Rakuten

Rakuten is Japan's largest online retailer (80 million users) and a leading provider of Internet-based services. Its Rakuten-branded sites offer shopping, auctions, books and CDs, travel arrangements, and online brokerage services.

Other online properties include job search portal Infoseek and Buy.com in the US and Thailand's TARAD.com shopping site. Offline, the company's activities include ownership of a professional baseball team, a telecom carrier, a financial services division, an online marketer, and a bus service. Rakuten's Fusion Communications provides Internet phone service. The company, which has operations in 10 countries, was founded in 1997 by chairman and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani.

Rakuten Group, Inc. (TSE's first section: 4755) is the largest ecommerce company in Japan, and third largest ecommerce marketplace company worldwide. Rakuten provides a variety of consumer and business-focused services including e-commerce, e-reading, travel, banking, securities, credit card, e-money, portal and media, online marketing and professional sports. The company is expanding globally and currently has operations throughout Asia, Western Europe, and the Americas.

Founded in 1997, Rakuten is headquartered in Tokyo, with over 17,000 employees and partner staff worldwide. Rakuten's 2018 revenues were 1101.48 billions yen. 　 In Japanese, Rakuten stands for ‘optimism.’ It means we believe in the future. It’s an understanding that, with the right mind-set, we can make the future better by what we do today. 　 So we challenge ourselves to evolve, innovate and experiment, to create a better, happier future for everyone. 　 Today, our 70+ businesses span e-commerce, digital content, communications and FinTech, bringing the joy of discovery to more than 1.5 billion members across the world.