2022.12.06
Kotozna (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, CEO Genri Goto) is pleased to announce that in November 2022, it implemented a third-party allocation of shares with companies including JTB Co., Ltd., etc. as underwriters, and raised a total of approximately 320 million yen.
The main use of the funds will be to enhance the functions of Kotozna In-room, the multilingual communication tool for accommodation facilities, including linking it to the core system of these facilities, and to enhance the functions of Kotozna laMondo, a multilingual customer support solution. We will promote business development and overseas expansion in anticipation of market expansion as COVID has subsided after more than two and a half years.
Since its establishment in October 2016, Kotozna has released the multilingual menu service “Kotozna Camera”, the multilingual chat tool “Kotozna Chat”, and was selected for the J-Startup support program.
In February 2020, Kotozna formed a business and capital alliance with JTB and have collaborated on the multilingual communication tool “Kotozna In-room” for accommodation facilities, which was launched in October of the same year. In addition to supporting 109 languages, Kotozna In-room supports labor efficiency and DX, and as of September 2022, has been installed in more than 250 facilities nationwide such as hotels and inns.
Since the relaxation of border restrictions in October this year, the number of foreign tourists has been steadily recovering, and the usage data of Kotozna In-room shows signs of an inbound revival, with the percentage of foreign language usage more than doubling in about a month.
Against this backdrop, the company raised a total of approximately 2.3 million USD this time in order to meet the multilingual needs of accommodation facilities, where demand is expected to increase, and to enhance the functions of Kotozna laMondo, a multilingual customer support solution launched in September this year. The underwriters are JTB Corporation, FFG Venture Business Partners, Oita VC Success No. 6 Investment Limited Partnership managed by Oita Venture Capital Corporation, Hokkaido Venture Capital Corporation, and Sagin Capital & Consulting Co.
The main uses of the funds raised this time are as follows.
・Technical investment to strengthen functions, including linking Kotozna In-room, a multilingual communication tool for accommodation facilities, with core systems of these facilities
・Technical investment to enhance the functionality of Kotozna laMondo, a multilingual customer support solution
・Overseas business expansion
With this procurement, Kotozna will further accelerate its efforts to eliminate the language barrier using social innovation and cutting edge technologies.
6 years have passed since our founding in 2016 with the goal of revitalizing and energizing Japan’s various regions by eliminating language barriers throughout Japan.Meanwhile, the government’s promotion of a “tourism nation” was paying off, with the number of foreign tourists topping 30 million annually by 2019 and inbound spending topping 5 trillion yen by 2020. As part of this, we developed the Kotozna In-room, which supports multilingual communication at accommodation facilities. However, due to the global spread of COVID infections, only 4.11 million people visited Japan in 2020 when the product was released. For an accommodation facility with restrictions on domestic travel, it was an unimaginably difficult time to manage. We, too, have continued to work with JTB to develop and market the product, believing that COVID will surely converge and inbound tourism will recover.
Finally, in October of this year, the border measures were relaxed, and the dawn of the inbound industry has arrived. Fortunately, Japan was ranked number one for the first time in the World Economic Forum’s Tourism Attractiveness Ranking released this year. As the momentum for this inbound revival grows, I am confident that the contributions that Kotozna can make will continue to expand. Moving forward, we will further expand our focus to the world and utilize cutting-edge technology to solve the social issue of language barriers.
