Asia-Pacific Power List 2022: Naho Kono, Rakuten

Naho Kono

Group executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Rakuten Group
Chief marketing officer and managing executive officer, Rakuten Mobile
Japan
Member since 2020

Naho Kono has been a member of the Power List since 2020, and continues to be recognised for her exceptional achievements at Rakuten, the operator of Japan’s biggest ecommerce platforms. 

In 2017, Kono became the first woman and youngest managing executive officer in the history of Rakuten. Today, she serves as group executive vice president and CMO of the Rakuten Group as well as CMO and managing executive officer of Rakuten Mobile, a new mobile carrier business that made its full-scale commercial launch in 2020.

Kono and her team continue to contribute to record-breaking growth for Rakuten. In the first quarter of 2022, the average number of monthly unique users across the Rakuten Group in Japan surpassed 36 million, up 11.2% year-on-year. And the percentage of users who use two or more services reached a record high of 74.8%.

With 2022 marking the 25th anniversary of Rakuten, Kono has been busy leading the group's anniversary project, as well as driving forward Rakuten's tech and green branding initiatives, which includes a goal to work towards carbon neutrality, aiming to adopt 100% renewable energy utilisation for the Rakuten Group as a whole by 2023.

Meanwhile, Kono successfully led Rakuten Optimism 2021 in Tokyo, an international business conference featuring CEO speakers from Accenture, Intel, Zoom, Qualcomm, Japan Post and others, and more than 100,000 viewers from around the world. A champion for diversity and inclusion, Kono and her team also led the ‘Walk Together with Pride’ initiative to promote true inclusiveness for the LGBTQ+ community both inside and outside the company.