VENTURE CAPITAL POST

With an ambition to be the next eCommerce giant in Southeast Asia, Matahari Mall officially launched Wednesday with $500 million funding from giant Indonesian real estate development company Lippo Group.

China's Momo Inc, a mobile-based social networking platform, filed with U.S. regulators on Friday to raise up to $300 million in an initial public offering of its American Depositary Shares (ADS).

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc said it will offer a cut-rate smartphone service for about a third of the monthly fees charged by the country's three dominant operators, adding to increasing price competition in the sector.

San Mateo, US-based open platform as a service Cloud Foundry is about to become more popular by launching the Cloud Foundry Foundation, which will help servers deploy software apps of developers under an open-source Apache license.

Tokyo,Japan-based Internet services firm Rakuten will launch a beta version of the Singapore-based streaming video platform Viki in Japan tomorrow, just five months after the Japanese bought the platform for $200 million.

The venture capital arm of Tokyo-based Internet firm Rakuten, Rakuten Ventures, led the Series A round for Singapore-based ViSenze which raised $3.5 million, TechCrunch reported.

Tokyo, Japan-based Internet services company Rakuten Inc opened its first European research and development (R&D) facility in Paris, France, which is called the Rakuten Institute of Technology.

Rakuten said it will purchase messaging application Viber for $900 million, marking the latest and largest acquisition of the biggest internet company in Japan, TechCrunch reported.

Singapore-based consumer-to-consumer marketplace mobile startup Carousell snagged USD800,000 in seed funding to be used for the development of its app and expansion efforts in Southeast Asia.

Japanese E-commerce giant Rakuten acquired video streaming site Viki for a reported USD200 million.

Startup company Slice received USD23 million in Series B funding from Japan's Rakuten, among others.

Japan-based online retailing giant Rakuten is leading the latest $100 million round of funding in U.S. social networking site Pinterest.