CONNECTING
JAPAN &THE NORDICS
Newsletter #12February 22, 2021

Last week TechBBQ published a deep dive analysis of the Danish Cleantech ecosystem. These
were the main takeaways relevant for investors especially:
Out of the total 4028 startups and scaleups that currently make up the Danish ecosystem, 409
can be classified as impact startups (which indicate that sustainability and positive social and/orenvironmental impact is produced simultaneously with financial gains). Of these, 310 startups are
considered Cleantech, making this the absolute most important vertical for Danish impact startups. These 310 startups also provide the basis for this analysis.
Specific Danish strongholds within energy technologies include: Smart grid, IoT & digital
infrastructure; Thermal storage; Offshore wind industry; Energy efficient technologies; Bio-energytechnologies; Power plant energy; fuel cells; Centralized heating technology.
Specific Danish strongholds within environmental technologies include: New materials;
Circular production and business models; Biodiversity, land usage & air quality; Water and waste
optimization; Mitigating land and air pollution.
Of the total 310 Danish Cleantech startups, 184 are found in the seed stage, 95 in the early growthstage, 29 in the late growth and 2 N/A. In terms of actual funding received, only 33% of the 310
startups have received an investment, and 64 have disclosed information on the investment.
However, data indicates that the average investment size was DKK 22.6 million, with the top
investment being DKK 267 million. Feel free to contact TechBBQ for further information on specificstartups within each category.
Despite the growing awareness and demand for environmental action, and a growing demand
for new sustainable solutions, Cleantech startups only received 7% of all investments from 201620, compared to 18% for Life science and 62% for ICT. New Cleantech ventures appear to be lesspopular and therefore less targeted by VC investors.
One reason for this investor preference for Life Science and ICT is perhaps a higher probabilityfor ROI, according to a study performed by MIT. Another reason may be the smaller size of theDanish VC-industry, compared to Sweden and the UK. In 2019 Danish investments amounted toDKK 4 billion, compared to 7-37 billion in Sweden and 37-143 billion in London. Generally, smaller VC
industries tend to compartmentalize their investments in fewer verticals.
Another challenge for VC investors is the fact that Cleantech ventures tend to be very capitalintensive and have a long commercialization pipeline with a predominant focus on technologicaldevelopment. Additionally, the Cleantech development pipeline is not as clear and structured ase.g., Life Science, increasing the risk of negative impact and unknown factors for VC investors,
who generally prefer to invest in companies after the R&D and prototyping phase.
The report provides a number of recommendations to solving the structural issues of Cleantech
investments. In the meanwhile, Japanese investors looking for impact investment opportunities
in the Nordics (of which Cleantech form the majority of companies) may reach out to the following
organizations for relevant connections:•Norrsken Foundation: A Swedish non-profit foundation with a unique focus on impact startups.
The foundation was created by one of the founders of the Fintech unicorn Klarna. In 2019,
Norrsken closed a new investment fund that will invest 100 million euros in new companies
focused on sustainability. In 2020, Norrsken partnered with Nordic Capital, a large private
equity fund headquartered in Sweden, that closed its EUR 6.1 billion Fund X.

•Nordic Impact: A Norwegian-based impact investment fund with a broad portfolio of earlystage impact startups. Nordic Impact is also the driver behind the impact focused Katapult
Accelerator, and the Nordic Impact Investment Network, that connects impact investors,activities and communities in the Nordics.

•+Impact: The largest digital platform for the Nordic impact community, connecting 1000+impact startups with investors, and providing comprehensive data on this specific ecosystem.
Investors include Norrsken, Nordic Ninja and Katapult Accelerator.

SHORT NEWS FROM THE NORDICS

DKToo Good to Go, a marketplace for surplus food, has landed an investment ofEUR 25.7 million led by VC firm blisce/. The funds will go toward expanding
operations, particularly in the US.

DK

Vivino, an app for wine recommendation and marketplace, raises EUR 128
million.

SE

Volta Trucks, an electric truck company, raised EUR 16.5 million.

SEFatshark, game developer, raised EUR 8.2 million from Tencent.

NO

Crypto exchange Norwegian Block Exchange has raised EUR 5.84 million in atransaction facilitated by Pareto Securities.

NOToyota enters into new partnership with Corvus Energy, to start developing
and producing sustainable large scale maritime-certified hydrogen fuel cellsystems.

FI

The Unicorn, Wolt, raises more than EUR 430 million to expand into retail andgrocery.

IS

Ueno, a digital design agency was acquired by Twitter.

EEStarship, a robot courier company, raised EUR 14 million from Hinrikus andothers.

INTERVIEW WITH RUNDIT

What tech solution does your company offer
and what markets are you operating in?
Rundit provides an innovative monitoring,
reporting and portfolio management softwaretool for venture capitalists and private equity
firms. Currently, Rundit is operating in 30+
countries, with customers in Europe, UnitedStates, South East Asia and the Middle East.
Our solution also offers access to our networkof 5500+ global VC’s, so when a company isfundraising it will be introduced to our investor
network.
Why is the Japanese innovation ecosystem
and market interesting to your company?
The Rundit portfolio monitoring and management software is location-agnostic, so it fulfils
the needs of the Japanese customers as it doesfor the European.
We are very keen on adding Japanese VC’s andinvestors to our network, as Japan offers innovative technology solutions to invest in, it is alarge market, and we want to learn more about
the market. Our solution is great for introducing
European and Nordic companies to the Japanese ecosystem, and vice versa. I think sparking more interaction between these two ecosystems is super interesting, as new ideas andtechnologies are being exchanged across theregions.

Name:		Pekka Viilto

Position: 		

Head of Sales & Co-Founder

Organisation:		

RunditEcosystem location:

Helsinki, Finland

Company History:

Founded in 2016

Contact:pekka@rundit.com

Do you have any success stories in your network of organizations / governments / people, who are leveraging their success in Japan?
There have been some Finnish gaming companies, which are widely known in our society
to have gotten successful in Japan. Two of myfriends, a couple, have launched a design company in Japan called MUSUTA, and have managed to do a proper breakthrough there. That
has been an eye opener for me, as I realisedthat Nordic and Finnish design and culture has
an affinity in Japan. I think Finnish companies
have always had a relatively good history of collaborating with their Japanese counterparts,
though it can still get better. I think Lingual andcultural differences still pose an entry barrier, but I think it is getting easier to overcome
this over time, especially as the world is getting
more and more digitalised.

EVENT

BULLETIN BOARD
EVENTFebruary 23rd - Copenhagen Capacity and Digital Therapeutics Alliancehost a webinar about digital health and the winding road to reimbursementof digital solutions in the EU and the Nordics.

EVENTFebruary 24th - Nordic Innovation House (NIH) are hosting their 3rd info
webinar “Scaling Nordics to Asia”. The webinar is hosted by NIH Singapore,
Hong Kong and Tokyo where they will share how they can assist Nordic
startups, scaleups and growth companies to hit the ground running at these
Asian locations.

EVENT

March 9-11th - UNLEASH TOKYO, a large-scale online event introducesbusiness opportunities in Tokyo, with a heavy list of speakers frominternationally-active Japanese companies, international companies, andinfluencers who are well-acquainted with Tokyo from inside and outsideof Japan. The event is free and will be available on Invest Tokyo’s officialYouTube channel.

EVENT

March 17th - TechBBQ hosts the virtual matchmaking event “StartupCapital” to connect pre-seed, seed-stage, and series A startups across theNordics and Baltics with global investors. The event is free of charge and werecommend Japanese investors to participate in the event! Last year morethan +250 meetings were conducted over 4 hours!
Deadline to apply: February 21st.

EDITORSPeter Johansen
Project Manager
pj@asia-house.dk
Julian Morié Hara Nielsen
Japanese Consultant
jni@techbbq.org

Innovation Lab Asia is a project collaboration
between Asia House and TechBBQ funded by
the Danish Industry Foundation.
For more information:

OUR REPORTS

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