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Globis, KDDI invest $2.6m in Japanese how-to site

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Globis Capital Partners and the KDDI Open innovation fund have led a JPY270 million ($2.6 million) investment in Nanapi, a Japanese website offering everyday how-to advice. This is the second round of investment for Globis which previously backed the company in 2010.

Established in 2007, the site has 95,000 "life recipes" offering advice on everything from cooking to finance to relationships; topics include things such as "how to cut vegetables" and "how to clean a toilet". The site claims to have around 14 million users per month with around 60 million page views.

The KDDI fund, backed by Japanese telecoms firm KDDI Corp, is managed by Tokyo VC firm Global Brain. According to a release, the company intends to leverage KDDI's user-base and expertise to make its content mobile by creating a portal for smartphone users.

The KDDI fund, which has around $50 million under management and focuses on tech start-ups, has made seven other investments, three of which came earlier this year. These include Japanese mobile commerce applications manager Origami; smartphone applications developer 3rdKind and mobile games developer Mutations Studio earlier this month.

Globis recently saw a first close of JPY6 billion on it JPY15 million fourth fund 

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