November 13, 2023

Gojo signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation to extend financial inclusion and established UNLEASH Capital Partners, Inc.

Gojo & Company, Inc. (“Gojo”) is pleased to announce that we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (“SMBC”, President and Chief Executive Officer, Akihiro Fukutome). Gojo and SMBC will work together on sharing insights and co-developing solutions for financial inclusion in developing countries. 

Gojo established UNLEASH Capital Partners, Inc.("UNLEASH") jointly with our former employee, Natsuki Sugai, a venture capital business specialising in financial inclusion. Gojo also signed an investment agreement with UNLEASH 1st Investment Partnership (the "1st Fund"), the first fund launched by UNLEASH. The 1st Fund is committed to investing in early-stage companies that are at the forefront of tackling the wide-ranging challenges associated with financial inclusion in India. As the start of the collaboration with Gojo, SMBC also decided to invest in the Fund. 

In addition to financial returns, Gojo will gather information on trends in digital technology and build a network of potential investment and collaboration partners through UNLEASH. 

About UNLEASH and the Fund

Name:UNLEASH Capital Partners, Inc.
Foundation:October 2023
India Office:Mumbai, Bengaluru
Managing fund:UNLEASH No. 1 Investment Partnership
AUM:JPY 45 billion, Approx INR 250 crore
Vision:Enable a world where everyone can determine their future.
Mission:Extend financial inclusion by unleashing bold entrepreneurs’ potential.
Long Term Goal:Deploy USD 10 billion in total by 2050.
HP:https://unleashcp.com
Contact:info@unleashcp.com

About Gojo & Company

Gojo was founded to extend financial inclusion across the globe. Gojo encourages the formalisation and growth of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Our long-term goal is to enable the provision of high-quality affordable financial services for 100 million clients in 50 countries by 2030. Nine years since our establishment, we work in Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India and Tajikistan with USD 792 million Assets Under Management and 8,800 employees, serving more than 1.88 million clients (Consolidated, as of September 2023).

October 12, 2023

Gojo’s group company completes JPY 9.0 billion (USD 60 million) Debt Fundraising from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation

Gojo & Company, Inc. (“Gojo”) is pleased to announce that we have successfully raised JPY 9.0 billion (USD 60 million) from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (“SMBC”, President and Chief Executive Officer, Akihiro Fukutome) to Gojo’s Group Company. 

This transaction marked the first debt fundraising from one of the largest Japanese commercial banks for Gojo group. A Social Loan of JPY 9.0 billion (USD 60 million) and 3 years loan term has been executed by SMBC to Gojo’s group company. Gojo will work towards improving the livelihoods and empowerment of rural women entrepreneurs in developing countries. 

A Social Loan is a form of financing that enables companies to raise funds for projects that contribute to solving social problems and creating societal benefits (“Social Projects”) and is specifically designed to ensure that (i) the proceeds are allocated exclusively to Social Projects, (ii) the funds raised are securely tracked and managed, and (iii) transparency is ensured through post-financing reporting.

For inclusive financial service providers in low and lower-middle-income countries, one of the major challenges is the high cost of funding. Establishing a sustainable mechanism to channel funds from developed countries such as the US, Europe and Japan to people who need access to affordable financial services in emerging countries is one of the most important roles played by Gojo as a holding company. Gojo continues to work on optimising funding cost by pursuing global scale and risk diversification, building strong relationships with Japanese financial institutions and individual investors, and diversifying financing methods.

About Gojo & Company

Gojo was founded to extend financial inclusion to everyone in the world, beginning with developing countries. Gojo encourages the formalisation and growth of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Our long-term goal is to enable the provision of high-quality affordable financial services for 1 million unserved and underserved people in 50 countries by 2030. Nine years since our establishment, we work in Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India and Tajikistan with USD 759 million Assets Under Management and 8,500 employees, serving more than 1.83 million clients (Consolidated, as of August 2023).

August 16, 2023

Gojo Closed USD 100 million Series E Equity Financing and Achieved Consolidated Profit in FY2023/3

Gojo & Company, Inc. (“Gojo”) is pleased to announce that we have successfully raised an additional USD 30.8 million in the final close of our Series E fundraising. The cumulative Series E financing amount has now reached USD 100 million, with paid-in capital since our establishment in July 2014 reaching USD 215 million. Gojo also closed FY2023/3 with JPY 18.6 billion financial income, JPY 1.7 billion operating profit, and achieved profitability. 

Gojo Closed USD 100 Million Series E2 Equity Financing

Gojo has raised USD 30.8 million in the final close of our Series E financing on top of the USD 47.6 million close of Series E financing announced in November 2022, and the USD 23 million raised from Cool Japan Fund, Inc. announced in February 2023. We are pleased to welcome new institutional investors including GLOBIS CAPITAL PARTNERS & Co. and SMBC Venture Capital Co., Ltd, as well as individual investors and additional investment from existing shareholders, ACA Investments Pte. Ltd. and Samurai Incubate Inc. through Class E2 and Class E4 Preferred Shares. 

With our cumulative Series E financing amount now at USD 100 million, we are strengthening Gojo’s financial foundation, investing in further growth after the group’s recovery from the impact of COVID-19, and promoting the digitalization of group companies, particularly in India and Tajikistan, as well as expanding to new markets in Asia and Africa.

Gojo has also agreed with Renet Japan Group, Inc. to acquire shares in their subsidiary CHAMROEUN MICROFINANCE PLC., a microfinance institution in Cambodia. Gojo will issue the equivalent of JPY 950 million of Class E2 Preferred Shares to Renet Japan Group, Inc. as a part of the consideration for the share transfer. 

Achieved Consolidated Profit 

Gojo reported a consolidated profit for the year ended March 2023, with financial revenue of JPY 18.6 billion and operating profit of JPY 1.76 billion. This is due to the full-year contribution from the performance of Humo, a microfinance institution in Tajikistan in which Gojo invested in September 2021, sustained growth of group companies especially in India, and provisions for overdue loans affected by COVID-19 and the coup in Myanmar. 

Strengthening Group Governance and our Management Team

As a holding company, Gojo provides support for finance, management, and technology to our group companies. This support is made possible by Gojo’s implementation of the best practices in governance for our group companies. 

Gojo Group’s governance practices are underpinned by a solid foundation of microfinance industry knowledge. Gojo’s expert management team has been involved in microfinance businesses around the world and has practical knowledge and an extensive network of entrepreneurs and investors around the world. This knowledge enables Gojo to establish new businesses and undertake M&A in new geographies in a replicable and scalable manner.

We recently welcomed Sohil Shah and Haruna Tanaka to Gojo’s Executive Committee as Principal of Investment & Head of VC and Head of Corporate Planning respectively. With the expansion of our management team, we will work on further strengthening the group’s governance through strong partnerships with the local management team and network development in each country. 

Debt Fundraising Support for Group Companies

Gojo has successfully raised a total of USD 55 million from major European Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) in order to support the growth of Gojo’s group companies: Finnfund, the Finnish development financier and impact investor, FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, and Proparco, the private sector financing arm of the Agence Française de Dévelopment, all through senior debt over 5 years’ maturity. 

About Gojo & Company

Gojo was founded to extend financial inclusion to everyone in the world, beginning with developing countries. Gojo encourages the formalisation and growth of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Our long-term goal is to enable the provision of high-quality affordable financial services for 1 million unserved and underserved people in 50 countries by 2030. Nine years since our establishment, we work in Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India and Tajikistan with USD 759 million Assets Under Management and 10,000 employees, serving more than 1.75 million clients (Consolidated, as of June 2023).

July 14, 2023

Gojo publishes its 2023 Impact Report

Villagers in the Ayeyarwady region of Myanmar. They live in a remote area which can be reached only by boat. Their life remains much the same even after the coup / Taejun Shin

Gojo is pleased to announce the publication of our 2023 Impact Report.

Gojo’s mission is to extend financial inclusion across the globe. To provide vulnerable people with access to high-quality, affordable and useful financial services, we need to deeply understand who we are serving and what their goals are. This is why we chose “Who Are Our Clients?” as the theme of this year’s impact report.

Highlights from the Impact Report

  • Client Profile: Using core banking system data, we learnt that the majority of our clients are micro- and small entrepreneurs who earn up to 30% above the World Bank poverty line of $6.85 PPP per capita per day. This tells us that our clients, although not extremely poor, belong to a segment of society that nonetheless struggles with income instability and is vulnerable to poverty as a result of shocks such as family illness or natural disasters.
  • Money management: We used our financial diaries data from Cambodia and Sri Lanka to look at how vulnerable people manage their money and use their loans. This has given us a more nuanced understanding of the factors that create good and bad outcomes from borrowing and how people cope with debt stress. We present this in the form of case studies in the report.
  • Client satisfaction and experience: Five of our group companies participated in the 2022-23 60 Decibels Microfinance Index survey. The survey results show that overall, clients have positive experiences with our group companies and would recommend them to family and friends, although there is room for improvement against global benchmarks.
  • Stakeholder impact: In recognition of our responsibility as an organisation towards our people (employees), local and international communities, the environment and our investors, we also include an overview of Gojo’s impact on these stakeholders in the report. This year, we piloted a greenhouse gas emissions calculator, and are sharing Gojo’s emissions at the holding company level in this report for the first time.
  • Corporate governance: The report includes a summary of Gojo’s governance structure, and announces the appointment of Ignacio Mas-Ribo as an Outside Director, and the retirement of Stuart Rutherford and Mangyo Kinoshita from our board in June 2023.

We hope you enjoy reading our impact report, and welcome any feedback or comments, which can be directed to Cheriel Neo (cheriel.neo@gojo.co). 

Impact Report Webinar

We will be holding a webinar in English to share and discuss the key findings from our impact report. It will be held on Thursday 14 September at 1:00 pm CET / 9:00 pm JST. Please register for the webinar here: https://gojo.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BUEZqLQ-S3SG7g_WLJOw4g 

Future impact research

In addition to continuing our financial diaries project in Sri Lanka, Gojo embarked on a collaboration with Stuart Rutherford and L-IFT (Low-Income Financial Transformation) to support and co-manage the Hrishipara Diaries as of 1 July 2023. We are honoured to be able to support the world’s longest running financial diaries project and believe the data from the Hrishipara Diaries will be a valuable counterpoint to our existing financial diary data, enabling Gojo to study money management behaviour in a setting with a deeply entrenched culture of micro-savings.

About us

Gojo & Company, Inc. is a Tokyo-based holding company of eight inclusive financial service providers operating in Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India, and Tajikistan. Gojo was founded to extend financial inclusion to everyone in the world, beginning with developing countries. Gojo encourages the formalisation and growth of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Our long-term goal is to enable the provision of high-quality affordable financial services for 100 million clients in 50 countries by 2030. Established in 2014, Gojo Group is serving more than 1.7 million clients and managing an AUM of USD 763 million with 7,150 employees (consolidated total). Gojo was selected for the Global Award (METI Minister's Award) at the Nippon Startup Awards 2023.

Website: https://www.gojo.co 

April 27, 2023

Ignacio Mas-Ribo, an expert in financial inclusion and digital finance, joins Gojo as Outside Director

Gojo & Company, Inc. (Gojo) is pleased to announce that Ignacio Mas-Ribo, an expert in financial inclusion and digital finance, has joined Gojo’s board as a new Outside Director.

Ignacio co-founded the Digital Frontiers Institute, a not-for-profit that develops professional development training courses around digital money and payments, and served as its executive director from 2015 to 2020. He is a Senior Fellow at the Fletcher School's Council on Emerging Market Enterprises at Tufts University.

Previously, Ignacio was Deputy Director in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Senior Advisor at the Technology Program at Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). Ignacio has been Director of Global Business Strategy at Vodafone Group, Executive VP of Marketing and Account Management at DoCoMo interTouch, and Senior Manager responsible for telecoms investments in Europe for Intel Capital.

Ignacio has undergraduate degrees in Maths and Economics from MIT and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. He has been Adjunct Professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. 

Ignacio states, “I am delighted to be joining Gojo’s board as an Outside director. The company has a clear focus on helping drive client impact through the development of a broad range of money management services delivered over scalable digital platforms. I feel that I can bring many relevant insights and experiences that I have collected while at CGAP, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and through the Digital Frontiers’ Institute that I co-founded. I am looking forward to working with such an enthusiastic, empathetic and mission-driven team”.

Here is a short video message from Ignacio himself.

Gojo extends a warm welcome to Ignacio and looks forward to accelerating financial inclusion further!

Gojo’s Corporate Governance

We strengthened our governance by moving toward a three-committee board structure in 2021 to shift to a monitoring-model governance structure, and formalizing our processes for monitoring and reviewing the group companies’ business performances. The board members consist of 1 full-time executive director (CEO as well as Board Chair) and 6 Outside Directors as experts in the relevant sectors as below. 

  • Taejun Shin (Founder & CEO / Board Chair) 
  • Masahiro Kotosaka (Outside Director / Strategy & Management)
  • Stuart Rutherford (Outside Director / Microfinance)
  • Mangyo Kinoshita (Outside Director / M&A and Startup law)
  • Royanne Doi (Outside Director / Ethics, Culture and Compliance)
  • Millena Nikolova (Outside Director / Finance and Investment)
  • Ignacio Mas-Ribo (Outside Director / Microfinance and Technology)

About us

Gojo is a Tokyo-based holding company of eight inclusive financial service providers operating in Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India, and Tajikistan. Gojo was founded to extend financial inclusion to everyone in the world, beginning with developing countries. Gojo encourages the formalization and growth of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Our long-term goal is to enable the provision of high-quality affordable financial services for 100 million clients in 50 countries by 2030. Established in 2014, Gojo is serving more than 1.6 million clients and managing the aggregated AUM of USD 810 million with 9,200 employees.

Website: https://gojo.co/

February 22, 2023

Gojo raises USD 23 million from Cool Japan Fund in Series E financing

Gojo & Company, Inc. (“Gojo”) is pleased to announce that we have successfully raised an additional USD 23 million from Cool Japan Fund, Inc., a Japanese public-private fund, as part of our ongoing Series E equity fundraising. The cumulative Series E financing amount reaches USD 80 million and paid-in capital since our establishment in July 2014 has now reached USD 193 million. We are committed to further extending financial inclusion across the globe by leveraging Japanese and international financial assets.

Background of the Investment

Gojo has raised USD 23 million from Cool Japan Fund, Inc., on top of the USD 47.6 million close of Series E financing announced in November 2022. Cool Japan Fund is a public-private fund that aims to support and promote the development of overseas demand for excellent Japanese products and services. Gojo has been led by its Guiding Principles and a client-centric approach since establishment in July 2014. The Principles consist of management principles inspired by Greek philosophy, and the five Confucian values – empathy, integrity, courtesy, wisdom, and trust. 

We believe this investment demonstrates Cool Japan Fund’s confidence in Gojo’s ability to achieve a double bottom line, seeking both financial sustainability and positive social impact through financial inclusion, aligned with the purpose of the Cool Japan Policy. We believe that our business contributes to improving the recognition and credibility of Japan in the area of financial inclusion and impact, as well as to creating partnerships with Japanese companies expanding business in developing countries.

This investment from Cool Japan Fund materialised thanks to the introduction from Nomura Securities Co., Ltd., which is recently strengthening its support for Japanese startup financings. We deeply appreciate the support by Nomura.

Message from Taejun Shin (Founder & CEO)

As a person born and raised in Japan, I consider Sontoku Ninomiya the best Japanese business person. He founded a cooperative called “Gojo-co” in 1820, which played a significant role in Japanese rural village development. “Gojo” (五常) means the 5 Confucian values of empathy, integrity, courtesy, wisdom, and trust, In other words, this means caring for others, doing what is right, behaving in the right way, being able to judge what is right, and being trusted by people through these four things. We believe, as Sontoku Ninomiya did, that these are the most important values in running financial service providers. We are committed to continuously spreading these values in each and every country we operate. 

I have been involved in social work and policy-making for foster care in Japan for over 15 years outside of my professional career. As I have had budget discussions for foster care with the government, I know how precious the money from government-backed funds is. We are not only committed to improving the income of local households in developing countries through our financial services but also to doing our best to increase the national wealth by making investment returns. 

About Gojo & Company

Gojo was founded to extend financial inclusion to everyone in the world, beginning with developing countries. Gojo encourages the formalisation and growth of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Our long-term goal is to enable the provision of high-quality affordable financial services for 100 million unserved and underserved people in 50 countries by 2030. Eight years since our establishment, we work in Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India and Tajikistan with USD 756 million Asset Under Management, 8,500+ employees, serving more than 1.5 million clients.

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