AVCJ

VCs invest $1.2m in Japanese website Retty

  • Andrew Woodman
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GREE ventures, NTT investment Partners and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital have jointly invested JPY100 million ($1.2 million) into Retty, a Japanese social restaurant guide.

Retty plans to use the funding to expand overseas, setting up websites in the US and Singapore, as well as to strengthen its development and marketing team. The company will also release iPhone and Android applications for the sites.

Founded in December 2010, Retty started an online "social gourmet service" where users can list and rate their favorite restaurants and share their assessments with friends.

Retty will be entering a saturated market with competitors such as Yelp and HungGoWhere. However, unlike Yelp where posts are anonymous, Retty connects users that are already friends via Facebook.

Restaurant review websites have already proved popular among venture capital investors in China. TrustBridge Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Qiming Venture Partners won VC Deal of the Year at the 20120 AVCJ China Awards for their Series C round of funding for Dianping.com.

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