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Report
The World’s Corporate Venture Capital Community Meet for GCV Asia Congress

(Japan)
January 18,2022

*This article was originally published in Japanese. All information in this article is as of November 30, 2022.

Global Corporate Venturing (GCV) held its GCV Asia Congress 2022 on November 16th at Sony City Osaki (Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo). It is Asia’s answer to the successful Corporate Venture in Brasil 2022 (see news posted January 11th, 2023) congress held in São Paulo, Brazil, on October 25th-26th. This event saw corporate venture capital (CVC) players and other stakeholders from Asia’s startup ecosystem meet around the globe to discuss investment in Asia, including Japan, and share successful cases.

Scene from GCV Asia Congress 2022 (photo by JETRO)

In “CVC in Japan,” panelists from Sony Ventures, Woven Capital, and Hitachi Ventures shared their success stories for their investors and parent companies. Among the participants was Evonik Venture Capital, the CVC arm of leading German specialty chemicals company Evonik Industries. It made its first-ever Japanese investment on November 15. Evonik Venture Capital’s Managing Director Bernhard Mohr delivered a keynote lecture titled “Internationalization of a CVC Unit.” He discussed useful advice for investment teams overseas, and the importance of applying localized investment approaches based on their unique investment characteristics.

In a fireside chat titled “Tips to Succeed: How to Enter a New Market as a CVC,” Ichiro Soné, Executive Vice President of JETRO, had a conversation with Sophia Nadur, the Managing Partner at bp Ventures. Speaking from bp Ventures’ experience of finding its way into new markets, Ms. Nadur pointed out the critical importance of being informed about market momentum, available government support, and existing infrastructure when entering new markets. Mr. Soné shared with the audience the support JETRO offers for finding investment opportunities in Japan.