(Left) Gen Funahashi, CEO of ICMG Partners, (Right) Kazufumi Yoshida, CEO of any
（Photos taken at ICMG Tokyo Office）

June 15^th, 2022
ICMG Partners Co., Ltd.
ICMG Co-Creation Fund Ⅰ Investment LP

We are pleased to announce that ICMG Co-Creation Fund Ⅰ Investment LP, managed by ICMG Partners Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, CEO: Gen Funabashi) and invested by Japan Airport Terminal Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Haneda Airport, Ota-ku, Tokyo, CEO: Nobuaki Yokota) and Kiraboshi Bank, Ltd. (Head Office: Minami Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo, CEO: Hisanobu Watanabe) has invested in any Inc. (Head office: Kanda Nishikicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, CEO: Kazufumi Yoshida; hereinafter “any”), together with DIMENSION, Archetype Ventures, Mizuho Capital, and Shinsei Venture Partners. any is a provider of “Qast”, a knowledge management tool that visualizes the know-how of each individual in a company. With a vision of ” Make a world where Teamship has taken root.,” any supports companies in improving productivity, practicing, and establishing knowledge management, and accelerating transactive memory.

(*Transactive memory: a state in which everyone in an organization knows “who knows what”)

Within a Japanese corporation, knowledge is concentrated in the hands of busy personnel and specific departments, making them secular in nature. Such personnel and departments constantly receive the same questions from various employees and are forced waste valuable time in responding to them. On the other hand, employees without access to required knowledge spend an average of 114 minutes/day searching for information within the company, consuming approximately 20% of their daily work time. This kind of operational inefficiency caused by uneven distribution of knowledge within an organization occurs on a daily basis in most companies. In particular, in companies where teleworking has become widespread, the number of opportunities to ask questions to colleagues and superiors is declining, and a 2021 survey conducted by Staff Service Holdings revealed that 56.0% of employees are unable to resolve questions about their work.

To address the aforementioned issues, any has developed Qast, a knowledge management tool that allows employees easy access to important information through Q&A and wiki functions. Qast has an excellent UI/UX and can be operated intuitively by anyone, regardless of industry or occupation, so that knowledge can be easily shared and accumulated. In addition, the popular post function, automatic tag function, and synonym search allow users to quickly reach the information they need. This allows employees to use Qast to quickly resolve work-related questions on their own, thereby reducing the time required to respond to questions or to search for information internally. Overall, this improves the productivity of the entire organization.

The significance of this investment is to improve the productivity of Japanese society as a whole through the penetration of knowledge management. Through Qast, the know-how possessed by each individual can be visualized and accumulated as organizational knowledge, thus unleashing the true potential of the organization. Therefore, we believe that an increase in the number of Qast installations will lead to the realization of the potential of Japanese society through increased productivity and improved knowledge sharing in the workplace. In addition, any is characterized by experienced knowledge consultants who will accompany and support you in realizing the “Qast Cycle,” a unique success method that enables knowledge management to permeate in a way that is appropriate for each company. We would like to support the introduction of Qast to our clients.

【About any】

Qast is a hybrid in-house knowledge sharing tool that allows users to centralize and instantly search for information and knowledge within the company. Qast is a hybrid knowledge sharing tool that centralizes internal information and knowledge, and allows for immediate search. It is a cloud service that can be used in a variety of industries, with automatic tagging, an analysis dashboard for knowledge management, and user profiles that visualize the skills of all users. It has already been implemented by more than 4,000 companies in Japan.

URL： https://anyinc.jp/

【About ICMG Group】

ICMG Group has been leading co-creative innovation not only in Japan but also in Southeast Asia and US together with various stakeholders such as leading Japanese big corporations, startups, and government agencies. ICMG Group has also carried out renewable energy investment projects in Southeast Asia with Tokyo Electric Power Company and Chubu Electric Power Co, formed a strategic partnership in Singapore with UNDP to promote the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and launched the sustainable city initiative project in Japan with Aichi Prefectural Government. ICMG Co-Creation Fund aims to create a sustainable society by providing growth capital and strong partner network of leading Japanese corporations to startups that solve social issues.

URL： https://www.icmg.com.sg/

【About ICMG Co-Creation Fund】

ICMG Co-Creation Fund was launched in May 2021 and is being managed by ICMG Partners as the General Partner. The Limited Partners are Japan Airport Terminal, which operates Haneda Airport Passenger Terminal Building and its group company Haneda Future Research Institute (LP investment from Japan Airport Terminal), and Kiraboshi Bank, which aims to become “a comprehensive service provider with strong financial capabilities”. The fund aims to build an ecosystem that leads a sustainable future by encouraging co-creation between startups that solve social issues beyond industries and Japanese large companies. In addition to providing startups with speedy growth capital, we also aim to provide growth support by offering collaboration opportunities with ICMG Group’s network of Japanese large companies.

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ICMG Partners Co., Ltd.
Public Relations Office
Phone：+81 03-6812-2548
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