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Japan’s food delivery startup for restaurants secures $2.2M to strengthen logistics

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Hachimenroppi, the Japanese startup operating a food delivery service for restaurants, announced on Friday that it has fundraised 240 million yen (about $2.2 million) from SMBC Venture Capital, SBI Investment, Senshu Ikeda Capital, Sansei Capital Investment as well as individual investors. With the latest funding, the firm has secured a total of about 1.1 billion yen ($9.9 million) to date. See also: Japanese fish delivery startup Hachimenroppi secures $4.5 million funding Japanese fish delivery startup partners with JCB, eases restaurants’ credit purchases Japanese fish delivery startup finds underserved markets using heat maps Japanese fish delivery startup making waves, raises $1.5 million Since launch back in April of 2011, Hachimenroppi has been offering an e-commerce platform for restaurants in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. In addition to buying from central markets including Tsukiji Fish Market, the company has been forming its own logistics and a vast procurement network with food producers and regional markets across Japan to stably provide restaurants with high quality fishery products, fruits, vegetables as well as meat. Leveraging its IoT (Internet of Things)-based platform managing deliverers, the company has made many features possible to better serve restaurants, such as optimized deliverer…

Hachimenroppi CEO Masaya Matsuda

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Hachimenroppi, the Japanese startup operating a food delivery service for restaurants, announced on Friday that it has fundraised 240 million yen (about $2.2 million) from SMBC Venture Capital, SBI Investment, Senshu Ikeda Capital, Sansei Capital Investment as well as individual investors. With the latest funding, the firm has secured a total of about 1.1 billion yen ($9.9 million) to date.

See also:

Since launch back in April of 2011, Hachimenroppi has been offering an e-commerce platform for restaurants in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. In addition to buying from central markets including Tsukiji Fish Market, the company has been forming its own logistics and a vast procurement network with food producers and regional markets across Japan to stably provide restaurants with high quality fishery products, fruits, vegetables as well as meat.

Leveraging its IoT (Internet of Things)-based platform managing deliverers, the company has made many features possible to better serve restaurants, such as optimized deliverer dispatching and notifying the estimated arrival time of an ordered food delivery.  The company claims that it will use the funds to strengthen fulfillment and logistics, also planning to focus on web marketing efforts using private and open data management platforms.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda

Japanese fish delivery startup Hachimenroppi secures $4.5 million funding

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Tokyo-based startup Hachimenroppi, which operates a fish delivery service for restaurants, announced today that it has fundraised about 450 million yen (or $4.4 million) from Recruit Holdings, YJ Capital, DeNA co-founder Shogo Kawada, DeNA (TSE:2432), and Monex Ventures.[1] This follows their previous funding worth $1.5 million in October. Since its launch in April 2011, the company has acquired over 1,000 restaurants as users. The company will use the funds to strengthen their teams in sales and system development as well as expanding logistics facilities. Coinciding with the funds raised at this time, Hachimenroppi also announced that they have partnered with Recruit Lifestyle, the Internet service-focused company under Recruit Holdings. Through the partnership, the fish delivery company will integrate their solution with Recruit’s tablet-based POS (point of sales) system AirRegi, where more than 20,000 restaurants using the POS system will have easy access to the startup’s fish ordering system. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan (TSE:4689). Monex Ventures is the investment arm of Japanese online brokerage company Monex Group (TSE:8698).  ↩

hachimenroppi_leadimage

Tokyo-based startup Hachimenroppi, which operates a fish delivery service for restaurants, announced today that it has fundraised about 450 million yen (or $4.4 million) from Recruit Holdings, YJ Capital, DeNA co-founder Shogo Kawada, DeNA (TSE:2432), and Monex Ventures.[1] This follows their previous funding worth $1.5 million in October.

Since its launch in April 2011, the company has acquired over 1,000 restaurants as users. The company will use the funds to strengthen their teams in sales and system development as well as expanding logistics facilities.

Coinciding with the funds raised at this time, Hachimenroppi also announced that they have partnered with Recruit Lifestyle, the Internet service-focused company under Recruit Holdings. Through the partnership, the fish delivery company will integrate their solution with Recruit’s tablet-based POS (point of sales) system AirRegi, where more than 20,000 restaurants using the POS system will have easy access to the startup’s fish ordering system.


  1. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan (TSE:4689). Monex Ventures is the investment arm of Japanese online brokerage company Monex Group (TSE:8698). 

Japanese fish delivery startup partners with JCB, eases restaurants’ credit purchases

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Hachimenroppi, which operates a fish delivery service for restaurants, announced yesterday that it has partnered with JCB, one of Japan’s leading credit card companies. Through this partnership, JCB will provide restaurants with credit purchase options and ease the process of buying fish from the delivery startup. Moreover, JCB will promote the startup’s service to its card member restaurants. Hachimenroppi buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese restaurants or diners, according to specific needs. Unlike existing wholesalers, they balance supply and demand using digital tools, allowing restaurants to order fish based on their customers’ needs rather than submitting to suppliers’ convenience. We previously outlined the specific details about how it works, so please check it out if you’d like to read more. The company raised about $1.5 million back in October in order to hire talented staffers and accelerate system development. They appointed Kenichi Saito as CTO earlier this month, who previously served as CTO at Japanese shoe-focused e-commerce site Locondo. To date the company has been outsourcing their system development, but they plan to set up a system development department (led by Saito) where they…

hachimenroppi_leadimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Hachimenroppi, which operates a fish delivery service for restaurants, announced yesterday that it has partnered with JCB, one of Japan’s leading credit card companies. Through this partnership, JCB will provide restaurants with credit purchase options and ease the process of buying fish from the delivery startup. Moreover, JCB will promote the startup’s service to its card member restaurants.

Hachimenroppi buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese restaurants or diners, according to specific needs. Unlike existing wholesalers, they balance supply and demand using digital tools, allowing restaurants to order fish based on their customers’ needs rather than submitting to suppliers’ convenience. We previously outlined the specific details about how it works, so please check it out if you’d like to read more.

The company raised about $1.5 million back in October in order to hire talented staffers and accelerate system development. They appointed Kenichi Saito as CTO earlier this month, who previously served as CTO at Japanese shoe-focused e-commerce site Locondo. To date the company has been outsourcing their system development, but they plan to set up a system development department (led by Saito) where they can do most of that work in house. In addition to the iOS app, they are planning to launch an Android version, but now they are focusing on hiring Rails engineers. So if you are interested in working with an up-and-coming startup like this one, don’t hesitate to contact them.

To step up their sales and engineering efforts, the company plans to grow to a 50-person team by summer. According to founder and CEO Masanari Matsuda, he plans to allocate about 80% of the team to customer relations serving restaurants, and the rest to system development. He elaborated:

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CEO Masanari Matsuda

In order to provide consumers with the best quality foods, I think restaurants shouldn’t be dominated by big companies. When an independent chef launches his own restaurant, he will be unable to buy ingredients on credit from wholesalers because that restaurant has no financial history. So our new service in partnership with JCB will help them a lot when starting out.

We’ll focus on fish delivery for the time being. However, our platform is receiving orders and updates from restaurants, which means we can enhance it to deal with a variety of food in the future, including rice, liquors, meat, vegetables, and fruits. As we know much about restaurants’ needs, we may even launch a new service sending cooks to restaurants.

The company has acquired 300 restaurants as of the end of last year. They expect to increase that to 1,000 restaurants by the end of this year, and 10,000 by the end of 2016. By 2020, they hope to generate over $3 billion in revenue, which accounts for almost 10% of the entire national fishery market volume.

Japanese fish delivery startup finds underserved markets using heat maps

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See the original story in Japanese. Our readers may recall when we reported about Tokyo-based Hachimenroppi, a unique startup that delivers fish to restaurants using a disruptive approach. Today the company unveiled a fascinating heat map showing the geographical distribution of fish quantities transacted at every wholesale market and port in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Obviously it gives a clear picture of which areas are relatively out of reach from conventional fish distributors. In these areas, consumers are less likely to have fresh fish at local stores or restaurants, especially fish delivered on the same day that it’s caught. The startup sees a huge potential in expanding its business to those areas.

hachimenroppi-map

See the original story in Japanese.

Our readers may recall when we reported about Tokyo-based Hachimenroppi, a unique startup that delivers fish to restaurants using a disruptive approach.

Today the company unveiled a fascinating heat map showing the geographical distribution of fish quantities transacted at every wholesale market and port in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Obviously it gives a clear picture of which areas are relatively out of reach from conventional fish distributors.

In these areas, consumers are less likely to have fresh fish at local stores or restaurants, especially fish delivered on the same day that it’s caught. The startup sees a huge potential in expanding its business to those areas.

Japanese fish delivery startup making waves, raises $1.5 million

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Hachimenroppi (named after the eight faces and six arms seen on many Buddhist statues) is a startup that does something rather unusual. It delivers fish, handling distribution services for restaurants. And apparently that business has some serious potential, as the company announced recently that it has raised 150 million yen (approximately $1.5 million) from VC firm Value Create, PR agency Vector, and logistics company Winroader. The startup’s founder and CEO Masanari Matsuda has had a unique career since he started working in the banking industry, moving on to a VC firm, and then launching two companies prior to this one. He launched this startup back in September of 2010 when he thought there was great potential in evolving fish distribution. The company buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese izakaya restaurants or diners, according to their specific needs. The fish products industry in Japan has an annual volume of 3 trillion yen ($30.9 billion), and the startup expects to meet the demands of 300 billion yen ($3.09 billion) by the year of 2020, accounting for a 10% market share. Every single restraurant has a different need…

Hachimenroppi CEO Masanari Matsuda
Hachimenroppi CEO Masanari Matsuda

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Hachimenroppi (named after the eight faces and six arms seen on many Buddhist statues) is a startup that does something rather unusual. It delivers fish, handling distribution services for restaurants. And apparently that business has some serious potential, as the company announced recently that it has raised 150 million yen (approximately $1.5 million) from VC firm Value Create, PR agency Vector, and logistics company Winroader.

The startup’s founder and CEO Masanari Matsuda has had a unique career since he started working in the banking industry, moving on to a VC firm, and then launching two companies prior to this one. He launched this startup back in September of 2010 when he thought there was great potential in evolving fish distribution.

The company buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese izakaya restaurants or diners, according to their specific needs. The fish products industry in Japan has an annual volume of 3 trillion yen ($30.9 billion), and the startup expects to meet the demands of 300 billion yen ($3.09 billion) by the year of 2020, accounting for a 10% market share.

Every single restraurant has a different need regarding what kind of fish or how many fish are needed day to day. On the other hand, what fish are available very much depends on changing [environmental] conditions. So matching the needs of restaurants with supplies from the market can be compared to doing a huge jigsaw puzzle. We facilitate this by making the most of digital technologies.

From an outsider’s perspective, the fish distribution business is fiercely competitive because of the abundance of Japanese izakaya restaurant chains. But according to Matsuda, this intense competition is happening only in the area inside Tokyo’s Yamanote loopline (the center of Tokyo), and the whole distribution system works based on supply in the rest of the country. He added:

When we get an order from restaurants, we’ll not be able to refuse their orders because there was a poor catch. A direct delivery from ports is good in providing fresh fish to restaurants, but it’s not good at all times because a poor catch directly results in unavailable dishes on their menus. We can understand the needs of restaurants and propose alternative options to them. This is our value.

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Hachimenroppi’s app for restaurant chefs and cooks

In order to do this the startup’s employees periodically visit restaurants/clients to establish better communications with their chefs. Interestingly, no specific personnel is assigned to each client, but any updates about restaurants collected by the employees are shared within their startup using Evernote. This means that any of their employees can visit clients, translating into greater potential for their business scalability.

Matsuda thinks that delivering top quality fish to consumers is their duty. With these new funds raised, they plan to develop a system that proposes fish recipes to chefs or cooks using smart tablets.

Instead of removing middlemen from the distribution process, which typical discount retailers often do, the company attempts to evolve the entire industry using digital solutions. If their service helps consumers eat better quality fish and if it helps fishermen earn more, it should certainly boost the fishing industry as a whole.

Similar to Hachimenroppi, we’ve seen more than a few Japanese startups trying to evolve conventional businesses using digital technologies, including Raksul (printing) and LeNet (laundry). We’ll feature a more comprehensive list of such startups soon, so stay tuned!