2023: Innovation, operations and creativity
Mickey Mikitani, Chairman and CEO, Rakuten Group
Last year marked Rakuten’s 25th anniversary, and as the world continues to experience rapid change, both technological and social, we also see many opportunities ahead.
Our vision is to become a global innovation company. To be a leader in innovation, we must remind ourselves of why we are here. Why are we doing this together? I distill the answer down to our Brand Concepts: Basically, we want to make the world a better place through technology and innovation.
“We are creating new kinds of value across a broad range of industries through the unique Rakuten Ecosystem: Look around the world and you won’t find anything else quite like this.”
Mickey Mikitani, Chairman & CEO, Rakuten Group
Last year, Rakuten reached more than 33 trillion yen in global gross transaction volume (GTV), a year-on-year increase of 23%. Global membership grew to some 1.7 billion members worldwide.
We started from just a handful of people with a simple e-commerce marketplace model and grew into one of the biggest internet services companies in the world.
We continued to achieve double-digit growth in both revenue and gross merchandise sales for domestic e-commerce, and our internet services business continues to perform strongly. Our fintech services are leading the industry with strong growth in the number of credit cards issued, bank accounts and securities accounts. We are creating new kinds of value across a broad range of industries through the unique Rakuten Ecosystem: Look around the world and you won’t find anything else quite like this.
“Diversity is not just a thing we do — it is our core strength. Bringing together different perspectives to focus on a core mission is key to our success.”
Now, powered by synergies with our mobile carrier service Rakuten Mobile, the Rakuten Ecosystem is entering a new phase of rapid growth, in terms of both total users and GTV. As we expand network coverage and services that offer even better savings and convenience to our customers, I am sure we will see an even more rapid acceleration of this growth. 2023 will also be a year that sees our mobile network platform business, built on our world-first end-to-end fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network, continue to scale even further on the global stage.
We have so many people from so many different countries and so many different backgrounds, with over a hundred countries and regions represented here at Rakuten. And I am very proud of that. Diversity is not just a thing we do — it is our core strength. Bringing together different perspectives to focus on a core mission is key to our success.
We have always looked ahead with optimism to a brighter future and consistently taken on new challenges. In the new year and beyond, I look forward to everyone bringing your ability to innovate, your operational expertise and your creativity to the challenges ahead.
This text is based on the annual greetings delivered by Rakuten’s CEO to Group employees at the opening of business in the new year.
