When Rakuten announced their partnership with MNC last May, everyone in the internet and ecommerce industry was stunned by Rakuten’s bold move to invade an undeveloped land. When i say undeveloped, i mean no one has done a success by relying on online transactions of any kind, it’s a big investment and risk. Rakuten is currently internationally growing like crazy by opening office all over Europe and several countries in Asia, and although Indonesia is one of them; it’s a totally different ball game.
In Japan, Rakuten is the biggest e-commerce service followed by Amazon with only half of Rakuten’s revenue. It’s not really a competition for Rakuten, so they decided to go all around the world and embrace new competitions. Rakuten Japan’s advantage -compare to Amazon- is they sell digital goods, which generates revenue (and lots of them) to the company.
In Indonesia, Rakuten partners with MNC Global a large media holding company that’s going to be a huge – huge advantage in terms of marketing and promotion. MNC owns several TV stations, newspapers, magazines, radio, online news portal, you name it. They ARE the media, and awareness won’t be a problem for Rakuten. MNC’s experience on running a news portal that makes money from ads and Rakuten’s experience on e-commerce and transaction should be a killer combination.
Will Rakuten only rely on ads much like the other player? Or Rakuten will be the one to push the culture forward and bring the online shopping culture to nourish in Indonesia and make a small chunk out of it? Still remains to be seen, as their website is currently act only as an online brochure to invite merchants.
@rakuteIndo
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