Japan’s Gree unveils $100M investment plan for non-game businesses

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See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.

Japanese internet company Gree unveiled that it will invest about 10 billion yen ($98.7 million) in non-game businesses in the coming 12 months. This was disclosed by the company’s managing director Naoki Aoyagi at his speech at B Dash Camp Fukuoka today.

In his presentation about Gree’s recent efforts in new businesses, he pointed out that they need to assess the feasibility of each business as frequently as every three months, similar to what US-based incubator Y Combinator does in terms of frequency of feasibility assessment.

In view of the mature state of the Japanese startup ecosystem, he said Gree should not launch a business to compete with other startups:

We have to do something different from what other companies are doing. We have enough money since we’ve been providing social games for a long time. We’ll keep primarily investing in the gaming business, but we secured a $100 million budget for investing in non-game businesses.

According to Aoyagi, this concept is called “the incubation and acquisition strategy” at GREE and a business scheme different from the company’s investment initiative Gree Ventures.

Aoyagi introduced HotelQuickly, the Thai startup that Gree recently invested in.
Aoyagi introduced HotelQuickly, the Thai startup that Gree recently invested in.