kikitori, a Tokyo company that digitises agricultural distribution, announced on 17 September 2026 that it had raised ¥300m (about $1.9m) in a Series A round.
Globis Capital Partners led the round, as it did the company's previous one. Agribusiness Investment & Development, a Japanese investor in agriculture businesses, also took part. The shares were issued through a third-party allotment.
The company said the round brought its total funding to about ¥700m (about $4.5m). It did not disclose a valuation.
What kikitori does
kikitori runs nimaru, a cloud service for the businesses that move fruit and vegetables from farms to shops. Much of that work in Japan is still done on paper, by fax or over the phone. With nimaru, farmers report planned shipments and quantities from a smartphone, and distributors use the data to handle receiving and dispatch.
The service connects producers, wholesale markets, wholesalers and retailers, and it has expanded into field production management and ordering of fertiliser, pesticides and other supplies.
According to the release, more than 200 large businesses use nimaru and more than 300,000 producers are registered on it. It handles about 250,000 distribution records a month, and the company says it has the largest share of collection and shipping systems used by JA agricultural cooperatives.
In its company profile on PR TIMES, kikitori lists capital of ¥100m (about $0.6m). It did not state its number of employees in the release.
What the money is for
kikitori set out three uses for the funds. The first is selling more of the nimaru software: rolling it out prefecture by prefecture, improving how it handles transactions at large wholesale markets, and adding billing and payment features.
The second is AI development. The company plans to use the distribution data collected in nimaru to build features such as shipment optimisation and price analysis.
The third is a nimaru trading platform that would connect producers, buyers and logistics providers online. Planned features include shared deliveries, credit scoring for trading partners and handling of a deal from quote to payment in one place.
Who invested and why
Chief executive Seiki Kamimura said in the release that agriculture tends to focus on production, but that the value of produce will not reach consumers unless distribution is modernised as well.
Ryohei Minami, a principal at Globis Capital Partners, praised the team for building adoption among prefectural cooperatives and wholesale markets. He said he expected nimaru to help Japanese agriculture cope with labour shortages and climate change.
Masakuni Arakawa, president of Agribusiness Investment & Development, said agricultural distribution is hard to digitise because it involves many parties and varied produce standards, and credited kikitori for staying close to operations on the ground.
The funding so far
kikitori was founded in March 2015 and is based in Minato, Tokyo. The release says Globis Capital Partners also led its previous round but does not give that round's date or size. With the Series A, the company has raised about ¥700m in total.
Company website: kikitori.jp