MNC Confirms Joint Venture Split-up, Plans To Sell Its 49% Stakes Back To Rakuten

Local conglomerate corporation MNC Group finally confirms the termination of their RBO (Rakuten Belanja Online) joint venture with Rakuten Japan. Quoted from Kontan, MNC Director David Audy confirms the principal difference of future vision as the root of the problem for the joint venture. MNC is said to seel its 49% ownership in the joint venture to Rakuten Japan.

The news about this breakup is not surprising for most people in the industry, rumor has spread about conflicts between the two giants since mid last year although no official news until yesterday. Rakuten is said to bring its Japanese management style to RBO and not running as smooth as they wanted to. Rumor also spread late last year about Rakuten team relocating its office from MNC Tower in Central Jakarta. RBO itself ambitiously tried to dominate Indonesia's potential e-commerce industry since 2010.

Although the decision has been made, David Audy cannot give exact date on when the partnership will be terminated effectively. Audy also doesn't have the valuation at for MNC to sell its 49% stake in the joint venture.

Audy said that MNC is still opening its doors for e-commerce opportunities in Indonesia. He also stated clearly that MNC's partnership with Chinese giant Tencent is not the reason behind the split-up with Japan's Rakuten. MNC itself is quite aggressive in its effort to expand to Internet business. Aside from promoting Tencent's messaging product WeChat, MNC is said to go into the online game and online search engine space.

As per today, RBO has 370 merchants and aggressively targeting 1000 merchants by the end of 2013.