Transcript
Introduction
Matt
Welcome back to Business Breakdowns. This is Matt Reustle and today, we are heading to Japan to cover the Internet conglomerate, Rakuten. To break down Rakuten, I'm joined by Matt Brett, the Lead Manager of the Japan Trust at Baillie Gifford. And Rakuten is the unique Japanese conglomerate that wasn't started over 100 years ago. Instead, it was part of the late '90s global Internet boom. And Matt explains what was different about that Internet boom in Japan and how Rakuten was really shaped from it.
We also get into the various business lines from traditional e-commerce to the credit card business and others, but notably how the loyalty point system here has become the glue connecting everything together. I think we cover a lot of conglomerates. Sometimes, it's not obvious how they all fit together. I think in this particular case, it is obvious how they've made this all work. And then perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation was covering Rakuten's major investment into the mobile phone market.