Venture Capital is funding provided to growth startup companies, which need early stage cash and have high potential to show for it. Startups in Asia, Japan and the States have a reason to celebrate in 2015, with Incubate Fund– one of Japan’s leading venture capital firms raising a huge 11 billion yen (that is 580 crores in Rupees) for large scale investments in up coming startups in Asia and the U.S. (via TechCrunch).
It is called the Incubate Fund III, and its backers are some of the most high profile tech companies- INCJ, Yahoo Japan Corporation, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Tencent Holdings, Sega Sammy, Mistletoe, Mixi, Tokyo Broadcasting Holdings, Development Bank of Japan and a list of private investors. Nikkei reports the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan poured in the biggest chunk of change, with roughly US$42 million. This fund has a ten year plan.
Drivemode, an app company based in the US has already been invested in by this fund, an investment amounting to nearly $2 million, which is great, since all the previous portfolio companies the Incubate Fund focused on were in Japan and Southeast Asia. Startups involved in the Internet of Things will be benefit since Yahoo Japan and GMO have identified it as a target industry for growing their own businesses. , other fields including online commerce, media, gaming, logistics, medical, financial, real estate, and housing.
Other companies that are savior angels for startups are Softbank, a Japanese telecom and Internet corporation. They invested pretty heavily in Indian and other APAC(Asia Pacific) nations’ startups last year. Rakuten, an e-commerce firm launched a $100 million fund to focus on startups in US, Israel and APAC region. Indonesian startups had Convergence Accel watching over them.
In a statement, Incubate Fund said
we aim to create and develop Japan’s next generation of industry by working closely with our Limited Partners, who invested in our fund
adding that the new fund will be investing multi- million dollars in startups as opposed to the sub-US$1 million amounts it has typically done.
As a venture capital firm specializing in investing during a company’s startup period, Incubate Fund has carried out investment activities in many seed-stage startups. In the last five years only, it has invested in over 120 companies directly or indirectly, and claims to have the largest track records in seed stage VC investments in Japan.
Well, this is more than what aspiring startups could have hoped for. Cheers.
IMAGE : chichacha | FLICKR | CC 2.0
