Japan’s Folio gets $63m in extended Series A

Participants included Dentsu Ventures, Mitsui & Co, SMBC Venture Capital, DCM Ventures, Draper Nexus Ventures and Line, a Japan-based division of Korean internet conglomerate Naver. The investment extends a Series A round that began last year with a $16 million commitment from Jafco, Monex Ventures, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, Rakuten Fintech Fund, DCM and Draper Nexus. 

The capital will be used in part for marketing content development. Line will implement Folio services on its communications platform, which is said to have more than 71 million active users in Japan.

“We couldn't hope for a better partner for this collaboration than Line,” Shinichiro Kai, Folio’s CEO, said in a statement. “Once the ‘anyone can use it’ Folio asset management platform is released on the ‘used by everyone’ Line messaging app, we fully expect that the transition from ‘simple savings’ to ‘personal finance’ will begin in earnest.”

Founded in 2015, Folio offers online financial services products that allow users to make investments as small as JPY100,000 across a variety of themes. Each theme offers diversification by allocating invested capital across 10 category-relevant companies chosen by Folio. Additional products include financial education materials for inexperienced retail investors.

Growth in Japan’s financial technology sector is broadly supported by slow innovation among legacy financial institutions. Recent activity in this space includes a JPY1.5 billion round to create a payments platform for online retailer Base, as well as a JPY1 billion investment in Moneytree, a service that helps individuals and businesses manage their financial data.

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Financials
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Japan
• Goldman Sachs
• SMBC Venture Capital
• Draper Nexus Venture Partners
• Financial Services
• TMT