ClipLine Raises 600 Million Yen in Series E Round

ClipLine, Inc. (headquartered in Shinagawa-ku Tokyo; President: Hayato Takahashi; hereinafter “the Company”), a provider of management support service “ClipLine” for enhancing organizational performance through videos, announces that it has raised a total of 600 million yen through a third-party allocation of new shares from existing investors IncubateFund and a Singapore-based venture capital firm, Axiom Asia Private Capital. As a result of this financing, total funding amounted to 2.1 billion yen (including capital loans),and a Series E extension round is now planned. 

 ■Background to the Financing
In October 2014, the Company launched ClipLine, a management support service that uses videos to enhance organizational performance. ClipLine supports the improvement of labor productivity in the service industry, which accounts for approximately 70% of domestic GDP. It was first introduced into restaurants such as Yoshinoya, and then Sompo Care Inc., a nursing care company, and retailers such as Gulliver, a used car company. It has been introduced into a variety of industries and companies, and is now also used by multi-site businesses that do not have stores, such as transportation companies and factories. As of the end of September 2021, it has 400,000 users in approximately 15,000 stores. Although the service industry suffered a major blow in the wake of COVID-19, the digitization of business operations has begun to spread rapidly, showing signs of recovery, with indicators for creating new added value, increasing efficiency, and improving productivity. The Company will continue to evolve its product to provide even stronger support and accelerate its business growth.

■Main Use of Funds​​​​​​​
Developing Next-generation ClipLine Combining SECI Model¹ with Service Profit Chain^{2​​​​​​​}
By providing means for employee education, communication, and knowledge sharing through videos, ClipLine has been able to improve its customers’ financial results, including increased sales, reduced turnover, and improved operational efficiencies. In the future, however, the Company will expand the functions to develop more management-friendly services. In particular, it will focus on strengthening a store manager support function, which is the pillar of on-site management.

１．       Implement a dashboard to score the information needed to run stores
２．       Develop multiple devices tailored to store managers’ usage scenarios

For other uses, ClipLine will continue to focus on strengthening its organizational structure through acquisition of human resources.
 

¹ A knowledge management framework proposed by Professor Emeritus Ikujiro Nonaka of Hitotsubashi University. It represents the knowledge transfer process that creates a spiral between “tacit knowledge (knowledge based on individual experience and intuition, know-how which is difficult to translate into language)” and “explicit knowledge (linguistic and theoretical knowledge, know-how which is easily shared across an organization)”.
² A framework presented by Harvard University professors Heskett and Sasser and introduced in a book titled The Value Profit Chain, the idea that a company’s long-term profits are based on employee satisfaction (ES) and customer satisfaction (CS), and that the creation of loyal customers leads to sustainable growth.

■Comments from Underwriters
Tohru Akaura – General Partner at IncubateFund
Since its founding in 2013, ClipLine has steadily advanced its business while earning the trust of its customers and has been adopted by a number of large companies in a variety of industries, mainly the restaurant industry.
As a video-based management system that improves the productivity of companies operating multiple stores and supports management itself, we are confident that the service will have a greater impact by exporting the knowledge of high-quality Japanese service industry to the world, taking into view not only its domestic market but also the global market. We will work together with other shareholders to provide even greater support.
 

Chris Loh – Managing Partner at Axiom Asia Private Capital Pte Ltd
ClipLine is a great management tool that is able to help businesses with many branches to digitize, improve the efficiency in management and better communicate with employees. Japan also has one of the highest service quality and staff training standards in the world, and many companies globally can learn from Japan’s example and improve tremendously. We believe that ClipLine is well positioned to help businesses both domestically and internationally, and we are very excited to work together with the highly capable management team in this journey.

■About ClipLine
ClipLine is a cloud-based service utilizing videos that improves the productivity of multi-store businesses. It will expand OJT from one-on-one to one-to-many and create an environment where new employees can train alone 24 hours a day, anytime, anywhere to reduce working hours of trainers. In addition, it has a track record of reducing sales and administrative expenses by making management remote and reducing the workload of middle managers, and realizing ideas and sharing know-how among stores by making tacit knowledge explicit. ClipLine was developed based on the SECI model proposed by Professor Emeritus Ikujiro Nonaka of Hitotsubashi University, and has been patented as an “autonomous learning system using video and audio clips” (Patent No. 6140375).
Service introduction video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVNFTRuDzI4&t=2s  

■About ClipLine,Inc.
Representative: Hayato Takahashi,President
Established: July 11, 2013
Headquarters: Room 20, 7th floor, TOC Building, 7-22-17 Nishi-gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-0031
Capital: 902,202,040 yen (including capital reserve as of August 31, 2021)
URL: https://corp.clipline.com/
Business Outline: Management consulting, and development and management of“ClipLine”

■Contact
CFO and Director Yusuke Watanabe, ClipLine, Inc.
TEL: +81-(0)3-6809-3305  Email: info@clipline.jp