Cool Japan leads $40m Series C for Taiwan’s Vpon

Korean private equity firm STIC Investments, Tokyo-listed e-commerce incubator Beenos, and Hong Kong-based travel sector investor Triplabs also participated. It follows a $10 million Series B in 2014 that reportedly included Goldman Sachs and a $7 million Series A in 2011 featuring TrustBridge Partners.

Vpon specializes in advertising analytics for mobile phones and smart devices. It has serviced more than 1,500 brands since inception in 2008, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, American Express, and Citibank. Its footprint includes 900 million devices across 750 Asian cities, with a strong presence in Greater China.

Triplabs said in a statement that it intended to leverage the company’s technology for a mobile advertising drive in the tourism industry. In 2018, Vpon teamed up with the Japan National Tourism Organization and the Osaka Tourism Board as part of the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics. This involved establishing an Osaka office.

Cool Japan was launched by the Japanese government in late 2013 with an aim to invest about JPY100 billion ($942 million) in the globalization of domestic businesses in fashion, food, media, leisure, education, and tourism. However, it has begun to invest outside of cultural categories in recent years. In December 2018, it backed a JPY5 billion round for Spiber, a next-generation textiles developer.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Media
• Technology
• Expansion
• Taiwan (China)
• STIC Investments
• artificial intelligence
• TMT