Nissay commits $1.7m to Japan's Oneteam

Oneteam will use the capital to recruit new staff, with a view to strengthening business fundamentals and growing its global customer base, according to a release. The app started with a focus on global business clients, with 85% of its customers outside of Japan; most of these are in Southeast Asia. Oneteam hopes to grow beyond this regional focus in 2016.

Currently Oneteam is in the closed beta stage of testing. It will enter open beta next month.

Company founder Akira Sasaki planned Oneteam based on his experience as a business management developer for Japanese HR giant Recruit in Southeast Asia. The app emphasizes topic-based real time discussions and allowing integration with social media and cloud services. Oneteam's seed round was led by Japan's CyberAgent Ventures, which targets tech companies from seed stage through the Series B round.

The company competes with global firms such as Slack, as well as more local platforms such as Japan's Chatwork, which recently raised $12.5 million in Series B funding from Jafco, SMBC Venture Capital and GMO Venture Partners, and Thailand's Eko, which raised a $5.7 million Series A round in August led by Gobi Partners.

Nissay has supported a number of technology-based Japanese start-ups, including skills marketplace Coconala, to which it committed JPY540 million ($4.4 million) alongside Jafco, SMBC and Voyage Ventures in November, and customer relationship management software developer Sansan, for which Nissay recently participated in a $16.9 million Series C round. The firm closed its most recent fund in 2014 at JPY10 billion.

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