A member of the top 100 from the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist
Last year, Jun Yasumoto, senior director of NTT Docomo Ventures, Japan-based phone operator NTT Group’s corporate venturing unit, carried out six new and additional investments, investing about $13m.
NTT Docomo Ventures in total manages about $420m in its portfolio, with recent deals including Couchbase’s $13m round.
Nobuyuki Akimoto, executive vice-president and chief operating officer at NTT Docomo Ventures, nominated Yasumoto for the Powerlist 100 and said: “As representatives of NTT group, we are assertively carrying out investment activities for startups on a global scale. Jun actively promotes such activities and has achieved exemplary results for both startups and NTT group.”
Akimoto was ranked eighth in the GCV Rising Stars awards 2016.
In 2013, NTT shook up its corporate venturing units by integrating its NTT Investment Partners unit, which seeks deals for the main business, with its Docomo Investment Fund Partnership pinpointing deals for its mobile phone subsidiary. These were rebranded to form NTT Docomo Ventures, with US subsidiaries Docomo Innovations and Docomo Capital subsequently merging in October 2015 to help the resulting entity be a “gateway between Japan and Silicon Valley in the mobile market”.
