JAPAN – Cloud-based restaurant management platform Dinii has raised JPY 7.46 billion (US$48 million), intended to expand its operations.
The funding round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Hillhouse Investment Management. Ecelectic and Flight Deck Capital also participated in the funding round.
The round is the first time Bessemer Venture Partners, an American venture capital firm has invested in a Japanese startup.
In a joint statement, Dinii’s founders Mao Yamada (CEO) and Kazuki Otomo (CTO) reiterated the funds from the funding round will be used to expand to other product services like employee management, reservation management, and food deliveries since it already has a Point of Sale (POS) platform.
The startup currently has operations in Tokyo and Osaka, covering Japan’s two largest restaurant markets for restaurants.
However, with the success of the recent funding round, the startup plans to expand into other cities like Nagoya and Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.
Dinii has raised JPY 8 billion (US$55 million) so far in its funding rounds. Its leading investors in its first funding round include ANRI and Coral Capital.
Founded in 2018, the startup initially made its mark as a B2B SaaS business by providing a lower-cost, cloud-based POS platform that both restaurants and customers could use with any devices they owned.
This was a unique solution for both customers and restaurants, which facilitated the exponential growth of the startup.
Mao Yamada stated the startup was inspired by Toast, the American cloud-based restaurant management system that also initially started as a POS and payment service provider but expanded to provide a host of other management services for restaurants.
Hailing the funding round, Bessemer Venture Partners cited similarities between Dinii and Toast as the primary drivers for its investment in the tech startup.
Bryan Wu, partner at the venture capital firm, said, “Having been fortunate to be a key investor in Toast in the U.S., supporting it to become a US$13 billion company, we see a similar element of success in Dinii: a strong team led by a young and visionary leader, a large underserved market, and the best all-in-one cloud-based solution.”
“We are confident that Dinii will emerge as one of the most prominent SaaS and fintech leaders in Japan.”
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