Rakuten Ventures
Doubles Global Investment Fund in 2016

Singapore, April 12, 2016 - Rakuten Ventures, the venture capital arm of Rakuten Group, announced today a significant injection of US$ 100 million to its Global Investment Fund. The additional funding announcement comes on the back of a successful track record of early-stage investments and the launch of a Japan Fund earlier this year.

Rakuten Ventures operates a Global Investment Fund and a Japan Fund to invest approximately US$ 285 million in technology start-ups. The US$200 million Global Investment Fund seeks out the next generation of innovators, around the world and across the IT sector, with the unique insight to build and sustainably defend a last-mover advantage in their verticals of focus. Rakuten Ventures is run out of Singapore by Managing Partner SaeMin Ahn, Investment Manager Hogil Doh, and Principal Adit Swarup.

“Rakuten Ventures has been given the opportunity to work with some amazing founders who have created great products and businesses,” said Managing Partner SaeMin Ahn. “With the continued progress and growth of those very leaders, we are happy to be able to dream a little bigger and push even further by partnering up with more core technology and service providers. We will work continuously to support invested companies and organizations in taking the next step to meaningful gains and execution.”

Regarding recent developments in the broader technology landscape, Ahn added that “increased developer interest in macro verticals such as advertising technology, messaging ecosystems, and API integration in general has given rise to a really interesting new breed of start-ups building intuitive solutions in areas from audio programmatic adtech and interactive (chat) bot integration to interoperability and workflow automation.”

The Fund’s recent investments include Algorithm marketplace Algorithmia, children’s eBook subscription service Epic!, C2C marketplace Carousell, and file transfer start-up SendAnywhere.

About Rakuten Ventures
Rakuten is one of the world's leading Internet companies and Rakuten Ventures is its venture capital arm. Focused on empowering the start-up ecosystem to positively affect Internet services globally, Rakuten Ventures manages a US$ 200 million Global Investment Fund and a ¥ 10 billion Japan Fund. Originally launched in 2013, its Global Investment Fund counts Carousell, Visenze, PocketMath, SendAnywhere, Algorithmia, and Epic! among its investment portfolio. Rakuten Ventures is run out of Singapore by Managing Partner SaeMin Ahn, Investment Manager Hogil Doh, and Principal Adit Swarup.