Rakuten India set to launch its SaaS offering SixthSense in US: Sunil Gopinath

Rakuten India will be launching its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering — SixthSense — in the US in September, the company’s chief executive officer Sunil Gopinath told TechCircle. An observability and monitoring platform, SixthSense was developed by Rakuten India and launched in 2021. It gives customers a 360-degree view of their information technology (IT) environment. 

“SixthSense is a proactive AI-enabled observability platform that helps chief information officers of our customer companies understand the overall health of their processes and systems pre-emptively so that action can be taken in case of a potential problem. A lot of organisations, including airlines, banks, and government agencies are showing interest. In India alone, we have two dozen customers and we are planning to take it to the US too,” said Gopinath. Rakuten also plans to launch this B2B offering to Sri Lanka and the Middle East.

To be sure, Rakuten India signed a memorandum of understanding with travel tech solutions provider InterGlobe Technology Quotient (ITQ) to jointly distribute SixthSense in the region. ITQ is the business unit of InterGlobe Enterprises and serves over 13,000 customers including travel agencies and travel management companies in about 400 cities.

Rakuten India is the Japanese technology conglomerate Rakuten’s largest centre outside of Tokyo. It started as a global captive centre that built artificial intelligence, web and mobile applications, DevOps, and analytics solutions to serve Rakuten’s business verticals including e-commerce, consumer, and retail. 

Gopinath said that in the next few years, Rakuten India aims to serve all of Rakuten Inc’s over 75 businesses. “We are positioned to be the globalisation hub of Rakuten Inc. In terms of talent, we are both English-speaking and highly tech-savvy,” he said. Gopinath also added that Rakuten India will work on externalisation of more of its products and grow its portfolio. 

Rakuten Capital, which is the corporate venture capital arm of Rakuten Group, led the investment in India-based payment platform Twid in August 2022. The startup raised $12 million in the Series A funding round which also participation from Google, Sequoia Surge, and Beenext. Gopinath said that Rakuten would also be soon announcing investments in more India-based startups, including one in the sustainability sector.