What is the daily life of the CEO of a large international company like? What studies do you need to do to reach this position? Fabien Versavau, CEO France of Rakuten, looks back on his atypical career path, to say the least.
The journey of Fabien Versavau, CEO of Rakuten France
Can you go back to your academic career?
When I was young, I lived in the Dordogne, so I did prep in Périgueux after obtaining a bac S. I then joined ESC Clermont BS. If I chose this school, beyond the people I met during the oral exams and the quality of the educational content, it is also because the school allows you to have a long professional experience between the 2e and the 3e year, in gap. This gave me the opportunity to be immersed in the professional world for 18 months. I made them at Ford in France and England.
At 35, I decided to complete and refresh my academic knowledge with the ESSEC-Mannheim Business School Executive MBA. For 18 months, I was able to have training that was really complementary to my career atESC Clermont BS.
What about your professional background?
Working in digital was not my primary objective. I had another passion: automobiles. That’s why I chose to work at Ford. But, at the end of the 90s, a revolution was at work: the digital revolution. I was in England and the Anglo-Saxon countries were ahead of the curve on this subject. I had the opportunity to discover this new world that was opening up. We knew that this new part of the economy that was being created was going to become major.
The attraction for novelty was stronger than my passion for automobiles. It was a unique opportunity to be one of the first professionals to get involved in these new subjects and this is what pushed me to join SQLI. This company supports the deployment of digital technologies in organizations. But the Internet bubble burst.
Is that when you took another path?
After the bubble burst, I turned to consulting and joined Deloitte Consulting. For five years, I carried out different consulting missions mainly in sectors that were not in digital. I was happy and fulfilled, but I decided to leave everything around 2006 to return to the digital world which had become much more mature. I said no to my reassuring career in consulting to join LeGuide.com, a travel and shopping comparator. And it was five years ago that I joined Rakuten.
Why did you choose the world of e-commerce?
Through my experiences, I really developed an interest in this sector and the world of platforms. This transformation of the economy through platformization is at the heart of Rakuten’s model. Rakuten is an international technology group of Japanese origin and one of the leading Big Tech companies in the world. I was attracted by the cultural approach of a company whose values and principles fit me well.
Differentiate yourself in a competitive market
Rakuten is positioned in a market dominated by Amazon and Cdiscount in France. How to stand out?
Rakuten, worldwide, represents 200 billion dollars in business volume. The group is one of the top 5 biggest platforms on the planet. Our differentiating axis is that we offer a diversity of services ranging from e-commerce to financial services, including payment, ebooks, digital advertising, messaging or mobile telecommunications. Today is the 4the operator in Japan.
The other differentiating axis is that we are one pure player of the marketplace. We are not a hybrid player who is both distributor and merchant. We never compete with our seller clients. They are at the heart of our model. From this absence of competition is born a relationship of trust, a privileged relationship with merchants who know that, when they entrust us with their products, our one and only interest is to develop their turnover.
You are also positioning yourself in the refurb market, a world dominated by startups like Back Market. How to tell the difference?
We have been involved in this transformation since 2010. Today, we display the largest inventory of private advertisements in France with 50 million offers. Two out of three products sold on Rakuten come from the circular economy. It is estimated that 75% of the carbon impact of our sales of new products is offset by our sales of second-hand products. We hope to reach 100% in 2023.
What sets us apart is that we are a general platform that combines new and second-hand products sold by professionals – we are historical partners of networks such as Gibert Joseph, Cash Converters, etc. – and products sold by individuals. On September 2, we launched a new offer in refurbished mobile phones called refurbished certified by Rakuten. This allows us to offer a 2-year commercial guarantee on these products, which is unparalleled in France.
Fabien Versavau: The daily life of the CEO of Rakuten
What is the daily life of the CEO of Rakuten Fance like?
It starts by managing to organize, with my wife, to know who drops the children off at school in the morning and who takes care of the nanny in the evening. Given the fact that I work in an international group, I sometimes also have to deal with meetings that take place in the middle of the night.
Finally, being CEO of Rakuten France also means having the pleasure of dealing with a diversity of subjects, the need to demonstrate agility in different themes and it is the wealth of the people who carry them. My role is to ensure that our model is constantly enriched by the diversity of employee cultures. They help us to propose positive, inclusive models and to have an optimistic vision of the transformation of society and digitalization.
What are you most proud of?
This is really the impact that the team and I are having in France where we have succeeded in establishing Rakuten’s value proposition. This provides French merchants and brands with the possibility of a respectful and balanced alliance with a platform that gives them the opportunity to diversify their income and digitalize their business. Seeing our strategy that we have been implementing for 5 years actually materialize is also an element of great satisfaction on a personal level, but also for the entire team.
Internship, work-study: Join Rakuten
Is Rakuten recruiting young graduates?
Every year, we recruit a huge number of profiles from business or engineering schools. We hire talents with a very varied and diverse profile. What characterizes us is that we recruit a huge number of candidates in Europe, but also outside Europe!
Any advice for those who want to join the group?
We are very sensitive to the notion of responsibility, respect and optimism. If you recognize yourself in this state of mind and wish to participate in the transformation of French and European society, thanks to digital technology, by involving historical players without replacing them; If you have confidence in Tech and progress and are passionate about topics related to innovation, then you tick all the boxes to join us and help us grow.
