Airporter, luggage delivery startup for Tokyo visitors, secures seed funding round

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Airporter (previously known as Willer), the Japanese startup offering the same-day travel luggage delivery service to/from Tokyo airports under the same name, announced on Monday that it has raised several tens of million yen (hundreds of thousands of US dollars) in an estimated seed round from Base Partners and Beenos (TSE:3328). Base Partners is a VC firm managed by Minoru Togawa (founder and former CEO of CA Mobile) and Takehiro Yamaguchi (former strategic investment department manager).

Airporter offers a low-cost luggage delivery service for visitors to Tokyo between their accommodation and Narita/Haneda airports so that they can enjoy hands-free travel in the city after or before their accommodation check-in.

We have seen several airports like Hong Kong or Incheon/Gimpo airports in Seoul, offering complimentary city check-in services so that visitors can drop their baggage before going to the airport, which gains good reputation among international travelers. Using the Airporter service, visitors to Japan can also enjoy a similar user experience in Japan (however, they will need to check-in for flight at the airport).

Airporter recently won the special award at an innovation encouragement initiative run by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Ecbo Cloak, an on-demand luggage storage service run by another Japanese startup, also started luggage delivery service from selected railway terminals to traveler’s accommodations on a testing basis, and further service expansion into delivery to/from airports are also expected in the future.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy