ANDPAD is a Tokyo-headquartered construction technology SaaS company building cloud project management software for Japan's construction and renovation industry. The platform digitises site progress reporting, blueprint management, photo logs, contractor coordination, and back-office workflows that have historically been run on paper, fax, and chat in a sector long resistant to software adoption.
Founded in 2012 by Yusuke Inagi, ANDPAD has grown into one of the most widely deployed construction SaaS products in Japan, serving more than 200,000 contractors across general contractors, subcontractors, renovators, and large home builders.
The company crossed unicorn status in 2021 after a major financing round and has continued to raise late-stage private capital from a mix of Japanese venture funds and corporate strategic investors.
ANDPAD operates at an interesting intersection of legacy industry digitisation and policy tailwind. Japan's 2024 work-style reform regulations, which extended overtime caps to construction, created a strong commercial pull for software that could remove time-consuming paperwork from site work.
ANDPAD has positioned itself as the default cloud back-office for the new compliance reality and is widely expected to file for a JPX listing once market conditions align.
ANDPAD is a useful study of how a vertical SaaS company structures itself for Japanese industry adoption, and how the corporate-form choices map onto a future JPX listing.
KK as the venture-default form. ANDPAD is a Kabushiki Kaisha. As with every other Tokyo unicorn discussed in this collection, the KK form is the default for venture-backed software in Japan because it is the only form that can list on the JPX and the form Japanese venture investors expect on a term sheet.
The GK (Godo Kaisha), introduced in the 2006 Companies Act reform, has lower compliance cost and no statutory auditor obligation but cannot list and is generally treated by Japanese VCs as a placeholder rather than a serious operating vehicle.
Departure from old conglomerate norms. ANDPAD is independent of any large general contractor. This matters because Japanese construction has historically been organised around the major general contractors (Obayashi, Kajima, Shimizu, Taisei, Takenaka), each of which sits at the centre of an extended subcontractor network.
A construction-tech SaaS company twenty years ago would likely have been absorbed into one of those general contractors as a captive IT subsidiary. ANDPAD instead operates as a neutral cross-network platform, a structural choice that mirrors the post-keiretsu independence of Mercari, freee, Money Forward, and Sansan.
Founder voting and the JPX one-share-one-vote norm. Founder Yusuke Inagi cannot use US-style dual-class voting shares because JPX listing rules disfavour them. Influence is preserved through pre-IPO ownership concentration, lock-up arrangements, and board composition rather than super-voting stock.
ANDPAD is a venture-backed construction-tech SaaS company on a JPX listing trajectory. KK is the only form that can list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the form Japanese venture investors expect on priced-round term sheets. A GK would have been workable as a wholly-owned operating subsidiary of a foreign parent, but not as a standalone listing vehicle.
The standard path for Tokyo growth-tech firms is to file on the JPX Growth tier (the post-2022 successor to the Mothers segment), then migrate up to Prime once the issuer meets a tradable market cap of at least 10 billion yen, 800 shareholders, a 35 percent free float, and English-language disclosure obligations. Mercari, freee, Money Forward, and Sansan all walked this path.
For pure construction software there is no general foreign-shareholder cap.
The Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act requires pre-notification for large stakes in regulated sectors such as broadcasting, defense, and certain critical infrastructure, but cloud project management software falls outside the restricted-sector list and any foreign investor can freely participate in priced rounds and eventually in JPX-traded shares.
Before 2006, KK incorporation required 10 million yen of paid-in capital and the GK-equivalent vehicle required 3 million yen. The 2006 Companies Act abolished both floors and allowed 1-yen incorporation. This reform is the reason Tokyo's post-2010 startup wave, including ANDPAD, Mercari, freee, Money Forward, Sansan, and SmartHR, was able to incorporate cheaply and iterate on capital structure as they grew.
