Tokyo, April 01, 2015
Fujitsu today announced that it is establishing a new corporate venture fund to strengthen collaboration with new ventures and further enhance its services in the fields of business innovation and social innovation, which form the pillars of the company's growth strategy. Fujitsu established its first corporate venture fund in 2006 to collaborate with promising ventures in Japan and around the world, and the new fund will further strengthen these activities.
In addition, the company will strengthen its efforts to accelerate the creation of new businesses that leverage the ideas and expertise of Fujitsu Group employees.
Fujitsu established its first corporate venture fund in 2006, and since then has collaborated with dozens of ventures in Japan and around the world. Now, to further enhance its services in innovation fields, Fujitsu will establish a new five billion yen fund to strengthen collaboration with promising ventures worldwide.
The speed at which new services and technological innovations are created in the ICT domain continues to accelerate. Accordingly, using the fund to speed investment decisions and execution is also essential for Fujitsu's business expansion. In order to expand ICT usage areas for enterprises (business innovation) and expand into new ICT usage areas (social innovation), which together form the pillars of Fujitsu's growth strategy, the company will accelerate collaboration by investing in promising ventures worldwide that have expertise or technologies in areas of expected growth.
Specifically, by combining new ventures' speed, fresh ideas, technologies, and their reach into new markets together with Fujitsu's capital, intellectual property, customers, and channels, Fujitsu seeks to strengthen both its own services and those of the ventures. The new fund will be used to primarily invest in four areas of business innovation - cloud, mobile, big data, and security - and seven areas of social innovation - transportation, healthcare, lifestyle industries, food and agriculture, energy, education, and the environment.
In addition, the company will enhance its efforts to promote entrepreneurship that accelerates the creation of new businesses by leveraging the ideas and expertise of Fujitsu Group employees in Japan. Since the implementation of its internal venture incubation system in 1994, twenty-four companies that were incubated within Fujitsu have been established. Among these, Papyless Co., Ltd, an eBook company, was listed on JASDAQ in 2010. In order to assist employees in establishing more ventures, in addition to more robust systems, Fujitsu plans to invest in these ventures using the new fund.
Through its collaboration with ventures, both within and outside the company, Fujitsu will work to offer new services to customers.
An overview of the new fund is presented below.
Overview of the New Fund
| Fund size |
: |
5 billion yen |
| Starting date |
: |
April 2015 (scheduled) |
| Term |
: |
10 years |
| Investment targets |
: |
Venture companies worldwide that collaborate with Fujitsu |
