Jakarta, Indonesia, December 8th -- Rakuten, Inc., Japan’s leading internet company, and PT Global Mediacom Tbk, Indonesia’s largest media group, today unveiled the brand name “Rakuten BELANJA ONLINE” and logoof their joint internet shopping mall business for the Indonesia market, which is scheduled to launch through a Joint Venture Company in 2011. “BELANJA” means “Shopping” in Indonesian. The two companies also launched a pre-site for potential merchants.
In May, Rakuten and Global Mediacom had reached an agreement to establish the joint venture to build No.1internet shopping mall in Indonesia. The Joint Venture will initially operate the internet shopping mall by offering domestically produced products to Indonesian consumers by local merchants. In the mid-to-long term, the Joint Venture will build a global e-commerce transaction platform by working in close cooperation with “Rakuten Ichiba Japan”, “Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan”, and “TARAD.com” of Thailand. Also, it will join hands with, “Lekutian”, an Internet shopping mall in China, which Baidu, Inc. and Rakuten launched jointly, as well as with Buy.com, Inc. in the U.S. and PriceMinister S.A. in France, which were acquired by Rakuten in July.
Indonesia boasts the fourth largest population (240 million) in the world and ASEAN’s largest number of internet users (33 million) with tremendous growth potential in the e-commerce business. Rakuten and Global Mediacom aim to build Indonesia’s No.1 internet shopping mall through the Joint Venture by combining Global Mediacom’s high profile and unparalleled marketing capability and Rakuten’s e-commerce platform technology and consulting expertise cultivated during the past 13 years as Japan’s largest internet shopping mall operator.
About Global Mediacom
Global Mediacom is the largest and the only integrated media group in Indonesia with operations encompassing content and advertising based media, subscriber based media and media support and infrastructure. Content and advertising based media is operated through PT Media Nusantara Citra Tbk. ("MNC”). MNC's operations encompass content production, content distribution, national free-to-air television networks, local free-to-air networks, production of 24 hour TV program channels, newspaper, tabloid, magazine, radio networks, online media, value added services, advertising agency and talent management. MNC has the largest content library in Indonesia, comprising 93,350 hours of entertainment and news content, which is increasing by more than 10,000 hours per year.
Subscriber based media is operated through PT MNC Sky Vision, the largest pay-TV operator in Indonesia through two leading brands under their respective target markets- Indovision and Top TV. Mediacom has another subsidiary with its own pay TV license called Nusantara Vision with its brand - OkeVision.
Media support and infrastructure is operated by PT Infokom Elektrindo which provides broadcast tower, transmission system and as an SMS gateway for the Mediacom Group.
About Rakuten
Rakuten, Inc. has approximately 64 million registered members in Japan and sales in 2009 totaled US$3.2 billion. Its core business “Rakuten Ichiba” is Japan’s largest Internet shopping mall and offers approximately 70 million products by about 35,000 merchants, some of whom have turnover of more than US$1 million per month. In addition to its Internet shopping mall, Rakuten, which has more than 10,000 employees, is engaged in other Internet businesses such as travel agency and financial services.