Foundation: 1997
Headquarters: Setagaya Ward, Tokyo
Chairman and CEO: Hiroshi Mikitani
Executive Summary: Rakuten Group is a Tokyo-based online retailing and electronic commerce company that operates a number of services across the internet, financial technology, and mobile industries. Founded in 1997 as MDM, Inc. by current CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, the company launched its first online shopping website, the Rakuten Shopping Mall, that same year. The company adopted the name Rakuten in 1999, aiming to help sellers bring themselves to the online market. By 2001, Rakuten had gone public on the Jasdaq Securities Exchange and became one of the most-visited sites in Japan. In the same year, Rakuten launched Rakuten Travel, an online service for hotel reservations. Rakuten expanded into financial services following the acquisition of Aozora Card Company to create the Rakuten Card Company. The Rakuten credit card came about soon after. In addition to cardholder rewards and points programs, Rakuten implemented membership loyalty points for its online shoppers and has also created the Rakuten Pay mobile application. 2008 saw Rakuten create its first international e-commerce site in Taiwan, called Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan. Since then, Rakuten has expanded its e-commerce into more than a dozen countries. Its other services now include cryptocurrency processing, mobile gaming, product searches, and mobile networks. Many of these services were either created or augmented by Rakuten’s acquisition of smaller companies. Since the rise of Amazon in both Japan and other countries, Rakuten was forced to shutter some of its online marketplaces abroad, but it maintains a large stake in the Japanese e-commerce world. In 2021, Rakuten allowed Japan Post Holdings to take more than an 8% stake in the company as part of a broad alliance. Its annual income is in the range of US$15 billion.
