Update on 10am JST, June 24th: Due to the wide range of the estimated price per share, the basis for calculating the market cap was changed to the average of the range.
Tokyo-based Timee, the Japanese startup offering an on-demand gig job app under the same name, announced on Friday that its initial listing application on the Tokyo Stock Exchange had been approved.
The company will be listed on the TSE Growth Market on July 26 (at the earliest) with plans to sell 4,836,800 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 32,245,400 shares but will offer no share for public subscription. The underwriting will be led by Daiwa Securities, Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, and Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities while Timee’s ticker code will be 215A.
The provisional price will be determined on July 9 while the book-building period will begin on July 9 and run until July 17 for the shortest or until July 23 for the longest (subject to change as the scheduled listing date is determined). The final public offering price will be determined between July 18 and July 24 (subject to change as the scheduled listing date is determined).
The total number of outstanding shares at the time of listing is 95,139,000. Based on the average of the company’s estimated issue price rangeof 1,430— 1,330 yen (about $9.5$8.3 US) per share, its market cap is 136.05126.53 billion yen ($910$792 million US). According to its consolidated statement as of October of 2023, the company posted revenue of 16.14 billion yen ($110 million US) and an ordinary profit of approximately 1.924 billion yen ($13 million US).
The Timee service was launched back in August of 2018 under its previous name of Taimee. Founder and CEO Ryo Ogawa began interning in high school and then founded a fashion company after winning a business contest at Keio University. He ran this business for about a year, pivoted, and established a new Timee business in March of 2019, which as of February of 2024 has over 7 million gig workers and served approximately 98,000 businesses mainly in the restaurant, logistics, and retail industries.
Led by CEO Ogawa (21.96%), major shareholders include Recolle (8.27%), Keyrock Capital Management (7.27%), MIXI (TSE: 2121, 5.58%), JAFCO (TSE:8595, 4.30%), Tsukiyama Special Purpose Company (3.66%), En Japan (TSE:4849, 3.53%), CyberAgent (TSE:4751, 3.51%), JEC2 Limited (3.30%), Woodline Partners (2.91%), CyberAgent Capital (2.46%), and CFO Tomoaki Yagi (2.37%).
See the original story in Japanese. UTokyo Innovation Platform (UTokyo IPC for short), the University of Tokyo’s answer to Stanford’s StartX incubator, announced in April that its 1stRound deep-tech startup support program has signed an agreement with Cyber Valley, a research consortium in the fields of AI and robotics based in Stuttgart, Germany, offering mutual support for startups between Japan and Europe. Both organizations will mutually invite startups from Japan aiming for the European market and startups from Europe aiming for the Japanese market, and supporting them on a non-equity basis. Aiming to help qualified teams build collborative relationships with companies and raise funds from investors, 1stRound (originally called the Startup Support Program) has adopted a total of 85 startup teams over the past eight years. Among all the teams from the program, over 90% of them has secured follow-on investment while over 50% of them has received grant. In recent years, the company has also focused on helping teams expand globally, including helping more teams appply for accelerator programs at major universities in the US. Meanwhile, Cyber Valley was founded by the Max Planck Institute (MPI) and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany to support AI and robotics startups. Based in Baden-Württemberg,…
Cyber Valley’s AI Incubator Demo Day in 2023 Image credit: Cyber Valley
UTokyo Innovation Platform (UTokyo IPC for short), the University of Tokyo’s answer to Stanford’s StartX incubator, announced in April that its 1stRound deep-tech startup support program has signed an agreement with Cyber Valley, a research consortium in the fields of AI and robotics based in Stuttgart, Germany, offering mutual support for startups between Japan and Europe. Both organizations will mutually invite startups from Japan aiming for the European market and startups from Europe aiming for the Japanese market, and supporting them on a non-equity basis.
Aiming to help qualified teams build collborative relationships with companies and raise funds from investors, 1stRound (originally called the Startup Support Program) has adopted a total of 85 startup teams over the past eight years. Among all the teams from the program, over 90% of them has secured follow-on investment while over 50% of them has received grant. In recent years, the company has also focused on helping teams expand globally, including helping more teams appply for accelerator programs at major universities in the US.
Hideki Nagasaka
Meanwhile, Cyber Valley was founded by the Max Planck Institute (MPI) and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany to support AI and robotics startups. Based in Baden-Württemberg, where many of the world’s top research institutes are concentrically located, it has been working with universities and institutes all across Europe, global companies such as Amazon and BMW, and VCs to promote entrepreneurship among researchers and support the growth of startups.
Through the collaboration, qualified startups from each of the programs on both sides will be mutually eligible to participate in the initiative.
According to 1stRound director Hideki Nagasaka, startup support organizations in the local market are best at helping conduct proof-of-concept projects with local enterprises. In order to establish a practical support system on a non-equity basis across borders, he decided to build a mutually beneficial relationship between 1stRound and Cyber Valley, in which both parties support each other’s startups without compensation.
He added,
Cyber Valley provides the resources and costs to support 1stRound’s startups in Europe while we 1stRound do and vice versa. Both organizations are committed to supporting the startups sent by the other in their mutual market..
In the deep-tech space, accelerators are growing faster than startups, but there are still no accelerators from Japan in the top 10. UTokyo IPC hopes to establish this position by building a cross-border PoC track record in the top three markets – Japan, the US, and Germany – in terms of top-ranked markets in GDP, R&D spending, and researcher population.
Unlike space-tech startups which are typically forced to startup their business on a global-scale from Day 1, deep-tech startups need to have their sights set on the global market at an early stage, and only then will result in more unicorn and decacorn startups. Even Y Combinator, which is regarded as a global unicorn maker, is not able to support startups in Japan especially with offering PoC opportunities for startups. If UTokyo IPC can establish a non-equity deep-tech support system in the aforementioned three markets, they will be able to play a top performance role.
With four universities and two national research institutes in Japan recently onboard, 1stRound is now organized jointly with 17 universities and two national research institutes in Japan. In addition, the UTokyo IPC announced last week that it has recently launched the University Startup Promotion Fund Limited Liability Partnership (commonly known as the ASA Fund), which invests in university-backed VCs in a fund-of-funds scheme, with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Tokyu Land Corporation, the University of Tokyo (to be determined), and others as limited partners. The fund will be up to 10 billion yen (about $64 million US) in scale.
In November of 2020, Singapore-based startup news media outlet e27 reported that Hi-so, a startup in Myanmar led by a Japanese entrepreneur, has secured its first round of funding. Prior to launching the startup, founder Kenta Takada worked at the Myanmar Office of Japanese trading firm Marubeni, and then learned the local language at university. Hi-So was positioned as a local answer to Uber Eats and other similar services in the country’s most populous city, Yangon. Meanwhile, to prepare for STATION Ai, a start-up hub to be opened in Japan’s Nagoya city this coming October, an initiative called PRE-STATION Ai was launched in April of 2022, which encouraged me to start participating in sauna excursions with people involved in the initiative. Since that time, I have occasionally visited these events where I had a chance to talk with Takada. Moving back to Myanmar, a military coup happened in February of 2021, less than three months after Hi-So announced the funding. Although this was a major obstacle to the startup, Takada stayed in the country for a while to see how things would unfold. However, he eventually decided to leave the country for Japan following the advice of his investors regarding…
Plus Impact opened a coworking space in Yangon, Myanmar on Wednesday. The company’s engineers work here or from other locations. Founder and CEO Takada squats in the center. Image credit: Plus Impact
In November of 2020, Singapore-based startup news media outlet e27 reported that Hi-so, a startup in Myanmar led by a Japanese entrepreneur, has secured its first round of funding. Prior to launching the startup, founder Kenta Takada worked at the Myanmar Office of Japanese trading firm Marubeni, and then learned the local language at university. Hi-So was positioned as a local answer to Uber Eats and other similar services in the country’s most populous city, Yangon.
Meanwhile, to prepare for STATION Ai, a start-up hub to be opened in Japan’s Nagoya city this coming October, an initiative called PRE-STATION Ai was launched in April of 2022, which encouraged me to start participating in sauna excursions with people involved in the initiative. Since that time, I have occasionally visited these events where I had a chance to talk with Takada.
The office and team of Hi-So, Takada’s previous business in Myanmar Image credit: Kenta Takada
Moving back to Myanmar, a military coup happened in February of 2021, less than three months after Hi-So announced the funding. Although this was a major obstacle to the startup, Takada stayed in the country for a while to see how things would unfold. However, he eventually decided to leave the country for Japan following the advice of his investors regarding his safety.
I remember that he said in the sauna,
When the situation settles down, I would like to launch a business again in Myanmar.
After coming back to Japan, he worked as the president’s office manager of the Japanese food delivery company Menu, a mentor for 500 Global (Accelerate Aichi by 500 Global), as well as General Manager at STATION Ai. Since last year, he has been traveling back and forth between Japan and Myanmar to find a way to relaunch his business. He decided to rebrand Hi-So, the Singapore-registered company, into Plus Impact to pivot the business from food delivery to an Employer of Record (EOR) service called Plus Talent. The Myanmar operation is now in place, and his team marked and celebrated its official launch on Wednesday.
Takada first visited Myanmar in 2012. Image credit: Kenta Takada
In the EOR vertical, the US-based Deel is famous for having become a unicorn within three years of its launch. In Japan, Naotaka Nishiyama, who used to be in charge of the Asia regional operations at Deloitte Tohmatsu Venture Support, is known for founding a startup called Tech Japan, which connects India-based IT engineers to Japanese companies.
The EOR model involves employees working for one business but legally employed by another. The EOR manages HR formalities like taxes and payroll, while day-to-day management is handled by the employer the employee works for. If the employee wishes, he or she can become an employee of the Japanese client to work in Japan.
The Plus Talent website Image credit: Plus Impact
Plus Talent matches IT engineers in Myanmar with high technical skills with Japanese companies. Myanmar’s population is approximately 60 million, and men and women aged 20-49 together accounts for 45.5%, or roughly 27 million young workers (compared to 44 million of the same age group in Japan). Although an increasing number of Myanmar’s young people are seeking economic stability and want to go on to university, many talented IT workers in Myanmar are unable to graduate from university due to social conditions, thus missing out on opportunities to play an active role. This means Myanmar is one of the ideal markets for Japanese companies wishing to acquire such human resources.
Takada explained,
We hope to rectify this disparity in opportunities and use the Web3 technology to support developing countries. Even at their salary level (120,000 yen or about $770 US per month), Myanmar engineers are extremely talented. From the company’s side, it is cost-effective, and from the engineer’s side, the treatment is attractive enough.
What is important is to provide opportunities for talented people in Myanmar. To this end, we are looking to match not only IT engineers but also designers, office workers, and all other types of human resources. More people in Myanmar learn Japanese today, so there is not much of a language barrier. Rather, the diligent and mild-mannered nature of the people makes them a good match for Japanese companies.
The Plus Impact team in Japan. Founder and CEO Takada sits in the middle. Image credit: Plus Impact
Their business is ethical, social, and sustainable but has great potential for growth as a human resources business from an emerging country like Myanmar. However, he has no intention of making the business follow the J-Curve growth. During the Hi-So period, the company secured funding from seven angel investors, including Kotaro Tamura, a Milken Institute Asia fellow and former member of the Japanese House of Councillors. Another angel investor, Yorihiko Kato, decided to make his second investment in Takada’s startup at this time.
Takada says,
For the time being, we will not conduct extensive advertising or sales activities but expect to focus on organic growth. We do not anticipate hasty developments.
We have ambitions to win the Nobel Peace Prize. This may sound like a funny story, but we are not joking. More than 300 individuals and organizations are nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize each year, so if we can get on that list, we should be able to get noticed.
First, we need to spend a few years to make more people understand our mission, and then we can ask Nobel Peace Prize laureates and university professors in Sweden to nominate us. If we do this, we should ultimately be nominated. At first glance, this may seem unconventional. But I believe that any small thing that can lead to a reduction in the opportunity gap is worthwhile.
Plus Impact’s coworking space in Yangon, Myanmar Image credit: Plus Impact
Some of our readers may recall that the so-called “Arab Spring” famously triggered a startup boom in the Middle East region. No matter where you live, you have to survive, so services capturing people’s daily needs often manifest themselves in the form of startups in regions with unstable political and economic conditions.
While Japan is suffering from the shortage of workforce, we cannot help relying much on overseas human resources. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Takada’s startup, which has found a new frontier in the human resources market in the country of a thousand pagodas.
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…
Image credit: Orange
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….
the Astroscale staffers Image credit: Astroscale Holdings
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…
Image credit: Sixty Percent
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.
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
