Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

und gleichzeitig Kunde von NEC und Altiostar

NEC and Altiostar Collaborate to Advance Open vRAN Deployments for 4G and 5G

HmeNEC and Altiostar Collaborate to Advance Open vRAN Deployments for 4G and 5G
Tokyo, Japan and Tewksbury, MA – January 27, 2020 – NEC Corporation (NEC), a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, and Altiostar Networks, the global leader in providing 5G-ready, open virtualized RAN (vRAN) solutions, have announced a collaboration to accelerate the deployment of  4G/5G open vRAN solutions. The combined offering will help service providers to improve quality of experience, enhance spectral efficiency and significantly reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).

Under this collaboration agreement, NEC, its subsidiary Netcracker Technology and Altiostar will jointly work on 4G/5G open vRAN business development, including joint marketing activities and development of solutions that leverage each company’s advanced technologies and experience. The collaboration will bring together NEC’s IT, network and system integration expertise and Netcracker’s orchestration capability with Altiostar’s field-proven vRAN technology.

Altiostar, a US-based company, pioneered open vRAN solutions where service providers deploy a radio access network using best-of-breed solutions.

www.altiostar.com/nec-and-altiostar-collaborate/

12.10.2019
Cyber Week und Black Friday gehen in Deutschland durch die Decke

Der Bruttoumsatz über Rakuten Marketings Affiliate Network stieg in Deutschland in den Tagen vor Black Friday um bis zu 188 Prozent gegenüber dem Vorjahr.

Stefan Bernauer, Country Manager DACH bei Rakuten Marketing kommentiert die Ergebnisse: „Das Wachstum des Affiliate-Netzwerkes in Deutschland ist natürlich sehr erfreulich und hilft uns beim Ausbau unserer Präsenz in Europa. Die Konversionsraten sind im Vergleich zum Vorjahr sehr stark gestiegen. Das zeigt, dass die Publisher immer besser darin werden, ihren Verbrauchern dabei zu helfen, die Produkte zu finden, die ihnen gefallen.

Rakuten Marketing nutzt innovative, datengesteuerte Technologien, um Marken und Händler weltweit dabei zu unterstützen, Verbraucher zeitnah mit authentischen digitalen Werbeerlebnissen zu erreichen. Bahnbrechende KI und maschinelles Lernen, gepaart mit reichhaltigen Daten aus dem Rakuten-Ökosystem, ermöglichen es Werbetreibenden, neue Zielgruppen anzusprechen und bestehende Kunden wiederzugewinnen.

rakutenmarketing.com/de-de/...in-deutschland-durch-die-decke/

The top tech employer brands in Paris in 2019
September 20, 2019

PriceMinister

Founders: Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, Justin Ziegler, Olivier Mathiot
Funding: €9.6 million
Valuation: €200 million
Founded year: 2000

Why its hot: PriceMinister is a French company operating an online buying and selling platform for professionals and individuals. It was the fifth most visited e-commerce website in France. In 2010, the company was acquired by Rakuten, a leading Japanese e-commerce site and fast-expanding internet group, which is well-known for offering cashback deals and rewards.

siliconcanals.com/news/...h-employer-brands-in-paris-in-2019/

von Lyft von 40,79 am 30.9.2019 und 47,98 am 31.12.2019 bei einem Wert von 1,282 Milliarden US-Dollar am 30.9.2019 einen Gewinn aus der Beteiligung von Lyft in Q4/2019 in Höhe von 226 Millionen ableiten lassen.

global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/
Und dann:
19Q3PPT_E.pdf

Allerdings wird dieser Betrag auch wiederum durch die Kursverluste von Pinterest  in Q4/2019 geschmälert, die aber inzwischen wieder etwas gestiegen sind.

Methode "Rasenmäher" helfen da m.E. nicht weiter.  Aber kurzfristig wirken sie sich auf die Kursentwicklung nach meinen Beobachtungen erheblich aus, was ich wiederum als Chance betrachte, da ich in Dips Gelegenheit zum  Nachkaufen habe, soweit das meine Diversifikationsüberlegungen zulassen.

DATE INVESTORS AMOUNT ROUND

Apr 2015 Y Combinator, Rakuten, Daniel Curran, Justin Kan, Zach Coelius
       $2m§SEED

Aug 2017 Rakuten Ventures, Gil Elbaz, SignalFire, Auren Hoffman, Zach Coelius, Devin Guan
       $7m§SERIES A

Jul 2019 SignalFire, Rakuten Capital
      $25m§SERIES B

Total Funding €30.9m

ONESIGNAL COMPANY INFORMATION

Launch date
2014

Employees
40 people

Growth stage
early growth

Ownership
angel, venture capital, accelerator

Firm valuation
$100m - $150m (Dealroom.co estimates Jul 2019.)

app.dealroom.co/companies/onesignal

23 January 2020 / News

OneSignal Named as Startup to Watch in 2020 by Andreeson Horowitz Partner
"Started from gaming industry and mobile, the company has expanded to broader market and spanning across web, email channels," says Casado. "Today OneSignal is used by 1 million developers and sending billions of messages on a daily basis."

Recently, a group of venture capitalists were asked to name companies they thought would "boom" in 2020. Andreessen Horowitz General Partner, Martin Casado, named OneSignal as his choice for a startup to watch in 2020.

As documented last week in a growth post, OneSignal is used by 68% of the top one million websites that implement notifications and have more mobile SDK integrations than all other push platforms combined. The product entered 2020 delivering 2 trillion messages annually and reaching delivery rates of 1.75 million messages per second.

onesignal.com/blog/vc-names-onesignal-start-up-to-watch/

UK's PremFina applies for money lending licence as it eyes Irish market

December 8 2019 7:00 AM

PremFina, a UK-based insurance premium finance company, is set to expand into the Irish market after it applied for a money lending licence from the Central Bank.

The company, which raised $36m (€32.6m) during its first investment round in 2017 from backers including Japan's Rakuten Inc and Draper Esprit, enables the payment of insurance premiums via instalments. It supplies insurance brokers with funding lines and software solutions.
PremFina, which has processed £300m (€356m) worth of insurance premiums since the fourth quarter of 2016, has already established an office in Dublin. It expects to be operational here by the second quarter of next year.

The company aims to start in Ireland with a small team, with plans to expand into other European countries, including Poland and Spain.

www.independent.ie/business/...yes-irish-market-38762559.html

Diamond members‘ Rakuten Ichiba monthly purchase amount is 4,8x
(Diamond members: Has earned 30 times or more and has earned 4,000 points or more in the past 6 months, and holds a Rakuten card.)

Q3/18 = 31.2% of Active Users
Q4/18 = 33.9% of Active Users
Q1/19 = 38.4% of Active Users
Q2/19 = 42.7% of Active Users
Q3/19 = 45.4% of Active Users

global.rakuten.com/corp/investors/
19Q3PPT_E.pdf

in 4693, dass im Kerngeschäft die Umsätze um 20,2% und der Gewinn um 50,8% gestiegen sind.

Eigner von Carousell:

Carousell went from just 7 signups in 1 day to being a S$1.15 billion dollar company

Carousell recently merged with 701Search, a classifieds firm owned by telecomm giant Telenor, that owns general classifieds sites in Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar.

The deal will value Carousell at US$850 million (S$1.15 billion) with Telenor being the largest minority shareholder at 32 per cent.

A US$800,000 seed round was followed by a successful US$6 million Series A round led by Sequioa Capital.

Rakuten then led another US$35 million Series B round in 2016 and a US$85 million Series C round.

mothership.sg/2019/11/carousell-billion-unicorn/

The Biggest U.S. Pension Bought Up Uber, Lyft, and Beyond Meat Stock Before They Rallied
California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers, also increased its holdings of Alibaba American depositary receipts in the fourth quarter.

newstral.com/en/article/en/1144869111/...-before-they-rallied


Lyft’s (nearly) pure-play ridesharing strategy is looking like a competitive edge as its losses continue to narrow every quarter. Lyft says it will have a profitable EBITDA by full-year 2021.

www.nasdaq.com/articles/...uld-shift-the-narrative-2020-01-31

"The start-up operates a network of over 1,500 properties across 80 cities in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Earlier this year, RedDoorz had its first close of US$70 million (S$96 million) as part of its larger Series C round, and launched a new regional tech hub in Vietnam.

The company has raised about US$140 million since its inception in 2015.

Founder and CEO Amit Saberwal said RedDoorz has built up brand awareness and loyalty across the markets it operates in. "Indonesia, in particular, is our strongest market given its robust domestic travel ecosystem, whereas Singapore is generally considered a premium travel destination," he said."

www.straitstimes.com/business/...dget-hotels-here-by-end-2020

DECEMBER 18, 2019

Pay your friends back with Moneytou on Viber

When your friend pays for dinner, collects money for another friend’s birthday, or you need to pay the babysitter, you no longer need to search the bottom of your bag for cash to pay them back, open up yet another payments app, or make a complicated bank transfer. We are excited to announce that now you can easily send or receive money inside a Viber chat without ever leaving it.

Moneytou, our new partnership with Mastercard, NeoPay, Edenlab and Libra Bank makes transferring money to your friends easy, quick, and most importantly, secure. This service is gradually rolling out selected countries around the world, starting with Hungary and Ukraine.

What do you need?
1. A debit or credit card issued in Hungary or Ukraine by (almost) any bank
2. Register your card from inside the Moneytou chat extension on Viber to get started paying your friends back and receiving payments from them

www.viber.com/blog/2019-12-18/...-friends-back-with-moneytou/

UKRSIBBANK BNP Paribas Group is an international service bank focused on client satisfaction. UKRSIBBANK has been operating in Ukraine since 1990.

Goal
To encourage more customers to use the bank’s app, as well as make current app users aware of the full spectrum of the app’s functions.

Solution
Bulk messaging via Viber and SMS is the most viable way of reaching customers directly.

Impact
In a three-month period 6,024,373 messages were sent, registering an average conversion rate of 14% for Viber and 7% for SMS.

The campaign exceeded initial expectations, and in just 3 months, downloads of the UKRISBBANK app rose by 50% while usage increased by 30%

www.gms-worldwide.com/case/ukrsibbank-bnp-paribas-group/

Rakuten Card Monthly Gross Transaction Value for December 2019 Exceeds 1 Trillion Yen
- Rakuten Card grows to a record 19 million cardholders

Tokyo, January 30, 2020 - Rakuten Card Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Rakuten, Inc., today announced that its monthly card gross transaction value for December 2019 reached a record 1 trillion yen.

December 2019 marks the first time for Rakuten Card to exceed 1 trillion yen in monthly gross transaction value. For the 2019 fiscal year, the gross transaction value is expected to be approximately 9.5 trillion yen, an increase of approximately 27% year-over-year*1. The number of Rakuten Card cardholders has also accelerated at a record pace, taking only five months to reach an additional 1 million cardholders, bringing the total number of cardholders to more than 19 million as of January 2020.

global.rakuten.com/corp/news/update/2020/0130_01.html

Rakuten and SQREEM Launch Rakuten SQREEM, Inc.
Tokyo, February 3, 2020  -

Launched today, Rakuten SQREEM is a new company established by Rakuten and SQREEM Technologies (Japan) Pte. Ltd., the Japan division of SQREEM Technologies, a company that provides AI-based marketing solutions. The new company will utilize the data provided by the more than 100 million Rakuten members*1 in Japan and the behavioral pattern analysis data owned by SQREEM to provide marketing solutions enabling media buying for internet advertising and the precise analysis of consumer behavior.

Rakuten SQREEM hopes to provide high-performance solutions to advertising companies that take into account the importance of protecting user data by developing digital marketing solutions that are not dependent on personal attributes, and instead use the analysis of open data available online.

Rakuten and SQREEM will continue to create new digital marketing solutions for a range of companies through Rakuten SQREEM.

global.rakuten.com/corp/news/press/2020/...=2&category=ec

Rakuten Mobile launches a ‘used smartphone trade-in’ service
2020.1.31

The service allows users to sell used smartphones that are no longer needed by applying for trade-in via a designated website.

After the application is made, the user confirms the result of the postulated assessment conducted online and sends the product in a designated kit delivered from Rakuten Mobile.

After this assessment of the product using Rakuten Mobile, the trade-in price is formally determined, and the trade-in amount is paid after the approval of the user.

Payments for the trade-in amount are made using Rakuten Group’s online electronic money Rakuten Cash.
The Rakuten Group also aims to meet the diverse needs of users by deploying Rakuten’s Rakuma flea market app, such as the Rakuten official used smartphone shop, which sells used smartphones.

amp.review/2020/01/31/...-a-used-smartphone-trade-in-service/

3 days ago

Eight years ago, Japan saw the launch of FRIL, the country’s first “flea market” app. FRIL allowed users to take pictures and post their own goods for customers to browse and negotiate. And so, the modern C2C (consumer to consumer) industry in Japan was born.

FRIL joined the Rakuten family in 2016, and with its focus on the fashion and beauty products genres, complemented the more general range of products sold through Rakuma, another C2C app in the Rakuten Group.

In 2018, the two apps were merged under the Rakuma brand. Rakuma quickly established a reputation as a low-cost alternative for sellers, taking a 0% margin on user sales during its first years before introducing a margin that was a fraction of its main competitors.

In 2016, Rakuma took its first step outside of Japan, launching in the competitive Taiwanese C2C market. Since launch, the app has been installed over 1 million times in Taiwan. The Taiwanese user base is predominantly young and female, and is particularly popular for buying and selling baby products and, more recently, used smartphones.

rakuten.today/tech-innovation/eight-years-rakuma.html

Rakuma in Ländern, in denen Viber eine starke Stellung hat, auch etablieren könnte - denn die Werbung über Viber wäre m.E. kostenlos.

Wall Street Says to Ride the Bull Market in Uber and Lyft Stock

Feb. 3, 2020 8:10 am ET

There is a stealth bull market in ride-hailing shares and Wall Street doesn’t want investors to miss out.
Shares in Uber Technologies and Lyft—the two dominant ride-hailing franchises—are up more than 20% from 52-week lows, and both stocks are outperforming the S&P 500 over the past three months. Profits aren’t on the horizon, but analysts are becoming increasingly hopeful.

www.barrons.com/articles/...5281?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo

CEO Logan Green and his team will get an opportunity to update that earnings outlook when Lyft announces its fiscal fourth-quarter results on Feb. 11. Executives said back in October that sales should rise by about 47% for the period, which would translate into 66% growth for the full year. The stock's trajectory in 2020 will be heavily influenced by the path that Lyft's expansion pace takes from there, and whether the growth stock can demonstrate an ability to generate profits in a tough industry.

www.nasdaq.com/articles/...ock-lost-11-in-december-2020-01-06

www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/...tups-worth-watching-2020

www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/ridesharing-market

Enter the Rakuten Monkeys
6 days ago

For Rakuten, the event marked a major milestone: the company’s first acquisition of a professional sports franchise outside of Japan. Rakuten has developed a strong presence in the Taiwanese market since entering in 2008, boasting some 6.3 million users (over a quarter of Taiwan’s entire population) and issuing well over 500 million Rakuten Super Points.

“One thing that makes our operations in Taiwan unique is how many consumer-facing services we have launched,” says Takashi Watanabe, head of Rakuten Group’s operations in greater Asia. “E-commerce, travel, credit card, eBooks, consumer-to-consumer — we have so many opportunities to interact with Taiwanese customers directly.”

Alongside rapid e-commerce growth, the ecosystem has since expanded to include Rakuten Travel, Rakuten Card, Rakuten Kobo, Rakuma and more, all connected with the ever-popular Rakuten Super Points.

rakuten.today/sports-entertainment/10-years-taiwan.html