About the Founder

Sachio Semmoto

Education:

BS degree from Kyoto University （1966）, Ph.D. degree from University of Florida (1971)

Work Experience:

Dr. Semmoto is a successful entrepreneur in telecommunication industry, with more than 30 years in senior management positions with leading Japanese telecommunication companies.

His career began when he joined Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT, Japan) in 1966, staying until 1983. After favorably campaigning for a deregulated telecom industry in Japan, he cofounded the first private telecom startup, DDI, now KDDI Corporation in 1984, whose market cap is approximately $ 85 billion.

After its IPO, he left the company to become a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan in 1996 as well as a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University and a Research Fellow at Stanford University.

In 1999, Dr. Semmoto founded and served as CEO of eAccess, Ltd. an Internet access startup that commercialized Japan’s DSL market and went on to capture the second-largest global market share. Following the IPO of eAccess in 2004, he founded and became CEO of EMOBILE, which became Japan’s fourth largest mobile network operator. EMOBILE and eAccess were sold to SoftBank in 2013.

Today he serves as Executive Chairman of RENOVA, Inc., a leading renewable energy power company (Japan). In 2017, he has founded the Frances & Sachio Semmoto Foundation to provide students from Asia Pacific nations, who otherwise would not have the means to fulfill their educational goals, access to postsecondary education in Japan.