Japan’s unicorn population recently increasing. Unicorn is private startups valued at more than $1 billion. Meanwhile, in the United States and China, the population of these so-called unicorns remains a fraction.
The number of startups grows rapidly in the U.S. and U.K. The rapid growth happens partly because they have a better opportunity to sell products and services around the world. On the other hand, in China and India, unicorn births are on the rise. China’s and India’s huge domestic markets make the rise happens.
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Additionally, another factor behind the growing number of unicorns is big companies establishing venture capital entities. In other word, overseas governmental investment funds actively invest in startups.
In the U.S., investment by venture capitalists increases 58% in 2018 from the previous year to an all-time high of $130.9 billion.
Japan’s government has adopted a target of 20 unicorns in the country by 2023.
Japan Unicorn
The first Japanese Unicorn is SmartNews. It is a Tokyo-based app developer. The unicorn recently raised more than 3 billion yen ($28.14 million). Thus, it brings its total valuation over $1 billion and giving Japan the third unicorn.
SmartNews, founded in 2012, operates a smartphone app. It distributes news from media organizations. Smartnews operates in Japan and the U.S. Consequently, SmartNews has more than 20 million monthly users. It has won trust from investors in the U.S. because of its rapid growth as a source of viewers for media company websites.
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Besides SmartNews, there were two Japan-based unicorns at the end of July. They are Liquid Group, which has a crypto asset exchange under its wing, and Preferred Networks, an artificial intelligence developer.
Other than those three, Mercari is also one of the Japanese unicorns. Mercari went public in June 2018, shedding its unicorn status. For a time, Preferred was Japan’s only unicorn. Mercari is an online flea market operator.
