Aratana raised 60M yen from two VCs and settlement service provider /Venture Now

Aratana conducted allocation of new shares of 61.95 million yen to Social Ad & Commerce Technology Fund operated by GMO Venture Partners, Miyazaki Taiyo Challenge Fund, and GMO Payment Gateway.

The company uses the capital to strengthen development of Social Gateway, an application to link Facebook Pages and EC sites. Aratana was founded on 2007 May. Its main business is deployment or customization of ASP-based online shopping service, Cagolabo. It plans to extend the business in rapidly growing social commerce market with Social Gateway which was just launched on this January.

Social Gateway is an application allowing to develop EC site in Facebook Pages.　There is few such a service in Japan, but the kind of services get very much attention overseas. The company offers both free and paid version. Currently 1,000 sites adopt the free version. It targets foreign market as well, however the first priority is to become the number one in Japan market, the president said.

Venture Now 4/1/2011

memo

• There are still not so many users of Facebook in Japan, but Aratana seems to believe it will increase and also be used widely as EC platform. Internet conglomerate, GMO also seems to pursue the opportunity.