Tokyo aims to become “the most startup-friendly” city in the world by building a new facility for young firms and “considerably” increasing its procurement from such companies, setting itself the goal of bolstering the number of so-called unicorn firms and new business launches in the capital tenfold over five years.

The proposed facility is being compared to Station F in Paris, which claims to be the world’s largest startup campus, hosting about 1,000 firms and providing support programs for them.

The initiative coincides with the central government’s new five-year startup policy proposals, which were also unveiled Thursday.

These proposals come with tenfold-increase targets, with the central government aiming to bump up investment in startups to ¥10 trillion by the fiscal year beginning April 2027, a figure more than 10 times the roughly ¥820 billion seen last year.

It also plans on increasing the number of startups from about 10,000 to 100,000, with 100 of these being unicorns.

According to CB Insights, there were about 1,200 unicorn firms around the world as of October, but Japan only had six, including five in Tokyo.

Tokyo also aims to get foreign venture capital funds and accelerators to join the effort to help the capital’s startups become international players.

“‘Born global’ is our stance on the (new startup) strategy. This means we’ll be looking at the global market,” Koike said, adding that she wants to draw entrepreneurs from other countries to Tokyo.

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Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/25/business/tokyo-startup-policy