Investment in XICA CO, LTD.

NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; President & CEO, Toshiki Nakayama), through its fund, has invested in XICA CO., LTD. (headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan; CEO : Yoshiaki Hirao; hereinafter referred to as “XICA”), which provides companies with the marketing tool “XICA magellan” with which to analyze the effects of diverse advertising such as online advertisements, TV commercials and public-transport advertisements in an integrated manner.

1. Outline of the investment
NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Inc., through its investment fund, acquired shares of XICA through the company’s third-party allotment.

2. Background of the investment
At a time when consumers’ buying behavior is becoming more diverse, companies have come to take a variety of sales promotion measures involving online advertisements, TV commercials, public-transport, and shop-window advertisements as a set of digital marketing efforts in a combined fashion. As such measures grow in number, companies find it challenging to analyze them in an integrated manner and examine the optimal combination of measures and budget allocation.

XICA delivers marketing tool “XICA magellan,” which is designed to assist companies’ marketing activities of total optimization through analyzing the effects of diverse advertisements in an integrated manner and calculating a proposed optimal allocation of advertising budget. This market will likely grow significantly, in which XICA is a firm that is achieving business growth thanks to the strength of allowing the user to perform an integrated analysis and simulation without having specialized knowledge of a sophisticated level.

The above-mentioned investment in XICA culminated from our high expectations that service and knowhow by XICA will contribute to creating various businesses in the digital marketing field of the NTT Group.