Baidu and Rakuten Launch China’s Largest Online Shopping Mall
May 12th, 2010
China’s largest search engine, Baidu, and Japan’s major online e-commerce site, Rakuten, have recently opened China’s largest online mall. The two companies announced a few months back that they would invest £32 million for three years to create this B2C online mall, called JV (Joint Venture).
With Rakuten helping small- to medium-sized businesses with the e-commerce, advertising, and financial aspects, and Baidu helping them out with the online marketing aspects, the businesses that join up with the online mall will find themselves in good hands.
Baidu has been doing pretty well since Google exited China. The company posted massive profit growth in the first quarter of 2010, and the growth has been predicted to continue onwards into the next quarter.
This is just a first step in Rakuten’s online expansion. Its president Hiroshi Mikitani said that the company has plans to expand into 27 foreign markets, 10 of those before the end of this year.
