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Nissay, Nippon invest $1m in online translation service

  • Andrew Woodman
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Nissay Capital and Nippon Venture Capital Co. (NVCC) have led a JPY108 million ($1 million) round of investment in Japan's Yaraku, the company behind online cloud translation service WorldJumper. Individual investors are also said to have taken part in the round.

The WorldJumper management system translates website content using both software and professional translators who evaluate the machine translation and edit the content accordingly. The Tokyo-headquartered company behind the service, Yaraku, was established in 2009 and has a staff of 10.

According to a release, the funding will be used to strengthen the management of the company and expand the WorldJumper platform. The company, which is managed by alumni of Waseda University and the University of Tokyo, currently has JPY144.9 million in capital.

Earlier this week, Shinichi Takamiya of Globis Capital Partners, speaking on the venture capital firm's first close on its fourth fund, said the Japanese start-up space was still vastly underserved by the VC industry as more and more tech talents from the country's top universities look to set up on their own.

"Despite the stereo typical image of Japan of not being entrepreneurial, we see are seeing a younger generation of entrepreneurs coming through," he said.

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