Japan's I-nest Capital raises $60m for debut VC fund
I-nest Capital, a Japanese VC firm set up last year by former Mizuho Financial Group employees, has raised JPY6.6 billion ($60 million) for its debut fund. The target was JPY6 billion.
LPs include Mizuho Bank, Mizuho Securities Principal Investment, Fuji Startup Ventures, the Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, financial technology provider Power Solutions, and industrials and technology-focused Tokyo Boeki Holdings, according to a release. Telecoms giant NTT Docomo confirmed it had contributed JPY500 million in a separate statement.
Founding partners include Takashi Yamanaka (pictured left), who began his career at Mizuho Bank and went on to become a managing director at IT investor Mobile Internet Capital. He will work alongside Shigeo Tsukamoto (pictured right), who worked at Mizuho Financial Group in the early 2000s before establishing GSW Corporation, a business consultancy with exposure to start-ups.
The new fund will focus on innovation in entertainment and lifestyle verticals, including technologies related to 5G connectivity, virtual reality, and augmented reality. About 25% of the corpus is to be deployed at the seed stage, with the rest going to later rounds. One investment has been made to date: an artificial intelligence-enabled surveillance system and biometric authentication developer called Secure that claims to have more than 4,000 corporate clients.
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