ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Shinzo Nakano, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITV”), a subsidiary of ITOCHU, completed the first closing of capital investment in the Technology Ventures IV Venture Capital Investment Limited Partnership (hereinafter “TV4”) as the general partner of TV4, and established it with a total commitment of 8.1 billion yen. ITOCHU will invest one quarter of that total, or 2.0 billion yen, in TV4.
IT and the Internet, which have revolutionized information distribution since the 1990s, are now bringing about further new changes in the world: by providing a vehicle to bridge yet-to-be-connected things and needs, they will organically generate economic activities of enterprises and individuals and their opportunities, encourage them, and eventually raise the industry to an even higher level. Under its vision, "To provide people’s lives with greater convenience through IT and the Internet, and to become a contributor to the growth of national power of Japan through the advancement of the industry," ITV will invest in industries that can be re-defined and re-energized by IT, the Internet and other advanced technologies.
ITV’s specific investment areas include crowdsourcing, finance (FinTech), infrastructure and energy with an eye toward electricity deregulation, and agriculture for the corporate sector; and health and medicine, education (EdTech), social services, and smartphones for the consumer sector. With its focus on Japan, ITV will also find and consider investments in potentially prominent foreign companies that create advanced and innovative services or technologies, mainly in the United States, by using the global network of ITOCHU.
Members with extensive business experience at ITV will actively provide hands-on support to portfolio companies in areas such as overseas expansion and cost reduction, which will lead directly to their further growth, as well as sales cooperation to bolster their excellence, including technologies and services, and cooperative support mainly with ITOCHU Group companies.

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