Japan’s Nippon Travel Agency expands across Asia amidst COVID-19 and appoints Vynn Capital as new business advisor.
NTA’s NTA Asia works with Southeast Asian venture capital firm, Vynn Capital, in its quest to becoming a new travel platform emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA AND TOKYO, JAPAN, July 8, 2020 — With offices across 10 countries and as the oldest Japanese travel agency, Nippon Travel Agency (“NTA”) is expanding across Asia with its subsidiary, NTA Asia, working on international business development as well as exploring new businesses. With that, the travel agency has appointed Southeast Asia based venture capital firm, Vynn Capital, as an advisor to explore new markets as well as growth areas for the firm. The expansion by the Japanese travel agency is viewed as a long-term strategy for the firm to grow as a traditionally Japanese facing business. NTA Asia, a subsidiary of NTA outside of Japan, will be spearheading this initiative as regional markets like Southeast Asia is becoming more and more important to the Japanese market.
Representative of NTA Asia, Naoki Baba, highlighted that “NTA is a fundamentally strong company that believes in long-term growth and we believe that the COVID-19 crisis serves as a reminder for all tourism and hospitality that even large companies need to be able to adapt to changes. As such, we continue to work with great partners as part of our strategy to grow as a business and we think that technology has a large part to play for this vision. We are excited and believe that by working with local experts like Vynn Capital, we will be able to explore new oppor- tunities and grow into a business that is not just relevant to Japanese, but also to our international friends from different country and culture.”
“As one of the few venture capital firms putting a lot of focus on the travel tech landscape, we believe that the travel sector is at the verge of exponential growth given what we are going through now. We have seen different crisis and pandemic that were threats to the industry, but every time something bad happened, we saw a greater rebound for the industry. As such, we remain bullish about the long-term potential of travel tech investments as such we are proud to be working with one of the largest travel firms, NTA, on our mission to transform the travel and mobility industry that we once knew. As we coined the term, Travelution to highlight the versality of the travel industry, we believe that the travel industry will evolve and traditional firms like NTA that has innovative mindset will be at the forefront of the change in a post-COVID environment”, said Founding & Managing Partner of Vynn Capital, Victor Chua.
Through this appointment, Vynn Capital will work with NTA on its strategy to transform its current business to become more innovative and technologically driven. NTA also hope that this will be the first step to further expan- sion of the firm as Southeast Asia and Japan integrates as economies moving forward. and OPTI will collaborate to bolster the ecosystem for early stage companies in Japan and Southeast Asia.
About NTA
Asia NTA Asia, a wholly owned subsidiary of NTA, is a Southeast Asian business holding company established in March 2020. NTA Asia has companies in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and plans to set up companies in Thailand and Vietnam in the near future to support the increase in visitor exchanges between Southeast Asia and Japan. Furthermore, NTA Asia is planning to expand into travel related industries using IT, aiming to break away from traditional travel business model.
About Vynn Capital
Vynn Capital is an early stage venture capital firm founded with the objective of bridging the gap between traditional industries and the new economies through the development of technology. Key industries of focus include Travel, Property, Food and FMCG, Female Economics as well as Business Enablers (including logistics and fintech). The team is made up of professionals with experience across early stage invest to late stage financing, with expe- rience in business operations. The investment philosophy revolves around the creation of synergistic value between partners and companies supported by Vynn. Beyond investing, Vynn Capital assists its investors or Limited Partners in understanding new industries and markets with its localized team and network across the major cities of South- east Asia. Vynn Capital is currently active in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar. For more information, please visit http://www.vynncapital.com
For media inquiries please contact:
NTA Asia
Naoki Baba
naoki_baba@ntaasia.com
Vynn Capital
Victor Chua
victor@vynncapital.com
