On April 2018, 4, Kyushu Institute of Technology announced that the QB No. 23 Investment Limited Partnership (QB No. XNUMX Fund *), which has QB Partners Limited Partnership as an unlimited liability member, will be announced by Kyushu Institute of Technology. Announced that it will make a pre-investment in the hearing aid system commercialization project.
Pre-investment is a gap fund function that fills the financial gap between research funds and private investment, which is said to be one of the challenges of university-launched ventures. It is a university-launched venture incubation program unique to QB No. 100 Fund.Invested 500-1 million yen / case in commercialization projects before the establishment of the company.Based on the funds, we will search for POC (Proof of Concept) and management personnel during the project period (six months to one year), which will lead to the creation of university-launched ventures.
This is the second pre-investment, but to a commercialization project that utilizes an anonymous partnership (= the investor becomes a member and provides funds to the business operator. You can receive the distribution of profits generated from the business). This is the first investment by Kyushu Institute of Technology.It is also said that this is the first gap fund in Japan.
The "Hearing Aid System Commercialization Project", which was the target of pre-investment, aims to develop a low-priced and easy-to-use hearing aid system by utilizing the sound information processing technology researched by Associate Professor Mitsunori Mizumachi of the Graduate School of Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology. thing.In the aging society of the future, the needs for hearing aids will increase, and it is highly evaluated that prices and quality improvements are desired, and that new hearing aid systems have the potential to lead to innovation in the hearing aid market.
* The first QB fund is the first industry-academia collaboration fund in the Kyushu region that aims to create new industries in the region by investing in research seeds of universities centered on universities in the Kyushu region and ventures from universities in the seed-early stage.
