the red skirt shown on the top left corner of this screenshot.

Browse, select, and buy.

Singapore-based ViSenze claims that what sets its image search abilities apart is that it can differentiate key objects in images and isolate them from the background for better image recognition. Besides Rakuten Taiwan, ViSenze has partnered with another fashion oriented company, Clozette, which is based in Singapore, for its similar ‘find and buy’ function.

But ViSenze believes that its technology can be used for other verticals besides the fashion e-shopping industry. Oliver Tan, the CEO of ViSenze, says that the team is now adapting its algorithm to other things like cars and consumer electronics.

Text input search is passe. These days, it’s all about voice and image recognition, as seen in Apple and Google battle against one another.

While the two tech giants are duking it out in open warfare, a Singapore startup called ViSenze — a spin-off from an NUS research project — has entered the search arena via a backdoor. It has partnered with e-commerce players Rakuten and Clozette to deploy its technology enabling shoppers to upload an image and receive search results consisting of fashion items with matching clothing types, style, colour, and patterns.

The Fashion Finder can be used on two sites: www.oshare.com.tw, a joint venture between Rakuten and Singapore fashion community Clozette, and www.rakuten.com.tw/event/funsearch.

According to ViSenze, the technology has many other applications. Cars and consumer electronics websites could find it useful, while advertisers can use it to match a search result page with a visually-resonant ad. For example, a user searching for shades could see an ad showing sunglasses of a similar make, model, and color.

I find the technology reminiscent of Google’s very own image search feature. Another startup that is knee-deep in the image recognition space is Graymatics, which is applying the technology to advertising and filtering.

Relevancy is the name of the game. Whether or not ViSenze will succeed depends on its ability to serve up useful search results.

Measuring user intent is a tricky business however, since some shoppers may know exactly what they want while others adopt a search-and-see-what-happens approach (I suspect women may tend towards the latter).

In any case,  I decided to put the technology to the test.

The first thing I noticed is the lack of drag-and-drop functionality similar to what Google employs in image search and Gmail. At the moment, Fashion Finder only enables URL search and image upload, but these methods are cumbersome.

I then tested the search engine by using images from the Internet. Here are the results (search input has a red border):

Search #1: It’s an admittedly complicated photo, with the background and foreground in focus. But how else to test the prowess of ViSenze’s technology? Besides, users may want to upload Outfit of the Day (OOTD)-type photos, so the tech should ideally be competent enough to decode such pictures. Looking at the results, the algorithms were able to detect a bag in the photo, but the search results were rather inconsistent.

Search #2: To make things easier, I used an image with a blurred background that puts the subject into focus. But for some strange reason, the search engine gave me stripes and more stripes. Maybe it has something to do with the bands of shadows in the image I used?

Search #3: Since the background could be a distraction, I trield a close up. The search engine recognized the two-layer ensemble of vest and T-shirt, although the search results was a mish-mash of different styles. It didn’t even recommend a similar vest.

Search #4: Let’s pare down to something simpler. This time, the search engine is able to detect the color of the image and make some interesting recommendations. But what’s with the female clothing?

Search #5: I stripped out the fluff. Plain white background with a simple blouse. This time, Fashion Finder is less confused, nailing the colors but still presenting divergent styles.

Search #6: Hot pink handbag throws up more recommendations for hot pink handbags. This is a no-brainer.

Search #7: It did a good job of recognizing strips and the type of shirt. The female blouse in the top right was the only exception.

The limitations of the tech became apparent after a dozen searches. Complex OOTD photos featuring an ensemble faze the search engine. Instead, uncomplicated, high-contrast images focusing on single item types seem to work best.

For now, the search engine is unable to account for a range of user behavior. Perhaps having toggles that allow for ‘discovery’ searches versus ‘specific’ searches might help. Having the ability to prioritize or filter results by color, texture, make, and even gender might be useful too.

Anyway, with further user feedback in the coming days, we should see the technology improve. For all we know, users might not really care about relevancy at all.

But in the meantime, Rakuten or VizSense might want to consider creating a guide to teach shoppers how to circumvent the tech’s limitations.

The post ViSenze’s visual search tech on Rakuten Taiwan has promise, but can’t handle OOTD images appeared first on SGE.

By Techninasia.com | Tech in Asia

So it seems we got us a little debate here on the topic of startups in Southeast Asia, so I’d like to add some fuel to the flame.

Oliver Segovia, founder and CEO of AVA Online, makes the point that there is way too much hype around startups attacking Southeast Asia, and that VCs are pushing the strategy too hard. But going for the regional play is just a reality that we have to deal with, whether it’s defending yourself from foreign players coming in or entering foreign markets. Ignore it at your own peril, enlighten yourself on it, because it’s the present and it’s the future.

Here’s my 5 key reasons why there is no Kool Aid, Southeast Asia is a reality, and not just some new fashion that will die out.

1. It’s not just VCs that are going regional

Let’s just get this out of the way first: venture capitalists (VCs) are not the only ones who are supposedly perpetrating the “Southeast Asian strategy”. Attacking the Southeast Asian market as a whole is not something new and it is actually a trend that we are witnessing (just take a look at our Southeast Asia tag). Why do I say this? Look at all the big companies that are actually thinking and operating regionally: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Line, KakaoTalk, Rakuten, Evernote, WeChat, Alibaba, Rocket Internet’s many properties, Zomato, Twitter, Airbnb, Opera, UCWeb; and I could go on. The point is, going regional is something most big companies are already thinking about and doing because the opportunities are real and tangible.

And the fact of the matter is, these big companies are not anomalies. Southeast Asian (and Asian) companies are now growing and scaling, ever so slowly, and they are not only feeling the limitations of their own markets. They also don’t want to be the second mover. Once Southeast Asian companies have near or equal budgets to megaliths like Twitter to tackle the region, a so-called Southeast Asian strategy cannot be ignored.

All of this has little to do with the influence of VCs, or VCs pushing startups. It all comes down to whether you’re ready and your business model fits into a scalable business that can go regional and possibly global. In fact, many startups already want to go regional and global, and some VCs offer that opportunity. And anyway, no one said you need to accept VC money to become successful. Plenty haven’t and have grown to multi-million dollar businesses. Just stop drinking the VC Kool Aid first, in general.

2. It’s not just about going regional, it’s actually about going global

A problem that some startups face across the region – and across the world – is an inability to think globally about their products. It’s one of those eternal questions: should I be building for the immediate concerns of my local users or build a product or new behavior that everybody across the world wants/needs? But look at all the winners and competitors of both Startup Asia and Echelon for 2013 – they are mostly startups that are competing in global and regional markets. Why? It’s because the globe is exciting, it has huge potential, and there’s money there, etc.

Competing across Southeast Asia is just a stepping stone to going global. Just based on logistics alone, it’s easier to set up shop in a neighboring country than leapfrogging to Europe or the States. The only ones that do that get nice series A packages of funding. And the thing is, some of these companies, like Builk from Thailand, winner of Echelon in 2012, aren’t going regional, they’re just hitting a few markets like Indonesia. Appota, from Vietnam is the same; they’re only tackling Indonesia and Thailand. Ultimately, it’s about choosing your bets wisely and thinking long-term once you’ve got a proven model.

And all of this makes sense because the rate of growth for some startups is faster than the markets they grew up in. Once some founders and CEOs see their market threshold, they realize they can’t grow unless they look beyond their own borders. That’s just natural.

3. Not everyone wants to do it, and that’s okay

The reason why I wrote this article is because I identified a growing sentiment that some startups do want to look outside their own borders for whatever their own personal motives are. But not all startups do. When I pressed VNG, one of Vietnam’s strongest and biggest tech companies which pulls in over $90 million in annual revenue, why they didn’t want to take messaging app Zalo out of the country to take on KakaoTalk and Line , VNG said they want to focus completely on the domestic market. A big company like VNG doesn’t want to go regional? That’s totally okay, and it makes sense for them. There are plenty of companies and startups that also have that mentality. Sanook, Thailand’s Yahoo, is also in the same exact boat. They don’t need to drink any kool aid.

The point is no one is forcing your hand to go global or regional. In fact, there’s likely huge potential at home already. But if you do venture forth, do your research. That should be obvious.

4. Tech startups don’t sell bars of soap

Retail and tech are completely different beasts with different business models, operating costs, logistics, human resources, etc. When we’re talking about tech startups scaling across the Southeast Asian region, we should be looking at tech companies that have been successful, not at retail examples. If I want to start a search engine, I don’t study how G&E ran their business, I study Google or Baidu.

A trend that we’re seeing lately is an increase in Silicon Valley companies like Spotify, Evernote, Airbnb, Twitter, along with huge Chinese, Korean, and Japanese companies like Tencent, Line, KakaoTalk, Rakuten, Baidu, etc., all attacking Southeast Asia. These are the companies we should be looking at in terms of strategies to emulate as well as an example of companies that are now actively thinking about a “Southeast Asian strategy”.

Time will tell if their regional roll-out is successful, but don’t look at bars of soap for a clue.

5. Just because the region is new, doesn’t mean it isn’t a region

Sure, the term for Southeast Asia was coined just in the 1920’s, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a viable region. But let’s be real about what Southeast Asia really is. It’s a collection of 11 countries wherein only about five to six countries are actually really markets worth attacking. Countries like Brunei are just way too small to even bother with and countries like Myanmar are way too fresh for most to tackle. And yet, these five to six countries, which include Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore are very ripe for first movers. And as the rest of the region speeds up and infrastructure evens out across the region, it will be increasingly easy and worthy to enter these markets one by one or as a group. There may be some severe differences between the countries, like Indonesia is one of the largest Muslim countries in the world and the Philippines is one of the largest Catholic countries in the world, but there is something to be said for proximity and contiguous economics.

Southeast Asian countries, despite their differences, have some very similar socio-economic circumstances, which allows startups, which grow in similar circumstances to launch in neighborly territory. In other words, since my startup grew under similar circumstances, my model will fit well in your circumstances. These circumstances include: young population, developing economies, growing infrastructure, a penchant for new social media (a worldwide phenomenon), rapid urbanization, etc.

And don’t even get me started on all the events that are happening across the region that are Southeast Asian centered. People are connecting the dots regionally. It’s imperative that we think regionally in order to grow as a region.

Don’t drink any Kool Aid, don’t listen to me, and do what’s right for you

At the end of the day, the decisions that you make for your startup or your portfolio company or tech company are your decisions. And those decisions will make you as a company. Take all of this stuff with a grain of salt. It’s your baby, so you have to evaluate your own product and your own market. Every startup operates under very different circumstances with very different models that work in one case but don’t work in others. There is no one size fits all. So if you want to go regional, and it has that potential, go regional. If you want to stay local, stay local. If you want to go global, go global. Just make sure you’re solving problems of real users, creating long-lasting product-market fits, and executing the hell out of everyone around you. Or you don’t even have to do that – you figure it out.

(Editing by Steven Millward)

The post appeared first on Tech in Asia » Philippines

by Mahesh Sharma

The aggressive international expansion of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has continued to put pressure on the firm’s bottom line but it is confident the “super sales” and B2B2C business model, popular in its homeland, will help it steal Amazon’s mantle as the world’s No. 1 e-commerce firm.

On Friday it announced second quarter earnings for the six months ending June 30, 2013, when revenue increased to $2.4 billion, up 32 percent compared to the previous year; Operating income rose to $475 million, while net income in this period was $256 million, up 18.9 percent year-on-year.

In Q2 2013, Rakuten’s internet services group, which includes leisure travel services, did most of the heavy lifting ringing in profits of $275.5 million on revenues of $1.4 billion over the period. However, the profit result was actually down by 4.8 percent on the corresponding period in the previous year, the legacy of large acquisitions in 2012 as well as moving away from the inventory sales model.

The marketplace move appears to be paying off as its overseas properties, such as Buy.com and Play.com as well as Rakuten’s international properties, recorded gross merchandising revenue of $141 million, up 37.3 percent year-on-year. Over the same period “other sales,” including white label and direct sales, were down 12.2 percent, to $1.3 billion.

Beyond the marketplace, it will take a personal approach to “organically” expand into new markets.

On the supply side, it allows merchants to design their own sites and use e-mail and social networks to engage directly with customers, which is akin to shopping in a mall. It’s also banking on the “super sales” promotion, which reaches over a billion impressions and promises triple digit growth in sales and web traffic. To participate, merchants must aggressively discount their products, including one product at 20 to 50 percent off RRP.

For customers, it will replicate the Rakuten ecosystem, popular in Japan, which engages customers via multiple channels, including ebooks, media, and travel, and uses a rewards points system to circulate these buyers amongst its various products, such as credit cards, securities, and life insurance.

Specifically, it will leverage its foreign properties, acquired last year: Canadian e-reader Kobo, which boasts 15 million and saw content sales rise 40.5 percent year-on-year in the latest results; as well Spanish video streaming service Wuaki, which was recently launched in the UK.

“Our Group, using this advanced business model, plans to fuse global e-commerce services, and aims to offer a borderless digital content platform across various devices,” Rakuten said on its website.

“The Rakuten Group will promote a horizontal penetration of our unique business model started from Japan as well as the know-how for success in each country and region. Also, we will develop a highly synergetic global management platform and will enlarge the Rakuten Ecosystem globally, striving to become the world’s No. 1 Internet services company.”

The post appeared first on TechCrunch » Asia

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