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Japan’s Yappli, developer of drag-and-drop tool for building mobile apps, files for IPO

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Yappli, the Japanese startup that provides a mobile app development platform under the same name, announced that IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on December 22 with plans to offer 350,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 726,600 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 4,495,000 shares. The underwriting will be led by Mizuho securities while Yappli’s ticker code will be 4168. Based on the estimated issue price of 2,960 yen (about $28.4) and a total number of 11,663,600 shares in the market including public subscription, the company will be valued at 34.5 billion yen ($330 million). Its share price range will be released on December 2 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on December 4 and pricing on December 10. According to the consolidated statement as of December 2019, they posted revenue of 1.71 billion yen ($16.4 million) with a net loss of 798 million yen ($7.6 million). The company was founded in February of 2013 under its original name of Fastmedia. It launched the Yappli no-code application development system which allows both app developers and…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Yappli, the Japanese startup that provides a mobile app development platform under the same name, announced that IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on December 22 with plans to offer 350,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 726,600 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 4,495,000 shares. The underwriting will be led by Mizuho securities while Yappli’s ticker code will be 4168.

Based on the estimated issue price of 2,960 yen (about $28.4) and a total number of 11,663,600 shares in the market including public subscription, the company will be valued at 34.5 billion yen ($330 million). Its share price range will be released on December 2 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on December 4 and pricing on December 10. According to the consolidated statement as of December 2019, they posted revenue of 1.71 billion yen ($16.4 million) with a net loss of 798 million yen ($7.6 million).

The company was founded in February of 2013 under its original name of Fastmedia. It launched the Yappli no-code application development system which allows both app developers and non-developers to develop their apps without programming skills.

Their revenue comes from initial support fee as well as monthly subscription consisting of a base usage fee, paid options, and billing based on the number of devices that receive push notifications through the app that users have developed. As of September 2020, the platform has been adopted to develop 527 apps while these apps have been downloaded about 65 million times in total. The platform’s churn rate has remained below 1% since December of 2016 and has been seeing 0.88% for the latest quarter.

Led by both Co-founder / CEO Yasufumi Ihara and Managing Director Masafumi Sano (20.75% respectively), the company’s major shareholders include YJ Capital (18.58%), Eight Roads Ventures Japan (10.02%), Globis Capital Partners (15.74%), Co-founder Masumi Kuroda (7.33%), Salesforce (3.71%), Itochu Technology Ventures (1.59%), and angel investor Shogo Kawada (0.42%).

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Japan’s Yappli drag-and-drop tool for building mobile apps snags $2.7 million funding

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Fastmedia, the Japanese startup that provides a smartphone app development platform called Yappli, announced today that it has fundraised 330 million yen ($2.7 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Salesforce, YJ Capital, and DeNA co-founder Shogo Kawada. [1] Coinciding with the funds, Fastmedia announced that Kawada and Takao Ozawa, head of Shopping Company at Yahoo Japan, have joined the company’s advisory board. The Yappli platform is designed for non-engineers such as marketing representatives who typically have no programming skills, allowing them to develop and maintain a mobile app for iOS or Android by choosing templates, functions, and design components via drag-and-drop operations. Users can also ask Yappli to submit their app to the app store for review. The app development platform supports a series of features for mobile apps, such as normal and geo-based push notifications, distributing online coupons, and other features which marketing representative typically want for mobile apps. Fastmedia CEO Yasufumi Ihara told The Bridge that the company has acquired more than 5,000 corporate users including about 30 major brands. From a business category perspective, the platform is the most popular in the apparel industry, followed by maker companies distributing their catalog…

yappli_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Fastmedia, the Japanese startup that provides a smartphone app development platform called Yappli, announced today that it has fundraised 330 million yen ($2.7 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Salesforce, YJ Capital, and DeNA co-founder Shogo Kawada. [1] Coinciding with the funds, Fastmedia announced that Kawada and Takao Ozawa, head of Shopping Company at Yahoo Japan, have joined the company’s advisory board.

The Yappli platform is designed for non-engineers such as marketing representatives who typically have no programming skills, allowing them to develop and maintain a mobile app for iOS or Android by choosing templates, functions, and design components via drag-and-drop operations. Users can also ask Yappli to submit their app to the app store for review.

The app development platform supports a series of features for mobile apps, such as normal and geo-based push notifications, distributing online coupons, and other features which marketing representative typically want for mobile apps. Fastmedia CEO Yasufumi Ihara told The Bridge that the company has acquired more than 5,000 corporate users including about 30 major brands. From a business category perspective, the platform is the most popular in the apparel industry, followed by maker companies distributing their catalog or online content to customers.

yappli-apps-_screenshots

Fastmedia’s business model takes a build-up approach, which is easier to make a solid revenue stream but also easier to see their ceiling of sales. To address this issue, Ihara is expecting sales from a revenue-share model that started in April, a stream from in-app purchases via their users’ apps developed on the Yappli platform.

For example, looking at the conversion rate of premium video content on a mobile app provided by Tokyo-based private broadcaster TBS, it has been hitting a high number of 10% despite the fact that similar services provided in the feature phone era was as little as 1%.

Fastmedia has introduced a revenue sharing model for content holders, where the company secures the sales from selling premium content through these holders’ mobile apps while the company undertakes the initial development of these apps for reasonable cost. Hence, the more premium content providers the company can attract, the more revenue will be generated and contributed to the growth of the company.

Fastmedia’s competitors include Strikingly, however, it seems that many users recognize the ease of use in the Yappli platform because of better fitting local market needs. With all this in mind, the company plans to strengthen user support using the latest funds.

fastmedia-executive-team
From the left: Masafumi Sano (managing director), Yasufumi Ihara (CEO), Masumi Kuroda (managing director)

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson


  1. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan.