Adtech start-up from Japan raises series D funding to enter China, India

Geniee, a Tokyo-based venture seeks to bolster its presence across Asia as it gears up for a possible 2016 IPO, reports Tech in Asia

Mild temperatures may have kept residents of the Japanese capital from experiencing a rare white Christmas, but for Tokyo-based Geniee, it ended up being a green Christmas. The adtech start-up, founded in 2010, raised an undisclosed amount of series D funding from Fenox Venture Capital over the holiday weekend.

Geniee co-founder and CEO Tomoaki Kudo tells Tech in Asia that the investment will be used to further its expansion across Asia. Geniee already operates subsidiaries in Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam – along with joint ventures in Thailand and Malaysia. By the end of 2016, the start-up plans to have a presence in China, India, and Taiwan.
 

“We often do business with strong local players, so we’ll be looking for partners in each of those countries,” Tomoaki says.

The CEO declined to share the exact amount raised, but a source with direct knowledge of the situation says it’s in the seven-figure USD range. The CEO described the investment as a ‘pre-IPO’ round and says his team is gearing up for an exit.
 

Geniee’s ad platform is based on real-time bidding (RTB), an industry term for the buying and selling of online advertising impressions via auctions that occur in fractions of a second. RTB allows advertisers to target specific demographics or geographical locations, thus ensuring that impressions aren’t wasted on irrelevant audiences. It’s also cheaper and less time-consuming than hiring a team of human ad buyers.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.