Nagoya TV Ventures

Naomichi Hata serves as CEO and is the named investment lead. Hata joined Nagoya Broadcasting Network's board in 2018 after a 33-year career at Toyota Motor Corporation, where he rose to general manager of the new business planning and agri-bio divisions. The investment team also includes Toyoyoshi Ando and Takashi Nishimoto, both drawn from the parent broadcaster's operations and sales units, giving the committee a blend of corporate development and media-sector operating experience.

Nagoya TV Ventures is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nagoya Broadcasting Network, whose three largest shareholders are The Asahi Shimbun Company (36.9 percent), Toyota Motor Corporation (34.6 percent), and TV Asahi Holdings (17.3 percent). CEO Naomichi Hata spent his entire pre-broadcaster career at Toyota. While Toyota does not directly own the venture entity, its shareholder influence and Hata's operational ties make the automaker a natural strategic partner for portfolio companies in mobility and logistics.

The firm primarily makes direct equity investments in startups, but it also participates in pooled vehicles. Notably, Nagoya TV Ventures is a participant in the Asahi Media Lab Ventures Fund 1, a Tokyo-based media-tech fund. Its core mandate, however, is direct investment from seed to later stages, with a stated emphasis on seed-stage deals.

The firm invests both domestically and internationally, but it explicitly prioritizes startups headquartered in Japan's Tokai region — the industrial heartland centered on Nagoya — or companies with concrete plans to expand into that region. In practice, the portfolio includes Japanese companies from Nagoya, Tokyo, and beyond, as well as at least one Israeli company, Pixellot, reflecting a selective global reach when the technology aligns with Mētele's media focus.

The investment policy names media, entertainment, video businesses, and the internet sector. In practice, the portfolio spans influencer marketing (BitStar), AI-driven sports video (Pixellot), bike-sharing (neuet/Charichari), smart infrastructure (Forcetec's SmaGO), digital content platforms (Revolver's Dino), and vertical software including event management and menu-based food discovery. This reveals a broader pattern: consumer internet and enterprise tools that can integrate with Mētele's broadcasting, event, and regional network assets.

It is a limited liability company (Gōdō-kaisha) capitalized with ¥10 million, fully funded by Nagoya Broadcasting Network. The venture arm operates as a captive CVC rather than a third-party fund, deploying the parent's balance sheet with a dual mandate: achieve venture returns and generate strategic collaboration opportunities between portfolio companies and the Mētele broadcast ecosystem.

Nagoya Broadcasting Network operates a tree-planting initiative, but there is no publicly disclosed link between that philanthropic work and the venture portfolio. Nagoya TV Ventures' environmental-tech investments — such as the IoT-enabled smart bin company Forcetec — arise from its broader media-tech and regional mandate rather than a formal impact or ESG allocation.