Business Collaboration Platform JANDI Raises $2M To Expand In Asia

Does the world need yet another enterprise collaboration tool? Startup JANDI thinks so, and SoftBank Ventures and Cherubic Ventures agree. The two firms have just led a $2 million angel round in the Korean-based startup. The capital will be used for product development and market expansion in Asia.

JANDI, which has launched its open beta version in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, lets co-workers communicate and share files across different devices and platforms (PC, Android, and iOS). All documents and conversations are saved in the cloud.

Jeffrey Ling, JANDI’s country manager in Taiwan, says that the startup’s closest competitor is Slack. Other potential rivals include Evernote Business, Google Drive, and Asana. JANDI hopes to gain users by integrating with those platforms as well, so that it can provide a “one-stop platform for anything work-related.”

Since JANDI’s main markets are in Asia, it also has to compete with consumer messaging apps like Line, WeChat, WhatsApp, Kakao, and Facebook Messenger, which co-workers often use to communicate about work-related projects.

“JANDI stands apart because of how much effort we are putting into localization—not just in terms of local languages, but also in terms of integration with local cloud services and the availability of local teams in each country, starting with Taiwan and Japan,” Ling says.

JANDI is currently focused on building its user base among small- to medium-sized enterprises and will adopt a freemium model for monetization.