Nehan Secures Approximately 1.6 Billion Yen in Seed Funding Round

Nehan Corporation, headquartered in Shinjuku, Tokyo, has recently completed a successful seed funding round, raising approximately 1.6 billion yen. The investment came from notable entities including DNX Ventures, mint, United Corporation, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital, alongside loans from Japan Finance Corporation and Dai-ichi Kango Credit Union. This round pushes Nehan's total funding to nearly 2 billion yen when combined with previous rounds. The funds will primarily accelerate product development and enhance hiring and organizational structure.

Challenges in the Public Procurement Market

Japan's public procurement market is a substantial one, worth about 27 trillion yen annually. Projections indicate that the workforce will decrease by nearly 20% from 2020 figures by 2040, which raises concerns regarding a shortage of public servants and increased administrative burdens on local governments. With the rapidly advancing AI technologies and the urgency for digital transformation (DX), it is becoming increasingly essential for private companies to engage in addressing public challenges. Recognizing this, the government is hastening reforms in the public procurement market.

The "Basic Policy 2024" explicitly emphasizes expanding investments in private enterprises, aiming to encourage start-ups to participate in bidding processes and tripling the target number of SMEs entering bids, thus marking a significant transformation period for the public procurement sector.

Sales Productivity Challenges in Public Procurement

While market opportunities are expanding, the need to enhance sales productivity in public procurement remains critical. Specific challenges include:

- Information on bidding published on over 2,000 government agency websites makes it difficult for businesses to gather comprehensive data on relevant projects.
- The extensive review of specifications and the preparation of proposals consume considerable time, limiting resources available for high-quality proposal preparation.
- A lack of accumulated case information inhibits strategic sales efforts utilizing past bidding data.

With expanding market opportunities, improving sales productivity and transforming operational processes are vital management challenges.

Introducing Labid: An AI Data Platform for Public Sales

Nehan has developed "Labid," an AI-driven data platform designed specifically for public sales. Labid streamlines the collection and review of bidding information released by municipalities and government agencies, supporting the entire process from project discovery to management and proposal preparation.

Features of Labid

1. AI Summary Feature: Automated summarization reduces the time spent reviewing extensive specifications by roughly 90%. This efficiency enables sales representatives to focus on preparing high-quality proposals, ultimately enhancing win rates.
2. Project Management Feature: Projects can be intuitively managed in card format, allowing the setting up of responsibilities and tasks for each project, significantly reducing administrative burden.
3. Automatic Proposal Draft Creation: Labid extracts necessary formats from specifications and proposal guidelines to provide a structured outline for proposals, instantly generating PowerPoint proposals, thereby significantly cutting down creation time.

Result: Improved Productivity

Based on client feedback, companies utilizing Labid have seen productivity increases of over 20 hours per month per employee. This efficiency gain allows teams to focus on essential sales activities, creating a conducive environment for success.

Background and Purpose of Funding

As opportunities in the public procurement market expand due to government reforms, companies are urged to construct and implement structured strategies for public sales, building efficient information collection and review systems. Nehan aims to facilitate public sales digital transformation through generative AI, enabling more private companies to effectively participate in solving public sector challenges.

In this funding round, Nehan has drawn investment from renowned VC firms, positioning itself firmly in the expanding public procurement market as a pioneer in SalesTech for public sales.

Investor Comments

Investors such as DNX Ventures and mint expressed their excitement over Nehan’s innovative approach to streamline public procurement processes using AI. They highlighted the immense potential of the public procurement market and the necessity of digitalizing these systems to create a collaborative environment between public and private sectors.

Career Opportunities at Nehan

Nehan is currently in a rapid growth phase and is seeking talented individuals across various roles, including BizDev, backend engineers, and AI/ML engineers, to join their mission of creating a new public framework.

Company Overview

Company Name: Nehan Corporation
Headquarters: Shinjuku, Tokyo
CEO: Yukimon Tsuruaki and Jun Kijima
Established: October 6, 2021
Capital: Approximately 164,999,940 yen
Business: Developing the AI data platform Labid.

For more information about Labid, visit: Labid Service Page.
For inquiries, contact Nehan Corporation's PR team at [email protected].