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.