Sansan, a Japan-based business card management platform backed by corporates CyberAgent, GMO, Japan Post, Nikkei, Nippon Life, Recruit and Salesforce, had its proposed flotation on the TSE Mothers exchange approved yesterday.
The company is set to go public on June 19 but does not appear to have yet set a pricing range for its shares.
Founded in 2007, Sansan runs a cloud-based contact management service that relies on optical character recognition technology to extract information from business cards.
The digitised data can be stored in third-party customer relationship management platforms such as Salesforce and used to generate leads or uncover actionable data such as job changes.
The company has attracted more than 6,000 clients to date including the Japanese government, according to its website. It also offers a business-to-consumer app called Eight that functions as a professional social network.
Sansan has raised approximately $120m in funding to date. Japan Post Capital, the corporate venturing unit owned by courier and logistics service Japan Post, co-led its $26.4m series E round with SBI Investment, an investment arm of financial services firm SBI Group, asset manager T. Rowe Price and venture capital firm DCM Ventures in December 2018.
Enterprise software producer Salesforce, DCM and Future Creation Fund, backed by automotive manufacturer Toyota, supplied $38m in series D funding for Sansan in August 2017, before investment bank Goldman Sachs invested $17.6m three months later.
Salesforce Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of Salesforce, had already joined insurance firm Nippon Life’s VC arm, Nissay Capital, for the company’s $16.9m series C round the year before.
GMO Venture Partners, the investment arm of internet company GMO, participated in a $14m series B round for Sansan in 2014 alongside media group Nikkei’s Digital Media unit, public-private partnership Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Energy & Environment Investment.
GMO and Nissay Capital had previously combined for a $5m investment in Sansan in 2013, after internet company CyberAgent and human resources firm Recruit had committed to a $500,000 seed round in 2009.
Chihiro Terada, president and chief executive of Sansan, is currently the company’s largest shareholder, with a 37.1% stake, followed by DCM Ventures (6.9%), INCJ (5.9%), financial services firm SMBC Trust Bank (5.8%) and investment bank Goldman Sachs (4.4%).
