Gaprise.inc Case Studies on Japan-Israel SMEs Collaboration 【2020/11/17】

Gaprise.inc

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Gaprise.inc was founded in January 2005 by a group of friends at Waseda University and started providing online store operator services. Since then, the company has expanded its business to landing page optimization, marketing design, web advertising management, and website construction. They now mainly operate reseller business and provide advertising management services. The president and CEO, Mr. Ryoji Kai, joined Gaprise six months after the company’s founding and served as Executive Officer in charge of web marketing before appointed to the current position in 2013.
The company partners with Israeli and other marketing technology companies and they support marketing activities for client companies. They also provide marketing consultation and digital advertising management services to optimize digital marketing initiatives in the web technology field.


Interview with Mr. Ryoji Kai, the CEO


Around 2011, when Gaprise was working to improve landing page conversion rates, they learned about ClickTale from one of the clients. This Israeli company provided a platform for in-depth customer experience analytics at the clients' request. At the time, Gaprise was developing software to visualize user behavior. However, they were surprised to discover that the Israeli technology was three steps ahead of them and already available in the market. Gaprise decided not to market its almost-ready proprietary customer experience software because the better product was available in the world. They got more and more excited as they learned about ClickTale. In 2012, they started distributing ClickTale with after-sales support in Japan, shifting their business to reselling for marketing technology. However, even promising technologies don't necessarily get adopted widely. Still, the company has successfully sold and implemented ClickTale for several hundred existing clients in the first year of collaboration. While other companies sold ClickTale in Japan at the time, Gaprise was the only one to achieve significant success after all.
The sales results contributed to earning Israeli companies' trust and a partnership with other Israeli companies. According to Mr. Kai, "Israeli doesn't trust foreign companies easily, but they have absolute trust in numbers." The Israeli also emphasizes networking, as they often start a new business or change careers in the technology industry. ClickTale's ex-employees who moved to other companies or started their businesses introduced new products to Gaprise, and the company grew a business network in Israel.
Today, as an authorized distributor for Contentsquare, which acquired ClickTale in 2019, Gaprise promotes its products in Japan and Asia, enabling customers to implement highly accurate marketing strategies. The company also offers marketing solutions such as a competitive analysis tool SimilarWeb, a social review tool Yotpo, an AB testing tool Optimizely, a project management tool Monday.com. Through these business connections, the company can catch up with the most advanced technologies in Tel Aviv as quickly as possible. They plan to continue their reseller business of Israeli cutting-edge marketing solutions for years to come. Besides, they are looking to expand to more challenging projects, both domestically and internationally. Now they consider going public on the stock exchange for business expansion.




Israeli companies place great importance on speed. To keep up with Israeli companies, Gaprise has set up an internal team with a few staff who can tackle referred services immediately apart from their daily duties. The company has a system to conduct hearings with existing customers to see if Japanese customers will accept the new technology. It allows them to perform the PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) cycle quickly. One of the essential factors in successful collaboration with Israeli companies is to think practically and work speedily.
Israelis also have a solid sense of ownership due to national history. They believe that great ideas can be generated from conflict. They sometimes engage in intense communication that is hardly seen in Japan, such as banging on a desk during a meeting or asking people to leave the room if they don't speak. The Japanese and Israelis have a very different attitude toward being hungry and ambitious. The Israeli does not afraid of confrontation or expressing their emotions. Mr. Kai believes that the key to successful collaboration is establishing an equal relationship between the two parties. To achieve that, Japanese companies should try to communicate proactively with Israelis.




Interview: Center on Finance and Innovation, Waseda University
Editor: Center for International Economic Collaboration

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