About Us

Takashi Katsuragi is the CEO of Rakuten Asia, bringing over a decade of diverse leadership experience within the Rakuten Group. With a remarkable track record as Head of Education Business, he spearheaded the "Englishnization Project," adopting English as Rakuten's official language. In recent years, he played a pivotal role in the success of key strategic ventures, including Rakuten’s communication utility and media businesses.

His previous roles as an HR executive spanned Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten USA where he crafted innovative solutions and implemented the Global HR appraisal system. Katsuragi's career began at the East Japan Railway Company, where he honed his skills in developing training programs for professionals. As CEO, his strategic acumen continues to propel Rakuten Asia to new heights in APAC.

As the CEO of Rakuten India, a key development center of Rakuten Group, Inc., Sunil Gopinath spearheads the scaling of product and technology footprint across wide range of Rakuten's global businesses and technology capabilities. Gopinath is particularly excited about driving the rapid adoption of data sciences and AI across Rakuten's products and ecosystem of services.

Before Rakuten, Gopinath was the Product Head of Flipkart's Marketplace Division, where he helped build products and services to scale the Marketplace business to a $2B+ business with over 100,000 merchants.

He has held senior leadership roles globally in companies like Intel and Qualcomm driving innovation in mobile, wearable devices and location-based services.

Gopinath has been nominated as a member of NASSCOM's prestigious GCC Council for the 2021-23.

Grace Lo is the Chief Executive Officer of Taiwan Rakuten Ichiba, overseeing the overall operation of the marketplace business in Taiwan.

Lo holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and an MBA from Taiwan National University. She initially aimed to become a biological scientist but soon realized that was not the job for her after a part-time hospital position during university . Since then, she’s committed to follow her passion for retail to create the best possible consumer experience.

Prior to her career at Rakuten, Lo worked for the top offline retailer company in Taiwan, where she was in charge of marketing operations and new business development. She joined Rakuten in 2008 as a founding member and lead of the marketing division. Under her management, Taiwan Rakuten Ichiba has become one of the most high-growth overseas businesses in the Rakuten Group and successfully introduced several different businesses into Taiwan’s market since 2014 to build up the Rakuten Ecosystem locally.

Eiji Ishii has more than 15 years of experience working in various personal finance businesses. He acquired a credit card license from Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission in 2014 and subsequently established Taiwan Rakuten Card in 2015. Ishii currently serves as the company's President and CEO.

Kazuhiko Saiki is Chief Executive Officer of Rakuten International Commercial Bank, the first internet-only bank in Taiwan where he has served as a member of the Board of Directors since 2020.

Saiki joined the preparatory office of eBANK in Japan, now known as Rakuten Bank, in 2000. He started off as a marketing manager, contributing to Rakuten Bank's quick development during its early years. He served as head of the Compliance Division, including information security and AML roles, and then as head of the Human Resources and General Affairs Division. Saiki brings more than 20 years of experience in the internet-only banking industry.

Prior to joining Rakuten Bank, Saiki worked at Parco Tokyo and Singapore where he was involved in shopping center development and marketing activities.

He is a consultant for the Bankers Association of the R.O.C. (Taiwan) and the Bankers Association of Taipei and holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Keio University in Japan and Marketing certificate from the University of California, Berkeley.

Yoshinori Kawada joined Rakuten Group in 2006. Since 2008, he has been involved in several stadium renovations, mainly as the head of the stadium for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

Kawada participated in Rakuten's acquisition project of the Lamigo Monkeys. Since the Rakuten Monkeys team was born in January 2020, Kawada has been active as the team's general manager and currently serves as CEO.

Kazumasa Mise is Rakuten Trade’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a member of the Board of Directors. He has more than 16 years of experience in the capital markets industry, specializing in fintech and digitalization of capital markets' equity trading and asset management.

Prior to joining Rakuten Trade in Malaysia, Mise worked at Rakuten Securities' headquarters in Tokyo, Japan for 13 years. There he was assigned to the Japanese Equity Department to promote margin trading and ETF trading. He also worked briefly with the Investment Trust Department, and prior to that, the Commodity Derivative Department, where he supported the merger and acquisition between Dot Commodity and Rakuten Securities.

Mise holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance and Economics from Syracuse University in New York.

Profile coming soon...

Yasufumi Kikuchi is the President of Rakuten Securities Hong Kong Ltd. and a member of the Board of Directors.

His career started in 2005 at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (current: MUFG Bank). He was the main trader of foreign exchange and interest rate derivatives in Tokyo and New York. After that, he held the executive position of trading in virtual assets ventures before joining Rakuten Securities Inc. in 2021. He was transferred to Rakuten Securities Hong Kong in March 2022 and assumed his current position in May 2023.

He holds a Master of Engineering from Yokohama National University in Japan.

Hiroaki Ishihara is the General Director of Rakuten FinTech Vietnam Co. Ltd. He has over 20 years of experience in the information technology field, including roles as regional IT head of APAC, in IT planning and strategy, project management, system engineering, and more.

Since joining Rakuten in 2020, Ishihara has contributed to the collaboration of Rakuten Group’s FinTech companies from a system perspective. In this capacity, he is responsible for the continual promotion of activities among them, as well as the development and establishment of Fintech facilities abroad.

Ishihara is dedicated to developing Rakuten Fintech Vietnam and ensuring that it supports the growth and success of Rakuten Fintech's businesses.

Ewa Szymanska is the Global Head of the Rakuten Institute of Technology, where she is responsible for leveraging consumer data and understanding consumer behavior to inform global marketing strategy, empower merchants and develop solutions for targeted online advertising.

Prior to joining Rakuten’s Global Marketing Office in Singapore, she was a Behavioural Data Scientist at SingTel – Singapore Telecommunications – applying a psychographic approach to analyzing location data for targeted mobile advertising.

Szymanska received her PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Munekatsu Ota is the CEO and Director of Rakuten Travel Xchange. The company is a wholesaler of hotel inventory for over 700,000 properties worldwide to online travel agencies in more than 80 countries.

Ota also serves as Representative Director of Rakuten STAY, a brand he launched in July 2017, which provides new accommodation experiences and operates approximately 40 properties throughout Japan.

In March 2017, Ota was appointed the General Manager of the Sharing Economy Business Department at Rakuten Group, where he pioneered the creation of a new sharing economy business in vacation rentals.

Prior to Ota’s tenure at Rakuten Travel Xchange, he served as Executive Officer and General Manager of the International Business Department of Rakuten Travel. He was also the Chairman and CEO of Rakuten Itsuko Information Technology in Beijing, China.

As CEO of Rakuten Symphony Korea and President of the Internet & Ecosystem Services business unit, Ryan Son is responsible for building, operating and selling the entire non-telecom side of the products Rakuten Symphony offers to global enterprises.

Son joined Rakuten in 2021 with Rakuten's acquisition of Estmob, the company he had been managing. The two products he brought to the company, Send Anywhere and Sendy Cloud, boast more than 50 million users worldwide and have become two of Rakuten Symphony's major products.

His strengths are product management, closing partnerships, user acquisition, team/company setup and his persistent work ethic that he nurtured through twice running his own business and working for Google and the United Nations.