Startup Profile: LUCA Japan

LUCA Japan provides a digital alternative investment platform for high net worth individuals (HNWI), enabling access to products including, but not limited to, private equity, real estate, and hedge funds.

The company was founded in mid-2021, and has raised JPY 251m (USD 1.8m) by July 2022 from 9 individual angel investors and 5 venture capital firms: East Ventures, FINOLAB (where the firm is based), Headline Asia, Plug and Play Ventures, and Saison Ventures.

LUCA’s technology has been licensed in January 2022 from Xen Technologies (“Xen Capital”), a Singapore-based digital platform that provides a white-label alternative investment solution and marketplace. Xen Capital has built and operates the platform infrastructure to facilitate product distribution, client management, quarterly reporting, and secure transaction settlement.

At the end of November 2022, LUCA has launched a beta version of its digital platform “LUCA Beta” for Japanese users, following localization of the Xen Capital platform, and additional development for local regulatory compliance.

LUCA Beta targets HNWIs who meet specific investor requirements, family offices, and wealth managers, including trust banks, securities firms, and Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs) that serve HNWIs. LUCA sources world-class alternative investment funds and works with GPs to reach untapped Japanese HNWIs and smaller institutional investors. The covered strategies are private equity, venture capital, real assets and private credit. LUCA Japan also plans to work closely with Japanese GPs to support raising capital from investors outside of Japan.

LUCA Japan establishes feeder funds under the Special Business Activities for Qualified Institutional Investors. Through the next feeder fund, they plan to offer a private debt fund that allow investments starting from around US$300,000.

From a business model perspective, we see LUCA operating similarly to Singapore-based ADDX, which distributes its products in Japan through an alliance with Tokai Tokyo Securities, one of its investors. We were priviliged to interview Oi-Yee Choo, Chief Executive Officer of ADDX, for our eXponential Finance Podcast earlier in the summer:

This article is part of our Tokyo FinTech Publication, please follow us to read more from our writers, like hundreds of readers do every day. Please also register for our short weekly digest, published some Saturdays, at the link below.

Should you live in Tokyo, or just pass through, please also join our Tokyo FinTech Meetup. In any case, our YouTube channel and LinkedIn page are there for you as well.