Development Bank of Japan Inc. (DBJ) has been adjudged a winner by the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP*1) for outstanding work in the category of Technology Development. In selecting DBJ for the award, ADFIAP cited the Concluding the Framework of Agreement with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and Investing in OLtV Seed Fund Investment Limited Partnership (OIST-Lifetime Ventures Seed Fund), a fund established by Lifetime Ventures LLC (Lifetime Ventures). The 2023 awards were presented at the ADFIAP General Meeting held on the 15th and 17th of May 2023.
The ADFIAP Awards recognize the work of development finance institutions with distinguished achievements in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim of the awards is to publicize deals and projects which are both outstanding and instructive, as well as to share financial methods and techniques.
OIST is a cross-disciplinary science graduate university founded in 2011 to advance the development of a world class research, education, and innovation hub in Okinawa. OIST conducts cutting-edge research characterized by competitive recruitment and assessments processes, well-equipped research facilities, and multi-year research fund allocations to research faculty members. Since its establishment, OIST has not only kept enhancing its research and education activities but has actively promoted industry-academia collaborations and contributed to Okinawa's nascent innovation ecosystem through its acceleration program and the fostering of tech-entrepreneurship. These efforts have started to give rise to the creation of startups.
Lifetime Ventures, the Fund's general partner, runs an investment strategy to support talented individuals with expertise in specific technologies, and has particular know-how in team building with co-founders to accompany founders in their startups.
The OIST-Lifetime Ventures Seed Fund was established mainly with the aim of bringing positive lifetime innovation to society and the environment, including and especially by implementing OIST's research results, and will leverage Lifetime Ventures' expertise to invest in deep tech startups with the technical themes of OIST technologies.
Currently, the research field in academia in Japan is facing not only a shortage of appropriate management personnel but also a lack of risk money providers to bridge the gap between research funding (e.g., Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research) and private sector growth money, as the timeline to commercialization is not clear at an early stage in deep tech startups.
DBJ is acutely aware of this issue and collaborates with several national research and development agencies, such as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), to support the commercialization of academia-born technologies. The Framework Agreement with OIST is the first time when DBJ will collaborate with both a university and a fund to do so.
This is fund investment with academia-industry collaboration to achieve solutions, from the commercialization of research findings to the funding support, and it has been evaluated as an initiative that contributes to technology development, leading to the ADFIAP award.
DBJ believes that this initiative will contribute to improvement of Japan's scientific and technological capabilities and the revitalization of the economy (linking capital and finance) and be a means of efficiently and effectively implementing Japanese academia's research and technology in society. In this sense, this fund investment will be done as part of the Bank's Special Investment Operations*2 carried out through the DBJ Startup Innovation Fund.*3
DBJ will actively continue to collaborate with OIST and OIST-Lifetime Ventures Seed Fund toward the social implementation of OIST's research results.
*1 ADFIAP
| Official name | Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific |
| Establishment | October 1976 (headquarters: Manila, Philippines) |
| Membership | 89 institutions in 38 countries and regions |
*2Special Investment Operations, established as an intensive but temporary scheme to supply growth capital from the perspective of promoting the competitiveness of Japanese enterprises along with regional revitalization, draws only a portion of the investment (industrial investment) from the Japanese government, enough to encourage the private sector to supply growth capital.
*3This fund was established to promote the creation and nurturing of startups and the development of innovation ecosystems under the Special Investment Operations category.
Inquiries: Business Planning & Coordination Department
Telephone: +81-3-3244-1150