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Investing in both venture capital funds and in new venture companies, Mitsubishi International Corporation (MIC) continually identifies new technologies and products as potential new business. Yet MIC has an even more dynamic source of "deal flow": effectively leveraging extensive industry relationships and market knowledge to identify opportunities that create lasting value for our business partners. Innovating Investment A major shipping client introduced MIC to an investment opportunity in a U.S. venture company that had developed an innovative Radio Frequency-based Identification Technology (RFID). Among the applications of the technology were identification tags for shipping containers. MIC invested in the venture with parent Mitsubishi Corporation. Mitsubishi Corporation also obtained marketing rights for the product in Asia, where it could leverage extensive contacts with key potential customers: port authorities in the major countries of East Asia. Building on these relationships, Mitsubishi Corporation succeeded in selling RFID systems to clients throughout the region. MIC, Mitsubishi Corporation and our shipping client each realized a significant capital gain from their respective venture investments. Evolving an Idea While establishing the application of RFID technology to the tracking of shipping containers, Mitsubishi Corporation worked with the venture to investigate the market for other potential applications. In Hong Kong, Mitsubishi Corporation formed a joint venture to automate the collection of automobile tolls to speed traffic through congested tunnels. Building on its knowledge of the transportation applications of RFID and aware that mass transit authorities needed to find a more effective way to manage fare collection, our parent company identified a solution: a cutting-edge contactless smart card produced by a leading electronics firm. Mitsubishi Corporation developed a market for this product as a stored-value ticket for mass transit riders. These smart cards provided many benefits for transit authorities by enhancing data collection and speeding riders through entry and exit gates. They have since become popular among transit riders because of their ease of use. As a result of the effectiveness of the product and the benefits to both transit authorities and riders, Mitsubishi Corporation has become a leading vendor of such systems, selling millions of cards to mass transit agencies around the globe. |
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