More entrepreneurs among Japan’s students
A passion to tackle unsolved problems spurring graduates to seek a different path
AT Waya guest house, located in a residential area of Sapporo, Shun Kawashima welcomes guests with a smile as they walk along the snowy road that leads to the building.
Kawashima, 26, is the president of a company that manages the lodging facility, which is housed in a 60-year-old building that was vacant until it was renovated and opened as a guest house.
Kawashima decided to start the business when he was a third-year university student, at a time of year when most students begin job-hunting in earnest.
Instead, he reached out to two friends, Takashi Kimura, 26, and Ryohei Shibata, 25, saying, “Lets start a business together”.
Half a year later, the trio decided to run a guest house, with the goal of “creating a place where everyone can say, ‘I’m home’”.
However, the three young men were just ordinary university students: They had neither the funds nor the social capital to get the venture off the ground. They graduated from university without having decided on a property for the new business and returned to Sapporo, where they had lived in their high school days.
The trio encountered one obstacle after another such as searching for the property and raising funds for the new business. When they shared the challenging process on their blog and Facebook, the number of people who wanted to join their venture grew steadily. In the autumn of 2014, they managed to open for business.
Spurred by factors such as the increasing number of foreign visitors to Japan, they opened a second guest house in 2016.
“The experience of choosing our own path and achieving a goal will definitely be helpful in the future. For us, it happened to be the choice to start a business,” Kawashima said. After graduating from school, many people obtain a job and work until mandatory retirement – the tendency to favour stability is deeply rooted. Accordingly, every spring, the streets are filled with processions of students dressed in a uniform of navy blue suits on the hunt for jobs.
However, in recent years, the number of young people who reject the conventional track and favour starting their own businesses has been gradually increasing.
In fiscal 2016, the Japan Finance Corp provided startup loans to 371 people under 25, up 28% from the previous fiscal year.
Although the number is low in absolute terms, it outstrips the overall rate of growth for startup loans at 7%.
“Things like the growth of the Internet and the proliferation of shared offices have helped develop an environment that makes it easier to start a business, even for young people,” said Narimasa Makino, chief executive officer of Darma Tech Labs, which provides support for startup companies.
Kindai University junior Kohei Kagari, 21, and Kyoto University of Art and Design junior Toshiki Miki, 23, are laying the groundwork to launch a business selling wild venison.
The majority of deer culled for damaging crops or killed by hunters are discarded. The students decided to try to address this situa- tion. Deer must be bled soon after death and transported to a meat processing plant to be safe for human consumption, but there are few companies performing this role. By serving as middlemen, they hope to supply high-quality venison to restaurants.
It would also benefit farmers who suffer from damage to their crops.
“I think that being born in a time when (the growth of information technology) has made it easier for all kinds of people to connect is an opportunity,” Kagari said enthusiastically. Kaoru Joho, 24, president of Table Cross Inc, which operates a philanthropy-in- spired app for restaurant reservations, started her company when she was a junior in university, out of a desire to create a culture of charity reservation in Japan.
When a user makes a restaurant reservation with the company’s app, the restaurant pays Table Cross an advertising fee of 180 yen per diner. Of this amount, 30 yen is used to pay school lunch fees for children in seven developing countries, including Cambodia, through nonprofit organisations and other entities.
The app’s users can make a contribution to society at no cost to them, while the restaurants can keep their internet advertising costs down.
Table Cross also brings in revenue, providing the funds to keep the app running. According to the company, it has so far provided more than 80,000 school lunches to children in developing countries.
“This issue is not something that can be solved with a one-off charity event. By turning a profit, I want to be able to make a sustainable contribution to society,” Joho said.
A passion to tackle unsolved problems appears to be kindling an entrepreneurial spirit among the nation’s current crop of students and graduates. — The Japan News/ ANN