It’s Thursday! It’s another wonderful day to share insights and tips from founders and entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Today, we will talk to the CEO of Anytimes, a platform to hire outsource work from people who are in the neighborhood.

Going to conferences and networking events is always a motivating and empowering experience for me. You get to meet women in power who manage businesses and who are influencers in the space that they are in! One of the women in power that I met during the DLD Festival in Israel and a women delegate for StartTelaviv was Chika Tsunoda (From Japan). She is the CEO of Anytimes.

Chika graduated from Keio University, Faculty of Law in 2008. After graduation, she joined Nomura securities for their sales team. She worked for Cyber Agent Inc. after. In that company, she was a PR planner. In 2013, she founded Anytimes Inc., and launched a skill share service platform in Japan where you can hire outsource service providers called “ANYTIMES”. She is currently a director of the “Sharing Economy Association Japan” and auditor of “Adventure Inc.”.

I had fun talking to Chika. Mind you! We didn’t talk about work all the time. This lovely lady also loves road bikes, dancing, yoga, climbing, diving, flower arrangement (IKEBANA) and other fun stuff! We also talked about love and relationships (but I am obviously not going to share our “girl talk” details here.. haha!).

But, let me share what I learned from Chika about her business!

Ginger: What is your Startup/brand/business? What is it about? How long have you been in business?

Chika: We provide a platform service called “ANYTIMES” which connect people who need help or those who are looking to hire outsource service providers to those who want to work in their neighborhood. Jobs and tasks include everyday household chores, pet care, assembling furniture, language lessons, and so on.

Ginger: Who is your target market? Why did you choose this market? Can you give us the insight behind this market?

Chika: In Japan, the total number of elderly/single/double income households reached 25million and government estimates continuous growth due to the aging population. This number also shows the growing demand for support services such as house cleaning, baby/dog sitting, any kinds of helps. People will look to hire outsource help more frequently. The demand for daily errands is increasing recently and this data shows the current market size is almost USD 60 Billion in Japan. Anytimes would like to grasp market share in the each field by providing a new skilled share platform We have confidence to achieve 5% market share initially.

Also, we are able to impose significant impacts on Japanese labor market by providing the platform. We estimate our platform can supply USD 9.6 Billion market value to the labor market if 5 Million users use Anytimes for 96 hours a year with USD20/hour. Given the tight labor market in Japan, the potential supply growth has meaningful impacts on Japanese economy.

 

Ginger: How did you come up with this idea? What made you decide to start this kind of business?

Chika: I believe people should have options of how to work going forward. Working from 9-6 in the office every day is an old idea. We should be able to work anytime and anywhere and important factor is to maximize individuals skills and time. I am confident that Anytimes can impose positive impacts on economy, community, and peoples happiness by providing the limitless opportunities. In the future, I would like to penetrate this idea globally and that’s my final goal as an entrepreneur.

Ginger: That’s such a noble mission, Chika. What are the greatest challenges in putting up and maintaining a business in your country?

Chika: I would say that it would really be government regulation.

Ginger: What do you think are three traits that a Startup Founder should have?

Chika: They should be flexible, humble and faithful.

Ginger: Not all of my readers are familiar with this topic. For Anytimes, how do you raise money or what are ways that you can do to raise capital?

Chika: There are Venture Capitals, Companies and Angel investors that startups can approach.

Ginger: How do you market your products? Growth strategy?

Chika: We have a three year mid-term plan until CY 2019. We are targeting 10 Million users, which is 10 times our target for CY2017, and USD 60 Million transaction values (tenfold increase from our CY2017 target). In order to achieve this plan, we will focus on online and offline growth strategies.

For online marketing, we will mainly invest in SNS and listing advertisement in order to grow our users. We will focus our offline strategy on building alliance with government, connecting with local communities, and corporations. These will all build brand recognition. We have successfully reached an alliance with local governments and some corporations, such as Airbnb.

Ginger: What are tech tools that you use for your business?

Chika: We use Github, Google Cloud platform, Slack, Waffle, Zendesk and Mailchimp.

Ginger: Thank you so much, Chika, for your time! So there you have it! These are insights for a woman in power who is the CEO of a Start-up company who let’s your hire outsource service providers within your neighborhood in Japan! Read more interesting stories every Thursday for my BE INSPIRED blog series!

 

More information about ANYTIMES!

Website: https://www.any-times.com/en/
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/anytimes.co.jp/
Twitter account: anytimes_info
Instagram account: anytimesjp