Inagora

About Inagora

Inagora Inc. is a Japanese-Chinese hybrid venture that operates a one-stop cross-border e-commerce (EC) platform, primarily connecting Japanese companies with consumers in China and other global markets. The company was founded in December 2014 by CEO Weng Yongbiao (翁 永飆), along with Minako Yamamoto, Shen Haidian, and Weng Yongzhen. Weng Yongbiao, a serial entrepreneur, previously founded several companies after his tenure at Itochu Corporation. His vision for Inagora was to solve the key challenges Japanese businesses face in overseas expansion: information, logistics, and payment barriers.

Inagora's business model is centered on providing a comprehensive suite of services that includes content creation, marketing, logistics, and payment processing. This allows Japanese brands to sell their products abroad without needing a local presence. The firm's flagship service is the B2C mobile shopping app "Wandou" (豌豆公主), which was launched in August 2015 and offers over 40,000 SKUs of Japanese products, mainly in the health, beauty, grocery, and home goods categories, directly to Chinese consumers. Inagora supports its partners by creating rich content, such as articles and videos, that tells the brand's story and explains product use cases, tailored to the cultural context of the target market.

The company operates a sophisticated logistics network with warehouses in Japan and China, enabling it to manage the entire process from export and customs clearance to final delivery. In addition to its B2C platform, Inagora has a growing B2B business, supplying products to other major e-commerce malls and utilizing social media and key opinion leaders (KOLs) for marketing. The company has also developed a brand incubation business to help relatively unknown Japanese brands gain popularity in China. While its primary focus has been the Chinese market, Inagora is expanding its reach to North America, South Korea, and Taiwan, and has started collaborations to enter the Southeast Asian market.