Rakuten Sees Huge Growth in Malaysia
(Updated on June 24th: We’ve corrected the spokesperson name in this article. We apologize for the inconvenience.)
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 Toru Shimada, senior executive officer and director of Rakuten Inc., 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.
