GREE Ventures: Tokyo's Gateway to Asia Startup Growth

GREE Ventures is the Tokyo-based venture capital firm founded in 2011 as the investment arm of GREE Inc, the Japanese gaming and social networking company. Although it began life connected to a games giant, the firm deliberately invested outside its parent's orbit — explicitly avoiding content and gaming to back the broader internet and mobile sector across Asia.

The firm's first fund, AT-I, was a $50 million vehicle launched in 2014 targeting seed to Series A deals in consumer internet, mobile services, marketing technology and cloud services across Japan and Southeast Asia. Its second fund, AT-II, closed at $67 million in May 2017 and expanded the firm's reach into India for the first time. AT-II typically writes cheques of $500,000 to $3 million for seed to Series A rounds and prefers to lead. Backers of the fund include SME Support Japan, members of the Mizuho Financial Group and GREE itself.

GREE Ventures has built a reputation for hands-on support, helping founders solve market problems and scale quickly. Its early portfolio included Indonesian mobile payments platform Ayopop, New Delhi-based women's content platform PopXO, Indonesian e-commerce fashion platform Berrybenka, and global B2B names such as Saleswhale and Healint. Its exits include some of Southeast Asia's most storied outcomes: Kudo, sold to Grab; Pie, the Singapore chat app sold to Google — the first Southeast Asian startup ever acquired by Google; and Luxola, acquired by LVMH.

In May 2019 the firm made a decisive break with its corporate past, rebranding as Strive and announcing the first close of its third fund, STRIVE III, targeting $130 million. The fund is led by General Partners Yusuke Amano and Tatsuo Tsutsumi, with Nikhil Kapur promoted to partner. STRIVE III focuses on seed-stage, predominantly B2B startups across India, Southeast Asia and Japan, with early investments in Indian edtech platform ClassPlus and Japanese identity-verification startup TrustDock. The firm has co-invested alongside leading regional VCs including Sequoia Capital, Monk's Hill Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Chiratae Ventures, Kalaari Capital and Golden Gate Ventures.

For founders, GREE Ventures/Strive's story is instructive: it was never a corporate venture arm in the traditional sense. It invested outside the parent's strategy, earned independence through performance, and kept GREE Inc on as an LP while becoming its own brand. Today it stands as a bridge between Japan's deep corporate capital and the startup ecosystems of India and Southeast Asia.