My Rakuten Experience: Tadashi
Tadashi is senior manager of the strategy planning section for the Unmanned Solution Department.
Current role
My department plans, develops and delivers services using drones. Our mission is to team up with the Rakuten Group’s various businesses to substitute in drones for heavy labor and dangerous tasks. The use of drones includes inspections of Rakuten Mobile base station towers and checking the state of roof damage for Rakuten Life. With drones, not only are risks reduced but tasks can also be completed in a shorter amount of time and at a higher level of accuracy. The business is broad, extending to maintenance of ballparks and golf courses, aerial photography and operation of the Rakuten Drone Academy, a platform which allows drone operators to apply for flying authorization.
Currently, we have around 30 team members working on drone-related projects with agile execution. Although I am in an overall management position, I am also involved in new Rakuten Mobile base station inspection work projects.
Why Rakuten?
I joined Rakuten in 2016 after working for a major foreign consumer goods maker and a foreign car dealership. I would like to start a business on my own someday, so I had the idea of first trying to build experience through establishing new projects from the ground up. Soon after starting at Rakuten, I set up a women’s cosmetics subscription service with a senior colleague. I have continued to work in various areas that are new to me, such as the takeover of a partner company and M&A projects.
Skill improvements
In the incubation service where I work, good and bad things happen every day. I face issues not normally encountered by a company employee, and have to do tasks I have never experienced before. It all counts as experience, including the failures. Progress may be slow and it may not be glamorous, but I feel that it is building my experience and my capacity to deal with challenges.
In the years since joining Rakuten, I have started companies and experienced earnings results, shareholder meetings, business liquidations, M&A and PMI. It is so fulfilling to recognize my ability to do such things. Rakuten’s culture has encouraged me to grow as a business person by setting challenges and goals that push me to improve while supporting my efforts.
The appeal of Rakuten
It is the thrill of creating products and services that do not yet exist anywhere, and the direct way you experience the delight of customers who have been helped by something that we came up with as a team. Drones are a new business and have the potential to become a new culture in the future. I gain a lot of motivation from being engaged in projects to create new standards that benefit society. I really like Rakuten – it is an environment that offers a wide range of new challenges and a stage on which you can really feel yourself growing.
What are your future goals?
In the future, I want to try my hand at developing a new business. My goal is to create a new culture and add value in the world by coming up with products and services that make our lives easier and richer.
What do you do in your time off?
I hang out with my family. I have fun with my kids, and am looking forward to the day that I can talk to them about what I do for a living.
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