Pre Series A investment in Eitoss, a Cloud-based Kaizen platform for deskless workers
Genesia Ventures, Inc. has announced its investment in the Pre-Series A Round of Eitoss from Genesia Venture Fund No. 2 (GV-2). The company provides a Cloud-based Kaizen platform named Cayzen for deskless workers in Japan.
About Cayzen
Cayzen is a service designed to gather employee suggestions from the bottom up and effectively link them to proposals for on-site operational improvements and new products. It helps accelerate the flow of on-site improvement-related activities, including real-time analysis and visualization of the effects and status of the implementation of proposed ideas. Many companies still make improvement proposals on paper, but by digitizing this, ideas can be matched and nurtured, creating collaboration among members and teams. Through Cayzen, Eitoss is committed to maximizing the creativity and potential of all deskless workers.
About the market
“Business improvement activities” originated in Japan and has become globally known as “Kaizen”. This idea supports the improvement of workplaces, especially in the manufacturing industry, and has led to the development of organizations through the creativity of each individual worker on the production floor. However, while creativity in Japan is highly regarded overseas, there are only a handful of jobs and occupations that require creativity in Japan.
Reference: “State of create 2016”, Adobe Systems’ 2016 online survey of approximately 5,000 people aged 18+ in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and Japan https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/max/pdfs/AdobeStateofCreate_2016_Report_Final.pdf
Data also shows that despite the high global reputation of Japanese workers, productivity remains remarkably low.
Reference: “New Productivity Nation Theory” (2018) by David Atkinson, Toyo Keizai Shinposha (Reference: Sales Lab) https://www.e-sales.jp/eigyo-labo/workstyle-reform-4-1478
Recently, companies have been pushing for DX (Digital Transformation), partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but IT investment for deskless workers — who account for about 80% of the global workforce — is said to only be at approximately 1% of total IT investment.
Reference: “The Rise of the deskless workforce” http://desklessworkforce2018.com/
In light of this situation, Cayzen was developed to support the creation of an environment in which people can work more creatively and productively by supporting business improvement activities at workplaces through the use of digital technology.
Solution
Cayzen is a tool that ties management goals and on-site improvement activities to promote target achievement. It is designed to be a one-stop platform to help achieve management targets by providing various tools to: manage proposals for improvement of on-site work and the visualization of on-site activities, aggregating and analyzing the variance on projected targets, and managing the implementation of countermeasures. This ensures the centralized reporting of field work and the use of a systematic framework to link management and on-site improvement initiatives, unifying the organization.
In addition, applying Cayzen’s mechanism to decarbonization and ESG supports activity monitoring, evaluation, and operation by helping to visualize ideas for energy conservation, calculation of assumed effects, status of implementation, potential issues arising from operational changes and possible countermeasures, from the bottom up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZDZknYlRs
(Watch Product Video on YouTube)
Purpose and Background of Fundraising
The funds raised will be used for development costs to further enhance the functionality of Cayzen and to strengthen the organizational structure, including customer support.
Comments from the Management Team Wataru Shimada, Representative Director, Eitoss Inc.
At Eitoss, we believe that digitalizing the efforts to improve field work will help deskless workers achieve their potential and creativity, and that the accumulation of this effort will lead to the development of society. We also believe that these improvements play a major role in promoting decarbonization, and will continue to develop our services to contribute to the advancement of decarbonization management. With the addition of new investors, we hope to make further progress towards realizing our vision of “Innovation by All — creating a society where all workers are involved in making a difference.”
About the investment
Shunsuke Sagara, Investment Manager, Genesia Ventures, Inc.
Following last year’s pre-seed round, we are pleased to have the opportunity to make an additional investment in Eitoss. The original idea of using a “bottom up approach to collect on-site feedback” has evolved into its second phase of “eliminating information silos between the management team and the deskless workers in the field”. I look forward to the year ahead as we hit the runway with a fully loaded engine.
Company Profile
Company Name: Eitoss Inc.
CEO: Wataru Shimada
WEB: https://eitoss.com/
Establishment: 9, 2019
Headquarters:2F YAMATO BLDG, 1-5-5 Kosakamoto-cho, Toyota-shi, Aichi, Japan
