OMRON VENTURES Co., Ltd. (Chief Executive Officer: Naoshi Ozawa), the investment subsidiary of OMRON Corporation (headquarters: Kyoto City; President & CEO: Yoshihito Yamada), has announced the start of the OMRON Koto Challenge, a program to nurture innovative manufacturing-focused start-up ventures, on December 1, 2014.

The OMRON Koto Challenge is the inaugural entrepreneurship support initiative of OMRON VENTURES Co., Ltd. The program seeks to foster new business and promote technological evolution together with participating companies. To this end, selected start-up ventures with a focus on innovative manufacturing in a range of sectors will receive comprehensive support from OMRON to develop their groundbreaking technologies and creative ideas, thus helping them overcome challenges, providing swifter avenues for the seeding of new enterprises, and encouraging growth and development. The program will do this by providing the full weight of OMRON's manufacturing strengths and global network to support budding businesses throughout the whole value chain, including production technology, purchasing, and distribution.

Over three months, participating companies will receive support as set forth below to help them complete prototypes of their products or services (or, if they already have complete prototypes, help to further hone those items).
(1) Use of rental office space located amid the innovative manufacturing environment at Kyoto Research Park.
(2) Mentoring and manufacturing expert support from OMRON's engineers and business development staff.
(3) Opportunities to publically announce prototypes at Demoday.

A dedicated program website will be launched and applications for participation in the inaugural program will open on Monday, December 1. Applications will be accepted between December 1 and February 2. After screening and interviews, the selected teams (between three and five teams will be chosen) will be announced in late February. The program itself is scheduled to start on early March for approximately three months.

A kick-off and program introduction event is to be held at OMRON headquarters in Kyoto on Monday, December 15.

In addition to the OMRON Koto Challenge, OMRON VENTURES is seeking entries for the OMRON Agriventure Founder Contest, in which contestants vie for selection as the first members of an agricultural start-up venture backed by OMRON's formidable wealth of technology.

OMRON VENTURES is devoted to creating new value that can solve society's challenges while sparking new innovation and mining the untapped potential of groundbreaking enterprises by supporting and working in partnership with start-up ventures around the world.

OMRON VENTURES Launches "OMRON Koto Challenge" Entrepreneurship Support Program