OMRON Corporation announced the establishment of OVC Ⅱ Investment Limited Partnership (hereinafter, "OVC 2nd Fund") on January 31, 2022, with the aim of investing in startups that seek to solve social issues. The OVC 2nd Fund invests and supports startups who take on the challenge of solving social issues mainly in areas such as factory automation (FA), smart cities, digital health, and energy management. Through these activities, we have renewed our commitment to accelerating the drive to seek solutions to social issues across the globe.

To address social issues that continue to become more severe and complex, we believe that it is vital to accelerate our efforts to create new businesses by way of open innovation and shore up existing businesses. Consequently, we are proactively engaging in joint development with external businesses. We deliberately chose investment as a means to promote collaboration with startups with original technologies and ideas. Accordingly, we established a corporate venture capital, OMRON VENTURES CO., LTD. (HQ: Minato-ku, Tokyo. President and CEO: Tomoko Inoue; hereinafter, "OVC") in July 2014, thus setting up the first fund.

OVC invested in 20 startups in FA, healthcare, smart cities, and other cutting-edge areas during its first iteration. To increase the chance to meet excellent entrepreneurs who are willing to go the extra mile to tackle social issues with their innovative technologies and business ideas, they have also been most aggressive in investing in overseas venture capital firms. Through these capital investments, they have been instrumental in driving innovation by drawing up novel business models through joint development with startups and offering revolutionary solutions.

Meanwhile, social issues that need to be solved, such as control of CO2 emissions and how to increase healthy life expectancy, to name but a few, are becoming increasingly complex across the globe, and more rapid solutions are being sought. In light of this, we have decided to expand the scope of investment to startups who aspire to create value in the pursuit of addressing social issues while continuing to expedite joint development with startups who may intersect with OMRON's business down the road. To increase support for investees in their business development, OVC has set up its 2nd fund, thus driving its efforts to create a better society by accelerating investees' value creation process. Together with the 1st fund, the total investment amount comes to roughly 15.0 billion yen.

OMRON will remain committed to supporting business development by startups with cutting-edge technologies and advanced business models in FA, smart cities, digital health, energy management, and other domains by leveraging the global network that OVC has built. In so doing, we will offer our knowhow in business strategy, financial practice, and otherwise, as well as our proprietary technologies and business assets, to the venture capital firms, in an attempt to create innovation driven by social needs.

Going forward, OMRON will continue to challenge itself to create even more value with a focus on joint development with partner businesses through open innovation, to accelerate our efforts to contribute to a better society.

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