GUV Powerlist 2018: #8 Koji Murota

Koji Murota became chief executive of Kyoto University Innovation Capital (KU-iCap), a wholly-owned investment subsidiary of Kyoto University, in 2016, bringing with him more than two decades of expertise gained in the corporate venturing, venture capital and private equity industries.

His previous positions include being a manager of Daiwa Corporate Investment, the venture capital arm of investment bank Daiwa Securities, where he helped establish a fund in China. He has also taught social finance and startup management at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Medicine.

KU-iCap launched its fund in 2016 with ¥16bn ($142m), which is expected to be deployed over 15 years, though there is a possibility of a five-year extension. The fund has made more than 20 investments to date.

While it is early days for KU-iCap, Murota told GUV he was particularly proud of two achievements so far. First, he played a key role in establishing iPS Academia Japan, which manages the licensing of induced pluripotent stem cells – technology to convert mature cells into stem cells, which netted inventor Shinya Yamanaka a Nobel prize.

Some of iPS Academia Japan’s patents were licensed to regenerative medicine developer BlueRock Therapeutics, which was spun out of Kyoto University with $225m of series A funding from backers such as pharmaceutical firm Bayer in 2016.

Second, KU-iCap led a round in and helped to launch cancer drug developer Chordia Therapeutics in November 2017. Chordia is technically a spinout of pharmaceutical firm Takeda, which has licensed several drug programs to Chordia, but Seishi Ogawa, a professor at Kyoto’s department of pathology and tumour biology, has joined Chordia’s team.

However, Murota identified issues elsewhere that could prove more challenging. He said: “One of my biggest challenges has been increasing the number of entrepreneurs. There are a lot of technologies, sufficient funds and some business ideas, but we lack ambitious entrepreneurs in Japan.”

Murota is not shying away from the problem and KU-iCap has launched a program, called Entrepreneur Candidate Club, which has led to the formation of several venture management teams to date – though more always remains to be done.

Looking ahead, Murota is keen to establish spinouts in collaboration with other universities and corporate venture capital units, telling GUV that “good technologies and businesses come from communication and fusion among them”.

Some of this collaboration is already happening, as KU-iCap was able to attract an investor that provided added value to one of its spinouts through a meeting at the GUV: Fusion conference.

And when it comes to finding more ways to support spinouts, he showed himself ambitious, explaining that KU-iCap would establish a branch in China in the near future to help its spinouts enter that vast market.

Despite having led KU-iCap for only two years, Murota has already had a profound impact on the local ecosystem and he is on course to make a success of the China plans as well.