The less bumpy way to ride e-commerce = Rakuten (Seite 239)

[FlankerStan]

Rakuten India to hire 1,000 junior, mid-level engineers in the next 12-18 months

The Indian arm enables group businesses across the various technology landscape, from product engineering, data sciences products, machine learning platforms, artificial intelligence products, and medical research.

Nidhi Singal Aug 25, 2022,

Rakuten India, the largest development centre and key technology hub of Rakuten Group Inc outside of Japan, is expanding operations in the country and plans to hire 1,000 engineers at junior and mid-levels over the next 12-18 months. The Indian arm enables group businesses across the various technology landscape, from product engineering, data sciences products, machine learning platforms, artificial intelligence products, and medical research.

Rakuten India’s hiring is coming at the time when global technology companies like Google have stopped hiring. “Rakuten Group is a global business conglomerate with diverse businesses ranging from Ecommerce, Fintech, Mobile, Research and so on. Our growth is fuelled by both organic and inorganic growth strategies. And as we are the key enabler for the success of Rakuten globally, the diverse business domains give us the opportunity to sail through rough weather. Our highest hiring happened during the pandemic when companies were very cautious,” added Gopinath.

https://www.businesstoday.in/jobs/story/rakuten-india-to-hir…

[FlankerStan]

Together into our tech future: Rakuten CEO Mickey Mikitani on digital Japan and ecosystem synergy

Together into our tech future: Rakuten CEO Mickey Mikitani on digital Japan and ecosystem synergy

3 days ago

“Japan still lags behind Europe and North America in this regard. I believe this gap will continue to shrink,” he predicted. “Online shopping as a share of overall retail could increase from the current 7-8% to 15%, 20%, even 25%.”

“Over the last three years, GMS (gross merchandise sales) on Rakuten Ichiba have grown,” Mikitani reported. “We reached five trillion yen in domestic e-commerce GMS last year. We now have over 36 million monthly active users in Japan using at least one service, and we will soon reach 40 million.”
One major driver of new users has been Rakuten’s fintech businesses; namely, payment services such as Rakuten Pay and Rakuten Card.
“The synergy between our financial services and e-commerce has been particularly significant. The retail share of online shopping in Japan is still just 7-8%, meaning that over 90% of retail is still physical,” he reasoned. “By covering this space through our credit card, payments and bank services, many consumers are basically doing all of their shopping through Rakuten.”
As Japan goes increasingly cashless, more and more customers are engaging with the Rakuten Ecosystem for the very first time through services like Rakuten Pay. The service is helping Rakuten overcome a crucial hurdle of customer acquisition that many online businesses face: the jump from offline to online.
“I believe that online-merges-with-offline (OMO) marketing will be extremely important going forward,” Mikitani stressed. “We are trying to make the Rakuten ID into something like a lifestyle ID.”

This lifestyle ID concept can already be found in the wild: Mikitani related his recurring experience meeting customers who simultaneously shop on Rakuten Ichiba, use a Rakuten credit card, hold a Rakuten Bank account, subscribe to Rakuten Mobile and even have a Rakuten home loan.
“With Rakuten involved in every aspect of a customer’s lifestyle like this, we become their first choice,” he explained. “If they go traveling, they’ll book through Rakuten Travel, which commands a 20% share of accommodation reservations in Japan. We’re on our way to issuing nearly 30 million Rakuten Cards, and have 12 million Rakuten Bank accounts now. Meanwhile, Rakuten Securities is one of Japan’s largest (online) securities brokers, in terms of the number of accounts.”

In fact, of the 36 million monthly active users in Japan, Mikitani revealed that around 75% were using multiple Rakuten services, while customers active on both Rakuten Travel and Rakuten Ichiba had increased by over 50% since the previous year.
“This is Rakuten’s strength: not just shopping, but a combination of many different services.”

https://rakuten.today/blog/rakuten-ceo-mickey-mikitani-on-digital-japan.html

[FlankerStan]

Wächst das Affiliate-Marketing eigentlich noch?

MARKUS KELLERMANN

22. AUGUST 2022

https://www.affiliateblog.de/waechst-das-affiliate-marketing…

[FlankerStan]

Rakuten is an important owner of ShopBack

ShopBack to expand footprint to Hong Kong on 8 August

Over 250 merchants in Hong Kong have onboarded ShopBack.

Shopping and reward platform ShopBack will enter Hong Kong, with its soft launch set on 8 August, providing shoppers in the market access to discount codes and coupons for cashback on online purchases.

In a statement, ShopBack said over 250 Hong Kong merchants have joined the platform, ranging from local to global businesses such as Watsons, Disney+, Apple, KFC, Booking.com, Farfetch, Taobao, Sasa, ParkNShop, and iHerb, amongst others.

“Entering Hong Kong is an exciting prospect for us at ShopBack. The market’s massive potential for e-commerce and the government’s focus on growing the sector illustrates a clear market demand for financial flexibility and convenience in shopping activities,” said Josephine Chow, head of Expansion and co-Founder at ShopBack.

https://hongkongbusiness.hk/news/shopback-expand-footprint-h…

[FlankerStan]

There is a lot we can learn from NTT Docomo and Rakuten in Japan

Europe making good progress on Open RAN – NEC

By Nick Booth 22 August 2022

Patrick Lopez, Global VP Product Management – 5G at NEC, tells Mobile Europe that state of Open RAN play among europe's mobile operators.

Clouds will open with good prospects for RAN

Open RAN is progressing faster than any new technology ever introduced into the telecoms ecosystem, creating more flexibility and capacity for us all the benefit from, NEC’s 5G product management VP, Patrick Lopez, has told Mobile Europe. Europe is generally making good progress, Lopez reported, but there is a lot we can learn from NTT Docomo and Rakuten in Japan.

“We’re starting to see some excellent traction in the market. We’re working with several European operators on Open RAN deployments,” said Lopez. NEC Open Networks is working With Telefónica on a 800-site pilot across Spain, Germany, UK and Brazil. It is also in a partnership with Vodafone in the UK to supply 5G massive MIMO radio units for the operator’s initiative to build one of the largest commercial Open RANs in the world. Meanwhile, it is heavily involved with Deutsche Telekom on the German telco’s O-RAN Town initiative.

However, there is still a massive complexity mountain to climb before all the benefits can be enjoyed. We are still at a stage where all the ingredients that make a fine wine are crowding each other out. The full flavours of all the subtle infusion will be enjoyed when networking becomes transformed by a new energy, the cloud.

“So my best advice to operators is that they need to get comfortable with starting their Open RAN journey as early as possible, even on a small scale. Because the sooner they realize the maturity and capacity of the technology, the sooner you can use that in your planning for your network growth.”

https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/europe-making-good-progress-o…

[FlankerStan]

Open RAN and the link between competition and innovation

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/230585/…

[FlankerStan]

Für mich nicht nachvollziehbar

I can't understand why Rakuten doesn't publish numbers about the sale of the US-company Rakuten Super Logistics

For example the amount of the sale and/or the increase of the cash and/or the decrease of debts.

[FlankerStan]

zu 8421

Ride Sharing Market worth USD 194.65 Billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 19.2% - Report by Market Research Future (MRFR)
New York, Aug. 06, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ride Sharing Market Overview: According to a comprehensive research report by Market Research Future (MRFR), “Ride Sharing Market Research Report, Type, Vehicle Type, Business Model and Region - Forecast till 2027” the market is projected to be worth USD 194.65 Billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 19.2% during the forecast period (2021 - 2027).
Ride sharing services have become ubiquitous in cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities and towns due to the large population and inefficiency of public transport services. Convenience of mobile applications and availability of affordable internet services has raised its popularity.

Prominent players of the global ride sharing market profiled are:
• Uber Technologies Inc. (U.S.)
• Careem (UAE)
• Didi Chuxing Technology Co. (China)
• car2go (Germany)
• GrabTaxi Holdings Pte. Ltd. (Singapore)
• Cabify (Spain)
• Gett (Israel)
• OLA
• Taxify (Estonia)
• ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (India)
• Lyft Inc. (U.S.)

https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/548235245/ride-sharing-marke…

[FlankerStan]

Rakuten owning near 50% of Cabify

Cabify is running a homecoming safety campaign

By Brenda

August 24, 2022

The journey home is the most requested by Cabify users in 2022, according to the company, where more than 15 percent of total trips in Colombia last year hosted the platform’s most popular destination, the final destination.

“Users rely on Cabify to get home safely, and we appreciate that trust by investing heavily in innovation and development to have more features that help us guarantee an uneventful trip,” said Manuel Torres, Country Manager for Cabify Colombia.

Like any user of the platform, you can configure within the application the name of the most recurring or preferred origin and destination: Home, Office, University, among others. From January to July this year, trips to ‘Casa’ increased by 101 percent, according to company data.

https://gadgetonus.com/apps/34862.html

[FlankerStan]

Complete nonsense are the following sentence in the article of Seeking Alpha, because the aquisition cost are extreme low through the ecosystem and no of the three other three carriers have marketing competence like Rakuten

„Given the tough subscriber acquisition battle ahead for the company to achieve mobile breakeven and the still uncertain subscriber acquisition cost to get there, I would hold off on underwriting an upside scenario from here.“

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4536752-rakuten-group-mobil…