Nissay Capital leads $1.5m round for Japan skills marketplace
Nissay Capital has a led a JPY150 million ($1.5 million) round of investment in WelSelf, the Tokyo-based start-up behind online skils marketplace Coconala. Other investors include internet marketing companies Opt and Adways, and the CEO of cosmetics site iStyle.
Set up in July last year, Coconala allows users to trade knowledge, skills and experience from one another. Customers pay a JPY500 commission on each purchase. The site claims to have acquired 63,000 users to date with 10,400 knowledge "items" for sale and more than 43,000 transactions completed.
According to a release, the extra capital will be used by WelSelf to expand its team of engineers from four to 10 in order to improve its service and launch a smart phone app.
This is the third website investment Nissay has made in recent months. In July it invested i$1.1 million in Japanese online ad platform, Dennoo, while in May it joined Nippon Venture Capital in investing JPY108 million in Yaraku, the company behind online cloud translation service WorldJumper.
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