CxO of the week: Narendra Narayana, COO of Rakuten India

The Indian tech landscape has been on the rise and the pandemic has become a catalyst for this industry. After moving away from the most orthodox way of running a company, corporates and alike have adapted to these changes.

In a recent chat with Narendra Narayana, COO of Rakuten India, he talks about the Indian tech industry and what Rakuten has been up to.

“I grew up in a small village, 80 kms, from Bangalore and moved to the city for my higher education, have been in the city since then. Worked in USA for more than a decade before I moved back to the Garden city,” Narendra said.

Can you explain Rakuten’s business model?

Rakuten is a top technology company in Japan that offers an ecosystem of services in the areas of E-Commerce, FinTech, Media, Mobile, and other industries. The company offers 80+ different products and services in B2C and B2B categories.

Can you describe the cashback model and how it is different from your competitors?

Our cash back model is based on points we give to consumers based on their usage of our products and services. The system is integrated so that irrespective of which service the consumer uses, points will be added to their one single account.

Why do you think that there is a need for your company to exist in today’s market?

Rakuten offers over 80+ products and services in various spectrum that touch the consumer’s life. Rakuten wants to better the lifestyle of our consumers through their products and services. Even the products that we have built the other enterprises (in B2B market),  make sure that the clients’ problems are solved at scale.

What are the steps taken by Rakuten with respect to ESG?

Rakuten is a responsible company and together with our stakeholders we continue to take action on environmental sustainability, and corporate governance. There are various programs we run globally to ensure sustainable future, such as local community empowerment, diversity and equal opportunity for employment, climate change and sustainable consumption.

For instance, Rakuten Institute of Technology, which has India presence as well, helps in creating local community empowerment, Rakuten group has undertaken an uphill task of moving to 100% renewable energy by 2024 to support climate change, are few programs supporting our global ESG standing.

In today’s world, there is a huge need to safeguard data, what steps have you taken to secure your company?

We have multiple layers of security check in our development process to make sure that there are no loopholes. We have CISO’s as part of major products and services as well as regional offices to make sure security policies and guidelines are followed strictly to avoid any issues.

We have trained Security Champions as part of each department or project/product teams who instill security thinking and measures starting from design to development to production of any software we build. We are also fully compliant with GDPR and CCPA.

What are your views on the world of tech during the pandemic and can you give me your insights on the future?

Technology industry saw a big boom during this pandemic because of the ease technology created for almost everyone to adapt to working from home, communicate remotely, and stay safe with access to enormous useful information available online.

Pandemic showed why technology is a need for us and how it can help us deal with such situations going forward. Technology will make our lifestyle better and safer.

What would you like to change about this industry?

There is a huge need for talent in technology industry now and as an industry we should all work together to develop the talent and help our educational institutions to prepare the upcoming generations with new technology knowledge. I feel that industry and educational institution collaboration must increase drastically.

What are the recent developments at your company?

Rakuten launched their 5G mobile services in Japan recently which has been a huge success. Rakuten’s technology and launch of OpenRAN based 5G service has disrupted the entire mobile industry and we will go global.

Rakuten India recently launched Rakuten SixthSense, an Observability platform for technology companies to deal with development and production environment issues – detect and fix in advance approach.