Tokyo-based Orange, the Japanese startup behind an AI localization system for manga titles, announced on April 7 that it has raised 2.92 billion yen (about $18.9 million) in a pre-series A round. This round was led by Globis Capital Partners (GCP) with participation from Japanese manga publisher Shogakukan, ANRI, SBI Investment, JIC Venture Growth Investments (JIC-VGI), Miyako Capital, Chiba Dojo Fund, Mizuho Capital, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and GFR Fund.
This follows Orange’s previous 250 million yen funding back in July of 2023. Of the investors participating in this round, GCP and Chiba Dojo Fund followed their previous investment. The latest round brought the company’s funding sum up to approximately 3.17 billion yen (about $20.5 million). The company intends to use the funds to expand the scale of its manga translation business and to spread Japanese manga globally.
Orange was founded in April of 2021 by Shoko Ugaki. Prior to launching the company, he was managing smash-hit game titles at Japanese gaming company Colopl (TSE:3668), such as Wizard and Black Cat Wiz and White Cat Project. The company turns untranslated manga titles into English using a proprietary localization support tool. With this latest funding, the company aims to increase its current pace of English translations by five times to translate 500 books per month. The company also plans to launch an e-manga store called Emaqi in the U.S. to distribute translated titles this coming summer.
In this particular vertical, another Japanese startup Mantra has been offering a multilingual translation engine called Mantra Engine, related business services, and the Langaku English-learning app. Mantra has so far secured 230 million yen ($150 million) from Japanese manga publisher Shueisha, University of Tokyo’s Innovation Platform (UTokyo IPC), Deepcore, and other investors.
Tokyo-based Astroscale Holdings, the Japanese company offering space debris removal services, announced on Wednesday that its initial listing application on the Tokyo Stock Exchange had been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Growth Market on June 5 with plans to offer 20,833,300 shares for public subscription and to sell 3,124,900 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 2,760,000 shares. The underwriting will be led by Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities and Mizuho Securities while Astroscale’s ticker code will be 186A. Based on the company’s estimated issue price of 720 yen ($5.2) per share, its market cap is approximately 80.4 billion yen ($577 million). Its share price range will be released on May 20 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on May 20 and pricing on May 24. The final public offering price will be determined on May 27. According to its consolidated statement as of April of 2023, the company posted revenue of 1.8 billion yen ($13 million) with an ordinary loss of 9.3 billion yen ($67 million). Astroscale Holdings was first established as a limited liability company (LLC) in November of 2018 and then later reorganized as a company limited (Co., Ltd.) in December of 2018….
Tokyo-based Astroscale Holdings, the Japanese company offering space debris removal services, announced on Wednesday that its initial listing application on the Tokyo Stock Exchange had been approved.
The company will be listed on the TSE Growth Market on June 5 with plans to offer 20,833,300 shares for public subscription and to sell 3,124,900 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 2,760,000 shares. The underwriting will be led by Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities and Mizuho Securities while Astroscale’s ticker code will be 186A.
Based on the company’s estimated issue price of 720 yen ($5.2) per share, its market cap is approximately 80.4 billion yen ($577 million). Its share price range will be released on May 20 with bookbuilding scheduled to start on May 20 and pricing on May 24. The final public offering price will be determined on May 27. According to its consolidated statement as of April of 2023, the company posted revenue of 1.8 billion yen ($13 million) with an ordinary loss of 9.3 billion yen ($67 million).
Astroscale Holdings was first established as a limited liability company (LLC) in November of 2018 and then later reorganized as a company limited (Co., Ltd.) in December of 2018. The company provides debris removal technologies and services for orbit transfer and maintenance of satellites. The business was originally operated by Astroscale, a Singaporean entity founded in May of 2013, and then Astroscale Holdings became the parent company of it after the reorganization.
Led by the company’s founder and CEO Nobu Okada (26.78%), Major shareholders include INCJ (16.53%), aSTART (6.25% through three funds combined), JAFCO (TSE: 8595, 4.27%), Goonies (Yusaku Maezawa’s asset management company, 3.14%), Mitsubishi Electric (TSE: 6503, 2.57%), COO Chris Blackerby (2.54%), Japan Growth Capital Investment (managed by Nomura Sparx Investment, 2.45%), THE FUND (1.92%), MMA Investment LLP (1.35%), and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital (1.34%), among others.
Tokyo-based Sixty Percent (60%), the Japanese startup running a cross-border e-commerce platform focused on Asian fashion brands under the same name, announced on Wednesday that it has secured 460 million yen (about $3 million US) in a Series A round. Participating investors are KURONEKO Innovation Fund (managed by Yamato Holdings and Global Brain), Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, PE&HR, Hakobune, Frontier International, Japanese hip-hop music producer Verbal as well as unnamed individual investors. The amount includes debt from financial institutions. This follows the startup’s pre-series A round revealed in May of 2021 when KURONEKO Innovation Fund and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital participated. The latest round brought the startup’s funding sum up to date to about 650 million yen (about $4.4 million US). Since its launch back in July of 2018, Sixty Percent has been running a marketplace-styled online select store for Asian street fashion brands. Five years passed since its launch, and the platform has now 100,000 items from more than 1,500 brands. Compared to the previous funding round back in April of 2021, their monthly gross merchandise value was over quintupled while the number of brands was over tripled. Many of the brands dealt on the platform are niche indie ones that…
Tokyo-based Sixty Percent (60%), the Japanese startup running a cross-border e-commerce platform focused on Asian fashion brands under the same name, announced on Wednesday that it has secured 460 million yen (about $3 million US) in a Series A round.
Participating investors are KURONEKO Innovation Fund (managed by Yamato Holdings and Global Brain), Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, PE&HR, Hakobune, Frontier International, Japanese hip-hop music producer Verbal as well as unnamed individual investors. The amount includes debt from financial institutions.
This follows the startup’s pre-series A round revealed in May of 2021 when KURONEKO Innovation Fund and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital participated. The latest round brought the startup’s funding sum up to date to about 650 million yen (about $4.4 million US).
Since its launch back in July of 2018, Sixty Percent has been running a marketplace-styled online select store for Asian street fashion brands. Five years passed since its launch, and the platform has now 100,000 items from more than 1,500 brands.
Compared to the previous funding round back in April of 2021, their monthly gross merchandise value was over quintupled while the number of brands was over tripled. Many of the brands dealt on the platform are niche indie ones that have been launched in Japan for the first time, while 90% of users are in their teens to 20s (Gen Z) with an average age of about 21 years old.
Since the platform is a marketplace where brands sell directly to consumers, but if their items were transported directly from their countries in Asia, they would have to go through customs procedures and shipping costs would be high. In order to eliminate these problems, The platform offers fulfillment, aggregation, logistics, and payment services based on technology, acting as an intermediary between brands and users as well.
According to founder and CEO Taiga Manabe, while the previous pre-series A round funding was intended to help the company mature e-commerce experience, it will now more focus more on strengthening marketing effort with the latest funding. The platform is designed for domestic sales in Japan but has confirmed purchases from users in about 50 countries.
Starting with Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Greater China countries, the platform is rolling out global expansion by making its mobile app multilingual, supporting multi-currency payments, and improving logistics. To optimize logistics, customs and shipping procedures, the company may collaborate with Yamato Holdings, one of the investors.
By joining the company as a individual investor and advisor, Japanese hip-hop music producer Verbal will assist the company in branding and business development. In addition, the company will strengthen its hiring effort for all positions including CxO candidates, engineers, product managers, marketing, and content planning.
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). He is the Managing Partner of Shizen Capital (formerly known as Tachi.ai Ventures) in Japan. You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him on Nostr @reggae. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. As is customary, we are publishing once again our annual VC Radar for Japan. The 2023 edition of the VC Radar reflects Japan’s most active Lead VCs in 2023. Specifically, this infographic depicts the number of new investments led by Japan’s independent venture capital funds into domestic startups last year. Only investments in which the VC firm served as Lead investor for a startup that was not already in their portfolio are counted here. We believe this is an important tool for Japan’s growing startup ecosystem. You can read more about our rationale here (special thanks to Mayumi for compiling this data !). (One additional note: we strive for full accuracy on this infographic and apologize for any…
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.”
He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). He is the Managing Partner of Shizen Capital (formerly known as Tachi.ai Ventures) in Japan. You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him on Nostr @reggae. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.
As is customary, we are publishing once again our annual VC Radar for Japan. The 2023 edition of the VC Radar reflects Japan’s most active Lead VCs in 2023.
Specifically, this infographic depicts the number of new investments led by Japan’s independent venture capital funds into domestic startups last year. Only investments in which the VC firm served as Lead investor for a startup that was not already in their portfolio are counted here.
We believe this is an important tool for Japan’s growing startup ecosystem. You can read more about our rationale here (special thanks to Mayumi for compiling this data !).
(One additional note: we strive for full accuracy on this infographic and apologize for any mistakes. Feel free to direct any requested corrections to infographic@shizen.vc).
Tokyo-based BeBit, the Japanese startup offering companies with digital transformation (DX) solutions through improving user experience (UX), has secured 1.2 billion yen (about $8.2 million) in a series B round.. San-in Godo Bank (TSE: 8381), Benesse Holdings (TSE: 9783), Mitsubishi Estate (TSE: 8801), Rakuten Securities and Turn Cloud Technology Service participated in the latest round. This follows the company’s previous funding round back in July of 2020. San-in Godo Bank follows their previous investment. The latest round brought the company’s funding sum to date up to 3.7 billion yen ($25.4 million). The company will use the funds to invest in solidifying their team structure, including strengthening solutions and recruiting personnel. Since its foundation back in March of 2000, BeBit has been helping companies create business results through strategic planning, design, and UX improvement using digital technologies. Since 2022, the company has been offering OmniSegment, an e-commerce-focused growth marketing solution, to which the company recently added a generative AI function, aiming to adopt cutting edge technologies into UX improvement. BeBit announced on Tuesday that it has completed the acquisition of Tsunago, an Malaysian startup offering OMO (online merges with offline) solutions. In terms of BeBit’s startup acquisition, this follows the one…
Tokyo-based BeBit, the Japanese startup offering companies with digital transformation (DX) solutions through improving user experience (UX), has secured 1.2 billion yen (about $8.2 million) in a series B round.. San-in Godo Bank (TSE: 8381), Benesse Holdings (TSE: 9783), Mitsubishi Estate (TSE: 8801), Rakuten Securities and Turn Cloud Technology Service participated in the latest round.
This follows the company’s previous funding round back in July of 2020. San-in Godo Bank follows their previous investment. The latest round brought the company’s funding sum to date up to 3.7 billion yen ($25.4 million). The company will use the funds to invest in solidifying their team structure, including strengthening solutions and recruiting personnel.
Since its foundation back in March of 2000, BeBit has been helping companies create business results through strategic planning, design, and UX improvement using digital technologies. Since 2022, the company has been offering OmniSegment, an e-commerce-focused growth marketing solution, to which the company recently added a generative AI function, aiming to adopt cutting edge technologies into UX improvement.
BeBit announced on Tuesday that it has completed the acquisition of Tsunago, an Malaysian startup offering OMO (online merges with offline) solutions. In terms of BeBit’s startup acquisition, this follows the one of Taiwanese MarTech startup Omniscient Cloud Technologies (now known as BeBit Tech).
The Malaysian startup offers Tsunago Store (showcasing goods but not selling them), Tsunago AI (AI camera-based behavioural analysis service on shop visitors), OMO consulting, app developments as well as operations. Since its foundation back in 2017, the company serves to Isetan Mitsukoshi department store, major local telco Celcom (Axiata Group), and The Social restaurant chain, among others.
In addition, Alphas CEO Hajime Hirose, Cinnamon AI Co-CEO Hajime Hotta and Datack CTO Yosuke Kimoto have joined the company as advisors. The acquisition will allow BeBit to expand its consulting and SaaS-integrated UX business into the Southeast Asia region with a focus on Singapore and Malaysia towards the global market.
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). He is the Managing Partner of Shizen Capital (formerly known as Tachi.ai Ventures) in Japan. You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him on Nostr @reggae. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. The other day a large growth equity fund in Europe reached out to me. This firm has invested across Europe as well as into North America. They contacted me because they are considering to open an office in Tokyo. This is of course fantastic news and a testament to how some capital allocators globally are waking up to the opportunity of Japan’s digital renaissance for investment. One anecdote that came up in my discussions with this fund relates to their search for Tokyo office space. It is a story that made me realize how Tokyo’s real estate companies are blindly missing a massive opportunity. Apparently, the firm had submitted an inquiry via the contact form on one of…
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.”
He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). He is the Managing Partner of Shizen Capital (formerly known as Tachi.ai Ventures) in Japan. You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him on Nostr @reggae. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.
The other day a large growth equity fund in Europe reached out to me. This firm has invested across Europe as well as into North America. They contacted me because they are considering to open an office in Tokyo.
This is of course fantastic news and a testament to how some capital allocators globally are waking up to the opportunity of Japan’s digital renaissance for investment.
One anecdote that came up in my discussions with this fund relates to their search for Tokyo office space. It is a story that made me realize how Tokyo’s real estate companies are blindly missing a massive opportunity.
Apparently, the firm had submitted an inquiry via the contact form on one of the websites of a well-known real estate developer. They expressed their inquiry in English, on an English version of the real estate company’s website. Unbeknownst to them, this may have been their first misstep.
Over two months have elapsed, and the fund manager still has not received a response of any kind from the real estate company.
Hello Tokyo, is anyone home ?
Now, this is a fund with over $2 billion in assets under management, and over 100 portfolio companies spanning 10 countries. They intend to use their future Tokyo office as a launch pad both for investing in APAC and for bringing European companies into the Japanese market. Needless to say, this fund’s first interaction with Japan at the operational level has not left a favorable impression.
I’ve been fortunate to meet members of the investment and innovation teams of several real estate firms in Japan. Nearly all of the individuals I have met strike me as incredibly intelligent, open-minded, and innovative. Yet there seems to be a disconnect between the strategies of Japan’s real estate firms on one hand, and with the government’s ambition to transform Japan into a startup nation on the other.
To their credit, the Japanese government has crafted policies which have fostered incredible progress in accelerating Japan’s venture ecosystem in a short time. I tip my cap to the forward-thinking champions in the government who are driving these reforms. True, Japan trails other successful venture ecosystems like North America and Europe, however the benefit of being late is that there are successful models available for Japan to emulate.
When it comes to allocating real estate toward building global innovation hubs, I submit that lessons from the fantastically successful experiences of France, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries could prove relevant for Japan to consider.
As our friends in Europe discovered, the best innovations tend to arise when there is a density of entrepreneurs working on a diverse array of startups within close physical proximity. This is not only true in theory; there is also empirical evidence to back this up. When the density of founders surpasses a certain threshold, the probability of unique insights and groundbreaking innovations rises exponentially.
Twenty years ago, the aforementioned European countries set out to replicate Silicon Valley in their own geographies. However, they lacked many of the fertile conditions that the San Francisco Bay Area possessed for becoming startup hubs. Following a couple false starts and failed attempts, they eventually cracked the code in creating the necessary critical density of entrepreneurs.
How to cultivate an international startup hub
So how did they do it in Europe ? One key factor is that they found a way to give free office space to startups. Some governments funded initiatives directly, whereas others nudged private sector actors, such as banks and real estate companies, to offer free office space themselves.
From the perspective of a startup founder, every 1€ spent on rent is 1€ deprived from working on innovation. So naturally, startup founders flocked to these free office space offerings: Over a short time; the critical density thresholds were surpassed and the virtuous cycle kicked in.
Moreover, these startup office hubs became some of the most sought after locations in which large enterprises desired to join as tenants. Even from the most narrow financial perspective of the property owner, offering free office space to startups more than paid for itself from the increased appeal of the property.
With Japan increasingly rising onto the radar of international investors, there is a compelling opportunity here for a real estate company to step outside of their conventional business model and become a Tokyo hub for global startups and fund managers.