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M1 offers corporate customers free perks with Rakuten tie-up

SINGAPORE — M1 has tied up with Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten to help the local telco’s corporate customers ride on rapid e-commerce growth in Singapore.

SINGAPORE — M1 has tied up with Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten to help the local telco’s corporate customers ride on rapid e-commerce growth in Singapore.

M1 will offer these customers a three-month subscription waiver if they launch their e-commerce businesses on the Rakuten Singapore Online Shopping marketplace. Other perks include free consultation for the merchants’ online business strategy, implementation, sales and marketing, as well as lead and revenue generation.

Mr Willis Sim, director of product development and corporate sales for M1, said: “Online shopping is a big hit with Singapore consumers and companies without an online retail presence risk losing out on this growing pie.”

“Our partnership with Rakuten will enable our corporate customers to conveniently and cost-effectively create an online presence to leverage the growing appetite for online shopping to further drive their business forward cost-effectively, without having to invest in complex technical or human resources,” he added.

A UBS study released in June showed that online spending across the South-east Asian region has the potential to hit US$35 billion (S$46 billion) by 2020.

Rakuten Singapore carries more than 250,000 goods from more than 300 merchants across a diverse mix of product categories, including apparel and accessories, health and beauty products, consumer electronics, toys and games, food and beverages, and home furniture.

The company said its online business here has surged, with its customer base increasing by more than 10 times since its soft launch in December last year and the number of orders rising 50 per cent month-on-month. Its popularity among mobile users is also rising. More than 35 per cent of site traffic and 30 per cent of sales came from mobile devices as at the third quarter of this year, it added.

Rakuten has also been financing Singapore-based e-commerce start-ups. Last month, Carousell said Rakuten was among a group of firms investing S$7.8 million in the mobile marketplace app. In the same month, it invested US$10 million in PocketMath, a mobile advertising platform, in what was said to be the largest first-round funding of a start-up in Singapore and the biggest single investment by Rakuten to date.

The investments are part of Rakuten’s bigger strategy, with the company having launched a US$10 million fund in South-east Asia last year to strategically invest in firms that will help in its e-commerce ventures. Tan Weizhen

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