Global Brain and Kodansha co-invests $4M USD in Mind Palette, the provider of social photo sharing service “Snapeee”

The “GB-V Growth Fund Investment Limited Partnership” managed by Global Brain Corporation, has co-invested in Mind Palette Co. Ltd., the provider of social photo sharing service “Snapeee”, together with Kodansha Ltd. The total amount invested in Mind Palette was $4M USD.

Snapeee is one of the biggest social photo sharing service in Asia, with more than 8.1 million registered users as of July 24, 2014. Snapeee ranked in top 10 in the photo category of iOS Store and Google Play in 36 countries and territories. Among those, it was ranked No.1 in 13 countries and territories including China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

“SNAPEEE has a full of unique Japanese KAWAII culture,” said Yasuhiko Yurimoto, President and CEO of Global Brain. “We firmly believe that Snapeee has great potential to be a successful service in the Asian market.”

“We are happy to welcome Snapeee as our new channel to the market,” said Shinichi Kuwata, Deputy Executive Director of Rights Division of Kodansha. “Our high quality contents from our top-line female fashion magazines, such as “ViVi”, now have additional access to female users in Asia through the Snapeee platform.”

“We will utilize the capital for accelerating customer acquisition region-wide in Asia,” said Takaaki Kamio, CEO of Mind Palette. “We will also add e-commerce functionality on our platform in the near future.”

With this investment, Hiroshi Mihayashi, Principal at Global Brain, has joined the Board of Directors of Mind Palette.

About Mind Palette Co. Ltd.

Founded in 2010 in Tokyo, Japan, Mind Palette has been focusing on creating a social media platform that mixes photos, mobile and communication. The service app “Snapeee” is available both on iOS and Android.
The service website is available at: http://snape.ee/
Further information is available at: http://www.mindpl.com/

About Kodansha Ltd

Kodansha is Japan’s largest publisher, with its headquarters in Tokyo. Originally established in 1909 by Seiji Noma, the company is still a family-run business. Under the current leadership of Yoshinobu Noma, succeding company president Sawako Noma, Kodansha continues to play a dominant role in the media world, producing books and magazines in a wide variety of genres including literature, fiction, nonfiction, children’s, business, lifestyle, art, manga, fashion, and journalism. Recently, the company has ventured into digital distribution of content as well.
Further information is available at:http:www.kodansha.co.jp/English

About Global Brain Corporation

Global Brain is a Tokyo-based independent venture capital founded in 1998, which focuses on seed to middle stage IT startup companies. It currently manages 6 funds with total amount of 300 million USD. It is well known for its intensive hands-on style investments with dedicated in-house business support team, and also known for growth hack support utilizing its extensive network with large corporations.