Rakuten, the Japanese consumer Internet conglomerate, has set it sights on world domination—or at least on global investment. The company is launching a $100 million dollar investment fund to focus on startups in the U.S., Israel and Asia Pacific region.
This comes as one of many moves Rakuten has made this year—the company also bought messaging app Viber for $900 million, and also made several smaller investments in Carousell, Visenze, Coda Payments, and Send Anywhere.
The new Singapore-based fund is aimed at supporting “Rakuten Ventures’ broader goal of long-term investments with startups that have the technology and potential to enable better user experience and facilitation,” says fund manager Saemin Ahn, reports TechCrunch. “Over time, this will include an increased focus on growing the ecosystem, technology, membership, and financial returns.”
Rakuten has not disclosed what companies in particular it is looking at, nor will it confirm that it plans to focus on mobile with the new fund. However, of Rakuten’s recent acquisitions in Southast Asia have had distinctly mobile focuses.
“When I look at Rakuten as a whole, we are always trying to enforce a strong methodology in having a moat and castle,” says Ahn. “Our castle is e-commerce and then we have multiple moats that help keep users in the ecosystem. It’s not that different to what Google does with search as a castle, and then moats like Android and YouTube.”
In May 2012, Rakuten was also a lead investor in the $100 million round that valued Pinterest at $1.5 billion.
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