Walmart and Rakuten team up for  $19bn Amazon food  delivery market in Japan

Walmart is to tie-up with Japan’s Rakuten, to enter into the online groceries and balk Amazon’s rise in groceries.

As the deal was announced in Tokyo, Japan by the companies CEO’s, Amazon’s is seeking to challenge Walmart’s dominance, by buying Whole Foods for $13.7bn.

Now the US rivals have taken the battle to Japan with  ¥2.1tn (£19.2bn) Japanese grocery market on the back of an expanding female workforce and aging population.

According to Doug McMillon CEO of Walmart, its $3.3 bn purchase of e-commerce company Jet.com in 2016, which has streamlined online deliveries, offering lighting speed service using initiatives from employees and tie-ups with car-hailing services like Uber and Lyft.

Rakuten is Japan’s biggest domestic online marketplace, selling goods from books, food to cars and properties, with a revenue of  ¥7872bn for 2016, a 9.6 per cent rise from the previous year. But its share of Japan’s internet retail market fell to 18.5 per cent last year as Amazon’s increased its share to 23 per cent.

The announcement is the first big move under Judith McKenna, who was appointed the chief executive of Walmart’s international unit this month.