Sansan Inc. (Sansan) has appointed Edward Senju as Regional CEO, who will drive growth of the startup in Singapore and ASEAN. Expanding the Singapore headcount and regional client base will be Senju’s key priorities. 

The startup was founded by CEO Chika Terada who, while working in one of Japan’s largest firms, noticed the inefficiencies in the way his colleagues and team networked. Despite meeting hundreds of different business contacts every month, no one in his company knew who had met whom. The market was not addressing these inefficiencies, so Terada formed Sansan, to help create a world where people better connect with their connections, better network with their network, and never miss an opportunity.

The cloud-based Sansan’s namesake platform seeks to enable companies to scan and organise business cards into a proprietary, expanding AI-informed database. One of Japan's most-funded tech start-ups, with a total funding of $120 Mn, Sansan owns over an 80 percent share of the Japanese market, as per the information shared by the company. 

Now the Japan based startup looks to replicate the growth it has had in Japan in other Asian markets including Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. And it plans to foray into the ASEAN market with Singapore as base. 

“Following our company’s vision to go global, we're focused on expansion within Asia and using Singapore as a key base from which we can grow in the region,” shared Senju. 

He further added, "Within the last one year, our team in SIngapore has already been supporting over 50 clients and we expect to significantly increase the customer base and headcount this year." 

In Singapore Sansan has already been supporting over 50 clients and now it expects to significantly increase the customer base and headcount this year.

With the Singapore government’s commitment to enhance Singapore’s position as a global business centre, Sansan considers the landscape extremely lucrative for businesses to thrive. Senju shared that they see huge potential among both SMEs and larger multinationals seeking to capture, track, and benefit from the millions of personal business contacts their employees have every single day.

Considering the aggressive expansion plan Sansan has in mind, Senju seems like a right choice considering the rich experience he has had with the startup. 

In fact, Senju was one of Sansan’s first employees in 2009, where on the finance team he worked on projects including the company’s seed funding round. After two years, Sansan he was tasked with putting its consumer app and professional social network, Eight, into active use. He not only  grew it into Japan’s market leader but brought the app into overseas markets as well. His experience and his product development expertise is what Sansan needs to scale its growth globally.