Originally, the Japanese business landscape has been defined by large corporations with conservative methodologies and investment strategies. However, the country has begun to experience a sea change in the past few years.
Rapidly, Japanese corporations are adding significant venture capital into the country’s startup scene, and their efforts are starting to be profitable. According to a recent report by RocketSpace, here’s Gigabit Magazine’s breakdown of the three best cities in Japan to inaugurate a new startup.
Tokyo is the headquarters of Japan’s booming startup scene being one of the most populous urban environments in the world, with a standing for a high quality of life supported by smart city innovation and thriving business and technology ecosystems.
Tokyo’s startup ecosystem is valued at $14bn and consists of almost 1,200 software startups. Also represented are companies in the fintech, digital manufacturing, e-commerce, convenience service and robotics.
As stated by Silicon Republic, Tokyo’s scene is “characterised by a lot of M&A and IPO activity with traditional businesses either buying tech firms or creating funds to back start-ups.”
Startups to witness in Tokyo incorporate: drone parts manufacturer, Aeronext; 600; employee training management software company Coursebase; cashless kiosk-in-a-fridge or unmanned convenience store service provider, and AR sports platform provider MeLeap.
Osaka emerging as a startup leader in its own right, a process helped in no small way by government programs like J-Startup, is often concealed by its bigger and louder sibling Tokya. The J-Startup Program is an incubator for Japan’s best and brightest startups with the precise goal of “creating unicorns”, started in 2018 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
The city has about 1,000 early-stage startups and is a powerful commerce hub, hosting to approximately 180,000 businesses, the second-highest in Japan.
Osakan startups engaged in the J-Startup Program to watch include: industrial chemical equipment company Microwave Chemical; Quantum Biosystems, a company using quantum mechanics to revolutionise DNA sequencers and computer visual processing disruptor Architek.