Hillhouse Co-Leads $52 Million Round In Japanese Restaurant Software Startup Dinii

Dinii has acloud-based platform for restaurant operators to manage orders, and analyze sales and customer preferences.

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Dinii, a Tokyo-based startup that provides cloud-based restaurant management software, has raised ¥7.5 billion ($52 million) in a round led by Chinese billionaire Zhang Lei’s Hillhouse Investment Management and U.S. venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners.

The Series B round is Hillhouse’s and Bessemer’s first startup investment in Japan, Dinii said in a press release on Thursday. Hillhouse, one of the largest private equity firms in Asia, is best known for its investments in Chinese tech giant Tencent and e-commerce behemoth JD.com. Its other startup investments include billionaire Chow Shing Yuk’s logistics unicorn Lalamove and AI-powered drug discovery company Insilico Medicine, both based in Hong Kong. Portfolio companies of Bessemer, an early backer of Linkedin and Pinterest, includes Hong Kong travel booking startup Klook.

Other investors who joined the Series B include Eclectic Management, an affiliate fund of OpenAI backer Thrive Capital. The company did not disclose the valuation of the round.

Six-year-old Dinii operates a software that enables mobile ordering at restaurants, as well as a cloud-based platform for restaurant operators to manage orders and analyze sales and customer preferences. The company this month launched a cashless payment processing feature.

With the fresh capital, Dinii said it plans to expand its products to achieve a one-stop platform for restaurant operators. The startup is set to introduce an employee shift and payroll management feature by the end of the year. Dinii added it is also looking to expand elsewhere in Asia, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and India, over the next one to two years.

“Dinii was born in Japan, grown to what we are today in Japan, and we are proud of Japan. That is why we are dedicated to becoming a world-class company that brings forth the best of industry and cultures of Japan that can compete with the rest of the world,” Dinii cofounder and CEO Mao Yamada said in a press release.

Yamada, a dropout from the University of Tokyo, started Dinii in 2018 after seeing inefficiencies in restaurants where he had worked part time. Many of the restaurants in Japan are still using on-premise machines for orders and payments, which require higher initial setup costs and limits customer accessibility. Dinii said thousands of restaurants are using its software, including Japanese hotpot chain Tsukada Nojo.

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