The Blooming Japanese Startup: Freee K.K. 

The cloud-based accounting startup known as “Freee K.K.” which was founded in 2012 has been receiving a lot of attention since last year. Recently due to the demand for cloud services, the company’s valuation has expanded to $3.7 Bn. The stock price of the company rose by 1.3% on 5th October. The company filed for the IPO last November and was the second-biggest IPO on its first day of trading. Since then, the shares of the company have quadrupled. 

Information on the Company

Freee K.K. has a subscription-based revenue model which means that they provide services on a monthly subscription basis. They have partnered up with 270 banks and financial institutions in Japan. Due to these partnerships, users can manage their funds by integrating their bank accounts. The company’s products include accounting software for corporations, HR labour software, industry lending corporation software, accounting and reporting software for individuals, opening notice creation service, Cloud ERP for business needs. Their flagship accounting service has over 220,000 subscriptions which have grown more than 50% over the past 5 years. 

Founding Team

Company CEO, Daisuke Sasaki was the head of APAC SMB Marketing Development at Google before starting Freee K.K. Before Google, he worked at a startup called ALBERT Inc. as the CFO and VP. Sumito Togo, the CFO and Director of Free K.K. has worked at McKinsey and Google before joining the company.

Investment History

Before the IPO, the company had raised a total of $227.9 Mn in 9 rounds. The company’s investors included Mitsubishi UFJ, Line, Life Card, Nippon Life, Sharp, Salesforce, Recruit, SBI and Greyhound Capital. In 2013, the company was the winner at the Infinity Ventures Summit Launch Pad. SBI FinTech Fund and other investors had invested around $8.3 Mn in 2016.

The Future of the company

Freee K.K.’s goal aims to provide a world-class quality of products and services. The company wants to be the dominant player in the field of the cloud-based accounting industry by outpacing market growth. According to Sasaki, the pandemic will create growth opportunities for the company. Businesses can shift their office tasks towards digitization which can lead to an increase in demand for cloud-based accounting systems.

 

Sources: Asiatechdaily, Yahoo!Finance

This research article has been produced by Investocracy, a company focused on connecting startups from emerging markets with Japanese investors.

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