January 23, 2013
Yahoo Japan Acquires Mynet's CRM Business
By Shankar Pandiath
TMCnet Contributor
Yahoo Japan recently acquired a part of Katy, the customer relationship management (CRM) division of Mynet for $3.95 million (350 million Japanese yen).
Katy is a mobile CRM business that was launched sometime during January 2007 by Mynet, targeted at restaurants and shops.
By acquiring Katy, Yahoo Japan intends to expand its smartphone business and diversify into the Online to Offline (O2O) business domain, as Mynet has established a large customer base for its mobile phone membership program management services among stores and other outlets.
O2O is a recent business concept that links and monitors the sales activities of smaller stores or helps to extend the sales promotion impact of online stores to actual stores.
While the approval and signing of the corporate split and merger document was complete on January 17, 2013, the effective planned date when Yahoo Japan plans to assume the rights and obligations of the business is scheduled to take place on March 1, 2013.There will be no share splits in this deal and there will also be no increase or decrease in capital of the company. However, Yahoo Japan will acquire both the assets and any liabilities and any contractual obligations of Mynet.
There will also be no change in the name of the company, change in location, business content or paid-up capital following the merger.
Some disclosure items and details have been omitted from the corporate split and merger because the increase or decrease in the total assets of Yahoo Japan is expected to be less than 10 percent of the net assets of the company on the final day of the immediately preceding fiscal year and the increase in net sales will be less than three percent of the net sales of the same fiscal year.
In addition, there will be no change in Yahoo Japan’s aggressive growth approach in 2013 and in all likelihood; many more startup companies may look to Yahoo as their exit plan.
Mynet has slowly been diversifying into the mobile social game arena since 2012, and it’s likely that the company would now concentrate solely on expanding its gaming portfolio.
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Edited by Jamie Epstein