Tokyo and Singapore-based Sansan has raised JPY 3 billion (US$26.43 million) in Series E funding, taking funding to date to over JPY 11.4 billion (US$100 million). Sansan’s Series E investment was led by Japan Post Capital, T. Rowe Price, SBI Investment, and DCM Ventures. The additional funding will help Sansan deliver on its mission: “Turning encounters into innovation.”

“It is an honour to have the backing of our investors and partners who clearly see great potential for what Sansan does – not just in Japan, but in more and more global markets. With fresh funding, we are well positioned to strengthen the whole value chain from marketing to sales and customer success” said Chika Terada, Founder and CEO of Sansan.

Kei Tomioka, Co-founder and Director added, “Singapore is the perfect location to establish our first international office given its status as a regional hub for South East Asia. Our team will aim to deliver the value of Sansan to customers outside of Japan starting with Singapore, and from there globally.”

As a cloud-based contact management service for businesses, Sansan converts business cards lying dormant within companies into actionable data. While proprietary OCR software is used to instantly digitize each card, actual staff also check each and every card to confirm accuracy. This gives Sansan an unrivalled accuracy rate of 99.9%. The system natively helps users track job changes, view contact’s backgrounds and social media presence. It also acts as an internal social network of business contacts, which is a huge benefit for the company as a whole, but especially the sales and marketing departments. Part of Sansan’s tremendous success stems from its unwavering commitment to protect the privacy of its users – Sansan does not share data with any third-parties, nor does it monetise the data of its users in any way.

By changing its mission statement from “Creating a resource from everyday business encounters and transforming the way the world works” to “Turning encounters into innovation”, Sansan is reconfirming its commitment to providing quality services to its clients and to continuously improve and evolve their products with the use of cutting-edge technology.

Sansan’s services have been deployed by over 7,000 companies worldwide, including Lenovo Group Ltd., Merck & Co. and Seven & i Holdings Co., and it has achieved growth as part of the business infrastructure of companies. Some of its clients in Singapore include A*Star, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Tokyo Gas, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Shimadzu, Sumitomo Chemical to name a few.

Sansan’s also has a B2C app, “Eight”, built for individual users. It is Japan’s largest professional social network with over 2 million registered users. It has recently acquired over 100k users across Indonesia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore since its launch outside Japan in October 2017. Eight provides options such as instant chat messaging and an activity feed, providing business opportunities and timely updates from one’s network.

For more information, please visit Sansan’s website at https://www.corp-sansan.com/.

About Sansan

Since its founding in 2007, Sansan has focused on delivering its cloud-based business contact management service to customers in Japan, Singapore and beyond. Sansan is setting a global standard for cloud-based contact management, with annually doubling numbers of users. Sansan, Inc. is based in Tokyo, Japan and set up its global office in Singapore in October 2015. The company began offering its B2C app Eight in 2012. With over 2 million registered users, it is a contact management solution that incorporates a social media framework to transform business cards into tangible business relationships.

About Japan Post Capital

Japan Post Capital is a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan Post that is primarily engaged in investing. It supports the growth of Japanese venture businesses by investing in companies that can be expected to grow through utilization of the network and brand power of the Japan Post Group.

About DCM Ventures

DCM Ventures is a venture capital group with over 3 billion dollars invested. They have offices in Silicon Valley, Beijing, Tokyo and support entrepreneurs through practical management advice, global business network and funding.

About SBI Investment

SBI Investment is a subsidiary of SBI Holdings that actively engages in venture capital investment in growth fields. The company participated in this round of funding through the AI & Blockchain fund it manages.

About T. Rowe Price

T. Rowe Price is a world-leading independent asset management company based in the U.S. in Maryland. It manages assets totalling over $1 trillion and currently does business in 16 countries worldwide. Since opening a representative office in Japan in 1982, it has long been engaged in managing Japanese stocks.