Rakuten wesentlich besser als Rocket

Eyal Lifshitz is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bluevine, a Redwood City, California-based fintech company that provides small and medium-sized businesses with access to fast and simple financial products through an advanced, online platform. More specifically, the company offers a suite of products designed to meet the diverse financial needs of today’s business owners including its BlueVine Business Checking, Line of Credit, Term Loan, and Invoice Factoring solutions. Since its 2013 inception, BlueVine has provided more than $9 billion in fast funding to more than 200,000 clients. In 2020, BlueVine facilitated more than 155,000 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to small businesses.

As a third generation small-business entrepreneur, Lifshitz is passionate about helping small businesses prosper. Before founding BlueVine, Lifshitz was a principal at Greylock IL, Greylock Partners’ dedicated fund for Israel and Europe. At Greylock, Lifshitz was involved in investing over $100 million in capital in startup companies. Before that, he was an associate at McKinsey & Company and a system and algorithm engineer at Texas Instruments. Lifshitz received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Tel Aviv University, graduating in the top 10 percent of his class. Lifshitz also received a Master of Business Administration degree with high honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

thefinancialtechnologyreport.com/...-technology-ceos-of-2021/

BlueVine’s Allocca: SMB Growth Demands New Vision For Loan Underwriting

Posted on March 29, 2021

When small business lending FinTech BlueVine took the wraps off its bank offering last October, the solution emerged as a natural extension of the company’s existing offering. After all, lending and banking are intrinsically connected — in theory.

In reality, however, various financial services have historically been siloed and disjointed for many SMB end users, according to Steve Allocca, who joined the company as COO earlier this month, taking along his experiences at LendingClub, PayPal, Wells Fargo and other heavyweights in the finance and technology arena.

BlueVine’s introduction of its Business Banking offering came at a time of urgency and desperation for many smaller firms in the U.S., which were eager for greater access to robust financial services. Availability of credit was certainly key to filling that need, as Allocca told Karen Webster in a recent interview. Yet to truly address SMBs’ needs, financial service providers must rethink the way that lending, banking and payments can work together — and not just provide firms with money, but actually foster long-term growth.

www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2021/...p;utm_medium=twitter

Rakuten was going in the IPO of Upstart with 5.3%

Upstart has gathered a number of external stakeholders since its fruition in 2012.

Those going into the IPO include Third Point Ventures (19.5%), Stone Ridge Trust (9.5%), Khosla Ventures (8.4%), Rakuten (5.3%) and First Round Capital (5.2%).

www.fintechfutures.com/2020/11/...art-holdings-files-for-ipo/

Cisco and Rakuten Mobile Building the Internet for the Future, Together

Learn how Cisco and Rakuten Mobile are working together to shrink the digital divide and provide a more inclusive internet for all with innovative technology that will carry us into the digital future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqP3l19r0lM

Rakuten CEO Meetings with U.S. Government officials
July 2021

Rakuten Group at a glance

~$210B Global gross transaction volume in 2020

~$14B Total annual revenue (2020)

1.4B+ Members globally

20k+ Employees across the globe

70+ Services and businesses

35+ Countries/areas around the world


Rakuten in the U.S: The Rakuten Americas portfolio includes market leaders in e commerce, marketing, advertising, business intelligence, logistics, communications and entertainment. And now entering the 5G market with our unique virtualized solutions. We believe that focusing on innovation and ethics creates value for consumers and businesses by aligning them together in a shared community.

+3,000 U.S. Employees

+13 Office Locations

15 Distribution Facilities

+$20B Annual GMV

+$1B Annual Revenue

+15 Acquisitions in U.S

#1 Ranked Affiliate Network

Rakuten Mobile in U.S.
Rakuten Mobile Americas has been established to provide telecommunications technology solutions and services based on the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) to the mobile telco industry across the Americas. RCP, developed by Rakuten Mobile, the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network, empowers telco operators, enterprises and governments to easily build, deploy and scale secure next-generation, cloud-based Open RAN mobile networks at high speed and low cost.

ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1071495780212/...y%20July%209%202021.pdf

Rakuten India Announces RAAI 2021: A Virtual Applied AI Conference

16/07/2021

An exclusive conference on applied artificial intelligence, organised by Rakuten India, in association with AIM, featuring speakers from fintech, retail & eCommerce domains. Join us on August 19th & 20th to be a part of the conversation where ‘Innovation Empowers Society.’

analyticsindiamag.com/...021-a-virtual-applied-ai-conference/

Rakuten Mobile is a Technology Company with US Tech DNA

Radio Technologies: Intel, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, 44 % value of components sourced from US companies in NEC Radio HW

Cloud Technologies: Altiostar, Robin, Intel, Broadcom, 75 % value of components sourced from US companies in Quanta Cloud Server HW

IP Network Technologie: 100% value of components sourced from US companies in Cisco Switch & Routers

Quelle: wie 7030

Dramatic increase in interest in our Open vRAN software

Thierry Maupile, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Product Management at Altiostar discusses Altiostar's Open and cloud-deployed RAN demonstrations at MWC 21, and reviews his predictions for the Open RAN industry post-pandemic.

How has the last 18 months panned out, and what are your expectations for MWC 2021?

Thierry Maupile, Altiostar Executive VP, Strategy & Product Management

In the last 18 months, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in interest in our Open vRAN software as mobile network operators see the successful deployments by Rakuten and their peer companies. We’ve had expressions of interest from the mobile operators because of the demonstrated performance of Open vRAN and the inherent cost-effectiveness and service deployment agility of the solution. We’ve been able to follow up on this interest with trials and proofs of concept safely, even during the pandemic, as much of the work can be accomplished remotely.  In addition, the performance and growth of our installed networks at Rakuten and other operators continues to keep us busy helping these customers to expand their 4G networks and bring new 5G services online. Finally, we’ve been actively advocating for supply chain diversity, and we’ve seen the Open RAN ecosystem grow significantly with radio providers, hardware, virtualization and software companies launching new products. Overall, the last 18 months have been a time of significant growth in the interest and implementation of Open vRAN networks.

www.thefastmode.com/expert-opinion/...-momentum-post-pandemic

Acceleration of Customer Acquisition of Rakuten Mobile

Cumulative Number of Applications: Surpassed 4.0 million (4.1 million of may 11)

The longer subscribers use the service, the more data they consume: Comparison of data usage per user in one month after the application and nine months after the application of users who applied for Rakuten mobile in June and July 2020 = +42%

Even with rapid traffic growth, the user experience continues to improve:
Network Voice Quality: 98.2% of Voice Calls have exceptional voice quality
Network Coverage YouTube Sessions Experience: 99.7% of sessions are in very good coverage area
YouTube Sessions: 2.5 million YouTube videos are watched daily
RCS to VoLTE Ratio: 5:1 Daily Call Volume ratio
Average Data Consumption: 0.51 GB  of data consumed daily per customer

ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1071495780212/...y%20July%209%202021.pdf

The FCC is a big proponent of open radio access network (RAN) technology, particularly since it sees open RAN as a way to expunge Chinese proprietary equipment from American telecommunications networks.

Each of its innovation test beds is equipped for open RAN research and testing.

The agency is hosting a prominent list of open RAN leaders at its open RAN Showcase this week who are talking about hardware and software and how the FCC might help foster the technology’s success.
Speaking at yesterday’s open RAN showcase, Rosenworcel said, “History tells us that when you give innovators in the United States a sandbox to test new ideas, well, good things follow. Here’s hoping that creating two new sandboxes to explore wireless innovation will unlock exciting new breakthroughs in open RAN technology.”

www.fiercewireless.com/regulatory/...s-open-ran-5g-test-sites

While targeting and demographics are a vital component of an advertising strategy, Rakuten Viber also allows brands to connect with consumers within the context of a ‘Moment’. Social and emotional Moments, when people are travelling or not, sharing a Moment with families and friend while apart. Users are most receptive to Viber ads during breaks (at school or work) or on the road (trains, bus or car). Through Viber, brands can become part of the sharing moment that consumers enjoy.
Rakuten Viber Ad Variants

Combining high viewability and robust targeting capabilities, brands can utilise the many mobile ad formats available:

• Post-call: When a user ends a call on their mobile device, they immediately see a visually rich ad that contains short text plus an image linking to a URL to track user interaction with a brands ad.

• Call Tab: Call screen combines calls and contacts into one screen, increasing traffic and allowing users to see a brands ad before their call.

• Main Chat Screen: The most viewed screen on Viber now has ads! With seamless and nonintrusive integration into the chat screen, ads are seen and welcomed as part of the experience.

• Business Chat Inbox: Only one click away from the chat list and the second most-viewed screen of the app, the Business chat inbox, is available for brands targeting users in Russia.

• Explore: Ads appear along the Explore screen with recommended news, curated chatbots, communities and Viber updates.

blog.rakutenadvertising.com/en-au/...-viber-increasing-reach/

MyTicket.de, one of the leading ticket companies in Germany, has joined forces with ticketing agency Coras to expand its distribution network.

The DEAG-owned firm will now be able to present tickets for attractions, live music and theatre to domestic and international tourists via Coras’ partners, including Europe’s largest airline Ryanair and the UK’s shopping and membership platform Club Rakuten.

In April, Coras teamed up with Rakuten Europe to offer member access to buy tickets directly through their membership accounts.

www.theticketingbusiness.com/2021/07/14/...etwork-with-coras/

Rakuten and Zalando can compete with Amazon

By Alex Hadwick on Jun 18, 2021

Two rapidly-growing e-commerce companies give us the inside track on how they are trying to step up and compete with the biggest and best digital players.

If you think e-commerce, chances are you think Amazon. That is with good reason, as the trillion-dollar behemoth has been a trailblazer in the sector, able to control huge market share in multiple countries. Though it is a company whose mere move into a space can cause perceived competitors to lose millions or even billions in market cap, there are plenty who aren’t intimidated and are instead carving out their own space in the e-commerce market. So, what are they getting right that’s allowing them to compete with this most voracious of rivals?

We talked to German-based Zalando and Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten to understand what it takes, where they are investing, and what strategies are allowing them to become major players in their regions.

www.reutersevents.com/supplychain/...w-can-you-compete-amazon

“In Japan, Rakuten has established a network of automated, labour-efficient fulfillment centres,” explains Komori, extending to “eight fulfilment centres in seven locations across the country (one of which is planned to start operations this year),” and “plans to expand that number by building three additional fulfilment centres by 2023.”

While Japan’s population density and highly-developed infrastructure allows Rakuten to operate out of what may seem a relatively small number of fulfilment centres, each one is still a considerable investment, particularly with the high cost of land and construction in the country. Therefore, Rakuten has had to maximise its investment. For example, the new facility Rakuten uses in Yamato City is quite different to a logistics facility in the US. It sits deep within the 35-million-inhabitant urban sprawl of the Greater Tokyo Area, in a heavily built-up area, and has a far smaller footprint than a typical Amazon fulfilment centre. However, through its more vertical approach, covering five floors above ground, it still sits near the standard total floor area of those of its Western rival, at 95,000 m2 (a little over 1 million sq ft)."

Quellle: wie 7038

BlueVine Business Checking Review
May 21, 2021, 7:00am

Small business owners deserve a checking account that benefits, not limits, their day-to-day business operations. BlueVine Business Checking may be the solution for some. The online banking platform, founded in 2013, offers a business checking account with unlimited transactions, few fees and a laundry list of other helpful features.

In this review, we look at everything BlueVine Business Checking has to offer business owners and how it stacks up to the competition so you can determine if it’s right for you.

Annual percentage yields (APYs) and account details are accurate as of May 20, 2021.

www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/...e-business-checking-review/

The global micro-lending market is projected to reach a valuation of $343.84 billion by 2027, according to a new report.

The expected increase in adoption of microlending in developing countries may improve consumers’ lifestyle or standard of living. The anticipated shift from traditional lending to micro lending may reduce operational costs and lower market risks, the report noted.

Based on providers, the banking segment held the “major share” in 2019. By region, the market across the APAC area should remain “lucrative” during the forecast period (until 2027).

As mentioned in the report by Allied Market Research (AMR), the global microlending market was valued at around $134.35 billion in 2019 and is on track to surpass the $340 billion mark by 2027 (a CAGR of 12.6% from 2020 to 2027).
 
Some of the key market players operating in the microlending industry include Accion International, BlueVine, Inc., Fundera, Inc., Funding Circle, Kabbage, Inc., Kiva, Lendio, LENDR, OnDeck, and StreetShares, Inc.

www.crowdfundinsider.com/2021/02/...ge-others-as-key-players/

Nachrichten sollte man allerdings einen Punkt nicht aus dem Auge verlieren: Nach meinen Schätzungen dürfte Rakuten trotz hoher Gewinne im Fintechbereich und angemessener Gewinne in anderen Bereichen auch im zweiten Quartal insgesamt einen hohen Verlust ausweisen, der durch den Mobile-Bereich verursacht wird. Denn wann man ursprünglich für sieben Jahre geplante Investitionen auf zwei Jahre zusammenschiebt und Einnahmen wegen erst wachsender Teilnehmerzahlen und Gratiszeiten bis zu einem Jahr noch nicht ausreichend wachsen, ist das unvermeidlich.

Während Ähnliches bei Startups mit sehr viel größeren Unsicherheiten problemlos geschluckt wird, könnte das Kursanstiege bei Rakuten zumindest behindern - auch wenn ich davon ausgehe, dass das diesmal im Gegensatz zu früher ordentlich kommuniziert wird, da diesmal davon auch etwas abhängt: nämlich der zukünftige Erfolg der Rakuten Communication Platform, der sich ohne Erfolge in Japan nur schwerer erreichen lässt.

Just 2.5% of total grocery sales in the country were online before the pandemic, according to a Reuters report, compared with 7% in Britain and 15% in China, but that has since doubled, and is likely a driving force behind Rakuten’s increased investment in Seiyu supermarkets.

www.reutersevents.com/supplychain/...w-can-you-compete-amazon

Ich schätze beim Operating Income in Q2/2021 einen angefallenen Verlust von ca. 350 Millionen Dollar – beim Operating Income Excluding Mobile, Logistics and Investment Business dagegen einen Gewinn von 400 Millionen Dollar.

Sollte der Mobile-Bereich in 2023 die Verlustzone verlassen und auch nur flat sein, wären inklusive von auch nur mäßigen Steigerungen in den anderen Bereichen in 2023 bei einem Jahresgewinn von 2 Milliarden Dollar, der sich dann in den nächsten Jahren zusätzlich durch Gewinne des Mobile-Bereichs massiv steigern dürfte.

2021-05-06

The April 30 addition of iPhone 12 lineup to Rakuten Mobile marked the transformation of Rakuten Mobile into a first tier carrier on the same level of Docomo, KDDI au and SoftBank. Now that SoftBank is taking Rakuten to court over allegedly stolen SoftBank corporate secrets, I think we know who is feeling the pressure. It is the end of an era. SoftBank was the first carrier to launch iPhone in Japan back in 2007 when NTT Docomo refused and KDDI au could not (the Verizon iPhone problem). They cleverly used iPhone to leverage their position from an industry also-ran into a serious first tier carrier grabbing marketshare for the other majors.

Rakuten Mobile is now playing the hungry upstart with fresh ideas and aggressive plans: pay for what you actually use instead of paying for a monthly allotment just like the good old land line days…how original. Nevertheless SoftBank feels threatened not only by Rakuten Mobile but the total weight of the Rakuten Empire: Rakuten Pay which encompasses Rakuten Edy and Rakuten Suica, and most of all, Rakuten Point.

SoftBank has similar parts, PayPay and TPoint/TMoney, but they are not well integrated across the SoftBank empire and more importantly, they don’t have the synergy of Rakuten. That’s why people in their 20~40’s are sometimes referred to as living in the Rakuten economic zone, leveraging Rakuten Point as currency ‘plus’ to make their real money go much farther for all of their needs.

But there’s one more thing. Now that Rakuten Mobile has the full iPhone lineup, it’s only a matter of time before Rakuten Edy and Rakuten Suica join Apple Pay. That is SoftBank’s true nightmare.

atadistance.net/2021/05/06/japans-new-economic-zone-rakuten/

Five Middle East operators sign joint open RAN agreement

Monday, 19 July 2021 By Hala Turk

Five network operators in the Middle East signed on Sunday a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to provide support and deployment of open RAN technology in their future infrastructure rollouts.

Etisalat Group, Saudi Telecom Company (stc), Zain Group, Mobily – the Saudi operator part-owned by Etisalat- and du announced in a joint statement their aim to “deploy Open RAN across their footprint, providing an opportunity to traditional RAN vendors to adopt open interfaces, software and hardware to build more agile and flexible mobile networks in the 5G and 4G era.”

The open RAN technology supports interoperation between vendors’ equipment. The main goal for using open RAN is to have an interoperability standard for RAN elements such as non-proprietary white box hardware and software from different vendors. Network operators that opt for RAN elements with standard interfaces can avoid being stuck with one vendor’s proprietary hardware and software.

The collaboration will present vast opportunities for operators and telecoms ecosystem with the availability of interoperable, competitive, and commercial-grade open RAN products, building a framework to exchange best practices and technical outcomes, the statement explained.

The operators will focus on introducing software capabilities in the open RAN environment that will support different technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It’s worth noting that the five operators will not starting from scratch, as Etisalat followed its recent collaboration with Japan-based Rakuten Mobile, to deploy an Open RAN network in Afghanistan in partnership with Parallel Wireless, Intel and Supermicro.

www.insidetelecom.com/...ators-sign-joint-open-ran-agreement/

Rakuten TV Europe has realized a major expansion of its AVOD (advertising video-on-demand) offering with the launch of more than 90 free linear channels* across the continent. The lineup will vary in each territory, comprising of Rakuten TV-curated content, as well as channels from top global brands and new channels created in collaboration with media companies. Hear from the CEO of Rakuten TV Europe, Jacinto Roca, on this exciting step forward for the company.
*Linear channel: Video content delivered in scheduled mode, like traditional TV programming.

global.rakuten.com/corp/innovation/rnn/2021/2105_011/

Altiostar Expands UK Lab to Extend 4G & 5G Open RAN

Open vRAN software firm is actively hiring software developers and customer support staff for its UK lab

Tewksbury, MA – July 19, 2021: Altiostar today announced it is expanding its UK-based open virtual radio access network (open vRAN) engineering lab by hiring new staff to support expanded software development, customer support and testing activities.

Altiostar’s UK development lab was opened in 2012 and is located in Weybridge south of London. It is strategically located in one of the worldwide hot spots for RAN development. The lab is outfitted for remote radio unit (RRU) integration testing with Altiostar software, and certification with standards bodies and regulatory agencies. The lab has in the past regularly hosted customer visits to conduct RRU testing. Moving forward, it will be a key location to support customer deployments taking place in the UK.

Altiostar UK office personnel also work closely with a number of partners that have a presence in the UK and Ireland. Altiostar is collaborating with NEC on a number of 5G deployments and also the NEC OpenRAN Global Centre of Excellence. In addition, Altiostar is partnering with Aspire Technology, an Open RAN professional services company headquartered in Dublin, to conduct independent interoperability and end to end testing for radios.

“The Altiostar UK location has played a key role in the development and testing of new software features for all of our customers,” said Kana Muhunthan, Senior Director of Radio Product Development at Altiostar. “The growth of this office reflects the importance of open vRAN to the future of the mobile wireless industry. The UK is a great location for attracting developer talent and we are committed to continue to grow our presence in this region.”

www.altiostar.com/...expands-uk-lab-to-extend-4g-5g-open-ran/

The SRv6 is also crucial as Rakuten Mobile moves from 5G Non-Standalone to Standalone. Moving to SRv6 will allow Rakuten Mobile to build resilience in the network and support more demanding Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

The second key aspect of the partnership is network slicing. With SRv6 for network slicing architecture, Rakuten Mobile will be able to offer cloud-delivered services, gaming, collaboration, hyperscaling the network, and more.

www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/...nd-Affordable-35903225/

There are vRAN challenges to overcome — Industry Voice: Madden

danielkuhn 1 day ago

Rakuten Mobile has done some good work in building an open vRAN network. After some initial struggle and heroic engineering efforts, it’s on air and it works. I would like to pay tribute to CTO Tareq Amin and his team for proving that vRAN works.

However, the problem Rakuten tackled was one-dimensional. It is to achieve green field network coverage. You don’t need a lot of capacity, at least initially, as it takes time to increase the capacity of your network. Rakuten plans to succeed in the future and clearly recognizes the need for further improvement. Amin recently said, “The part that the industry desperately needs to deal with and fix is the radio access DU … I don’t think the current open RAN platform DU is absolutely optimal. It lacks a lot to make. It’s competitive. “

He’s trying to say that the virtual distributed units (vDUs) available on the market can’t handle some of the high-capacity features of 4G / 5G, such as carrier aggregation, CoMP, and interference conditioning in most cases. is. These features are useful for LTE networks deployed in single-vendor networks where unique interfaces allow coordination between wireless and multiple DUs.

To My prediction, I recently predicted that American operators would move forward and make vDU work … $ 4 Billion vDU Software In the next few years. It’s starting to happen, and there’s evidence of success at Rakuten, and at Verizon’s coordinated “Bluefield” network.

Joe Madden is the lead analyst at Mobile Experts, a network of market and technology experts analyzing the wireless market.

illinoisnewstoday.com/...ercome-industry-voice-madden/308878/