YJ Capital
YJ Capital is a Japanese corporate venture capital company with a mission of helping global-minded entrepreneurs to build successful and long-lasting internet companies.
As a subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan, YJ Capital has unique access to the operational experience and unparalleled backing and market-related support provided by the conglomerate.
Overview of YJ Capital
YJ Capital is a Japanese corporate venture capital company with a mission of helping global-minded entrepreneurs to build successful and long-lasting internet companies. As a subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan, YJ Capital has unique access to the operational experience and unparalleled backing and market-related support provided by the conglomerate. YJ Capital specializes in startups and makes investments throughout Asia-Pacific, in the United States and in Israel, across all stages from seed to early-stage investments, all the way to late-stage investments. The company has made major investments in cloud computing, smartphones and internet advertising.
Brief History
Based in Tokyo, Japan, YJ Capital was founded on 7 August 2012 with Yahoo Corporation as the sole shareholder. The company CEO is Shinichiro Hori and its Executive Vice President is Yosuke Tomatsuri. YJ Capital has three main funds, YJ1 Investment Partnership, YJ2 Investment Partnership and YJ Tech Investment Partnership. YJ1 Investment Partnership started investing in September 2012 and raised 3 billion JPY. YJ2 Investment Partnership started investing in January 2015 and raised 20 billion JPY. YJ Tech Investment Partnership started investing in May 2016 and raised 3.5 billion JPY.
Significant Investments
In June 2018 during the Series B investment round of Panair Cloud, an energy management tool for electricity retailers, YJ Capital made an investment of US$17.62 million alongside co-investors SMBC Venture Capital, Yohohama Capital, Yamaguchi Capital, Ad Hack Ventures, 77 Bank Capital, DG Daiwa Ventures and others. YJ Capital made several investments in Virtusize throughout a range of investment rounds with co-investors D4V, Toyoshima & Co. and Ideos Venture Cap. Virtusize provides assistance to online retailers to visually illustrate the fit of clothing items of various sizes. A US$5 million investment was made by YJ Capital into InstaVR.
Other investors were ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Mizuho Capital, GREE ventures, The Venture Reality Fund and Colopl Next. In 2016 YJ Capital joined the Abraaj Group in investing in Ninja Van, a technology-enabled logistics operator with a presence in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. YJ Capital made two major investments into Paktor, a Singapore-based social networking platform created with single people in mind. An initial investment of US$32.5 was made during the company’s venture round, and a further US$10 million during the Series B investment round. Other major investments by YJ Capital include:
- US$12 million into Sociolla, an Indonesian online cosmetics retail company, during the Series C investment round
- US$8.5 million into Candee, a Japanese PR and digital video marketing company, during the Series A investment round
- US$12 million into Virool, a programmatic video marketing platform, during the Series A investment round
YJ Capital in the News
Deal Street Asia announced in July 2018 that YJ Capital concluded a deal in which it acquired a video-centric culinary media venture Dely Inc. The deal was a US$83.8 million investment which gave YJ Capital a stake of 45.6% in the startup. With this deal the company bought out SoftBank, L.P., Gumi Ventures and other shareholders. It was announced that the dining and restaurant discovery startup OFFPEAK would receive strategic backing from YJ Capital for an undisclosed amount.
