With $33m funding, Japan’s version of LinkedIn now one of the best funded startups in the country

BizReach founder and CEO Soichiro “Swimmy” Minami.

Japanese recruiting startup BizReach today announced a Series A round of funding from 10 companies totaling US$32.8 million. The investors in the round are YJ Capital, Japan Co-Invest Fund, Salesforce Ventures, Dentsu Digital Holdings, Gree, Rakuten, Link and Motivation, EFU Investment Limited, IMJ Investment Partners Japan Fund 1, and East Ventures (Disclosure: Tech in Asia is also backed by East Ventures).

The lead investor for the round was Yahoo! Japan’s investment arm YJ Capital, which invested US$13.9 million, the largest investment amount to date for the fund. It was also the first investment from IMJ’s new fund focusing on Japan. This round makes BizReach one of the most funded startups in Japan.

The startup has been profitable through advertising since 2014. Now Swimmy is looking for his next challenge.

BizReach has been called the LinkedIn of Japan and gone against the traditional recruiting business model by allowing companies to post jobs and connect with professionals in its database for free. Paid subscriptions are also available for job seekers as well as additional premium options for corporations.

BizReach has four main services. The original service is for high-class recruitment and aimed at job seekers looking for salaries of over US$75,000. There are also separate services targeting women and young professionals in their twenties. Stanby, a job search engine released by BizReach last year, currently lists over four million jobs. BizReach also has a job site RegionUP aimed at professionals in Southeast Asia.

Founder and CEO Soichiro “Swimmy” Minami loves challenges and was part of the founding team of a professional baseball club in Japan. He started BizReach after having difficulty finding new projects to work on through the traditional recruiting process in Japan.

Although BizReach has been profitable through recruiting advertisements since 2014, Swimmy is again looking for his next challenge. He hopes to use the funds he just raised to grow Stanby and use its applicant tracking system as the base for a new cloud recruiting system called HRMOS set to open in May.

Although applicant tracking systems are common in the US – with sites like Workable, Greenhouse, and Lever – and search engine-like job posting sites such as Monster.com have been around since 1999, BizReach still provides a novel service in Japan.

BizReach wants to bring more analytical capabilities to recruitment. Swimmy hopes to eventually track employees over their lifetime. This means a company could manage applicants before hiring, keep track of back office tasks like pensions, and even track employee performance at a single location.

Converted from Japanese yen. US$1 = JPY 113.63.

Update on March 29, 10:40pm JST: Article was updated to include some of Swimmy’s comments on revenue streams and business strategy.