Sumitomo Corporation Corporate Venture Capital (CVC): Founding Members Discuss Working With Trading Company-Affiliated Startups (Part 2)
Sumisho Venture Partners make good on their word working with startup "tsukurioki.jp"

We'd like to begin by asking how SVP came to invest in Antway.

AkibaMy first encounter with Antway came via a referral from another venture capitalist (VC). Seeing the potential in the "tsukurioki.jp" service operated by Antway, SVP invested in the company in May 2023.

Maejima"tsukurioki.jp" is a home delivery service that provides refrigerated food prepared by professionals under the supervision of a registered dietitian every week. For around 700 yen per meal, the service provides everything needed to make dinner for you every day. The primary aim of the service is to reduce the burden of housework on a growing number of dual-income households and households raising children.

Akiba What caught SVP's attention was the fact that "tsukurioki.jp" was outclassing by a wide margin other similar services in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) market in terms of customer satisfaction and acquisition channel efficiency. We considered this as an indication of the high latent need among working households, burdened by a lack of time and the stress that comes with meal preparation.

Our decision was also supported by high praise we received from "tsukurioki.jp" users within Sumitomo Corporation and the excellent quality of the products we tasted.

What did Antway expect from SVP?

Following the investment, SVP pitched the idea of corporate services to support Antway's business development, starting with the introduction of "tsukurioki.jp" as a service for employees at Sumitomo Corporation. What were you aiming for with this proposal?

AkibaStartups inevitably have limited resources and personnel, which can hinder their ability to raise brand awareness, so our aim was to lend Antway support in this area. Since Antway had been focusing on DTC sales, SVP presented a plan to expand into the B2B realm, taking advantage of its strengths in networking and sales to major corporations. This led us to believe that an employee benefit-type service that sold directly to large companies with many dual-income household employees would be the best fit.

How did SVP and Antway communicate during the business development process?

Did you encounter any challenges or difficulties in the process of developing the business?

Akiba Initially, there was some conflict between the issues that Antway was looking to solve and the issues SVP wanted to address.

Maejima SVP wanted to help raise awareness of "tsukurioki.jp" through B2B development, but Antway was facing an urgent issue: variations in customer demand depending on the day of the week. Monday pickup was the most popular, while pickup slots later in the week were usually left open.

How did you reconcile these misaligned priorities?

AkibaBecause we believed that achieving B2B expansion was essential to the growth of the business, we proceeded with trial sales at Sumitomo Corporation concurrently, mindful of the low-demand days issue that Antway was looking to resolve. We felt that both aims could be achieved with a little ingenuity and had a series of discussions. Specifically, we designed the service to attract more customers on low-demand days by checking Antway's manufacturing capacity on a weekly basis and changing the rates for low- and high-demand days. Although demand exceeded supply for some pick-up slots, Antway's manufacturing capacity gradually increased, leading to B2B expansion.

Maejima In the end, the initiative made a lot of sense as measures were taken to overcome both challenges: medium- and long-term channel development and short-term low-demand days of the week.

AkibaIn practice, the business development process tends to slow when there are initial differences, with people saying things like, "Let's wait a while," but we tried to keep up the momentum.

Maejima Startups generally face challenges and problems, and only rarely succeed. Given this, unless you share the momentum of working together to overcome the challenges, the project will go up in smoke before it ever gets off the ground. Our regular weekly meetings were critical to maintaining the high levels of enthusiasm needed to get us through, and we remain very thankful for them.

Is this ability to accomplish goals a strength that differentiates SVP from other VC firms?

You mentioned manufacturing support earlier. Please tell us about the business development initiatives that SVP and Antway are currently working on, and your outlook for the future.