NTT DOCOMO Ventures Invests in toBe Marketing, Inc.

NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; President and CEO, Takayuki Inagawa; hereinafter, “NDV”) has invested, through its fund, in toBe Marketing, Inc. (headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan; CEO, Tomokazu Koike; hereinafter, “toBe Marketing”), which provides support services for digital marketing.

As the internet and social networking services are becoming more popularized, major battlegrounds for companies’ marketing activities have moved from mass media to the digital world. Moreover, marketing automation tools that make it possible to automate each process of a digital marketing activity were initially advocated in the United States in the 1990s, and have been rapidly spreading across Japan since the mid-2010s.

In order to maximize the effect of marketing automation tools, it is essential that a plan is put in place to appropriately create a digital marketing strategy to tactfully utilize them, with the reality being that there are not many companies that can do this on their own.

toBe Marketing supports more than 1,200 companies in conducting digital marketing activities by offering support services for the introduction and use of sales support tools, such as marketing automation tools.

toBe Marketing services are highly rated by their existing customers, with the company’s additional growth being expected on the basis of the potential growth of the applicable markets and business expansion, arising from collaborations with their sales partners. Furthermore, there is a close similarity between their services and the NTT Group’s initiatives for the digital marketing business; therefore, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Inc. has decided to make this investment on the basis that this investment will contribute to the creation of new values in these fields.

From now on, NDV will promote linkage between toBe Marketing’s services and NTT’s services and will support activities such as joint creation of new services by the two companies. NDV will make further efforts to create new values.

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