Japan is a strong market for incorporating technology into the food consumption experience, and one of the startups currently leading the way on this idea is attracting investors from across the ocean. Dinii, which allows users to order food from restaurants and shops through a mobile platform, has raised $48 million (7.46 billion yen). Bessemer Venture Partners and Hillhouse Investment Management led the investment, with participation from Ecelectic and Flight Deck Capital. Notably, this is the first time Bessemer has invested in a Japanese startup.
Mao Yamada (CEO) and Kazuki Otomo (CTO) founded Dinii in 2018 after working part-time at restaurants to earn money for their tuition while studying at the University of Tokyo, and realizing how outdated restaurant ordering and delivery systems were.
Dinii originally emerged as a B2B SaaS business. The duo got a foothold in the market with a low-cost, cloud-based POS platform that restaurants could use on phones and other devices they already owned, so potential restaurant customers wouldn't have to buy special devices or other equipment, as they already have thin margins. Now, Dinii wants to build on its momentum by expanding the financial services it offers to customers, Yamada told TechCrunch.
“We already have a cloud-based POS platform, so we can manage our employees, [restaurants] Reservations, and [food] There are also deliveries and things like that,” he said.
Dinii was inspired by Toast, a US cloud-based restaurant management system that also started out as a POS and payment service (and had Bessemer as an early backer), but Yamada says he has yet to come across a company in Japan with similar capabilities to Dinii (data and financial services for restaurants).
“We have been fortunate to be a lead investor in Toast in the US, helping the company become a $13 billion company, and we believe Dinii has similar ingredients for success: a strong team led by a young, visionary leader, a large underserved market, and a best-of-breed all-in-one cloud-based solution,” said Brian Wu of Bessemer Venture Partners. “We are confident that Dinii will emerge as one of the most prominent SaaS and fintech leaders in Japan.”
The Tokyo-based startup is rolling out a cashless payment solution called “Dinii Payments” that it hopes to develop into a larger financial services product for its customers. “By first offering a cashless solution, we can eventually move into back-office operations such as bill settlement, inventory management and payroll,” Yamada said.
Another big focus is catering to employees, who tend to work at restaurants on Dinii's platform. Many of them work part-time, Jorel Chan, Dinii's chief of staff, told TechCrunch. “They might be students, for example, who don't have very stable jobs and have low credit scores,” he said. “A lot of times, they can't wait until the end of the month to get their paycheck. They'd probably like to be paid daily, but that's not possible right now.” One way Dinii plans to do this is by introducing daily payouts for an additional fee.
Other areas the company hopes to expand into include insurance, asset management and lending to help restaurants manage their cash flow and grow their business.
Restaurant Circumstances in Japan
Most restaurants in Japan primarily use in-store POS systems, meaning traditional restaurants partner with companies like Toshiba or NEC to rent in-store POS systems for basic operations. Yamada says these are costly, have limited functionality and don't quite cater to modern demands like ordering from mobile apps, paying with QR codes, cashless payments and cloud-based customer relationship management tools.
“By deploying the POS system on the cloud, Dinii's clients, which include a wide range of restaurants from small businesses to large corporations, can provide instant functionality and collect customer data through mobile ordering. Dinii's technology allows restaurant owners to know which menu items are popular, communicate with customers through their CRM (customer relationship management) system, and send customized coupons to consumers, ultimately increasing revenue,” Yamada explains.
Dinii also leverages an integration with the popular messaging app Line, allowing local restaurants to collect customer data such as preferred menu items, gender, previous visits and number of visits.
The Japanese startup makes money in two ways: from software subscription fees for its cloud-based POS system and fees for payments made through its cashless platform integrated into the POS system.
Japan has more than 900,000 restaurants, and the domestic food and beverage services market is projected to grow from $214.35 million in 2022 to about $475 billion by 2030. Currently, Dinii operates about 3,000 restaurants across Japan, which represents a penetration rate of just 0.5%, so there is significant room for upside, Yamada noted.
“More than 20 million [registered] “Considering the number of users ordering food from over 3,000 restaurants, you can imagine how much data passes through Dinii's platform every second. Without going into too much detail, we are currently building out the functionality of our own data solutions that will benefit restaurants in the future,” Yamada continued.
Expanding into Southeast Asia
The Tokyo-based startup also has operations in Osaka, covering the country's two largest restaurant markets, but with the new capital as a catalyst, it plans to expand into other Japanese cities such as Nagoya, as well as Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Deeny's headcount has quadrupled from 30 to 130 in 2022, and it plans to hire more as it expands geographically.
The startup has raised ¥8 billion (approximately $55 million) since its founding, with previous investors including ANRI and Coral Capital.