Announcement regarding Capital and Business Alliance between Uhuru Corporation and Restar Holdings

Uhuru Corporation (HQ: Minato-ku, Tokyo, President & CEO, Takashi Sonoda, hereinafter, “Uhuru”) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a capital and business alliance with Restar Holdings (HQ: Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, President & CEO, Kunihiro Konno (“Restar”)).

Goal of the Business Alliance

Based on the management vision “Global (in view and scale) / Social Contribution / Collaboration and Innovation”, in addition to providing semiconductor and electronic component solutions, Restar conducts business across a wide range of activities, including contract manufacturing (Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS)), electronic hardware for video, audio and telecommunications, and operates solar, wind and plant farms (“vegetable factories”). Restar aims to be “the Electronics Value Platformer” that accommodates all manner of stakeholder needs. Each of Restar’s businesses has worked in tandem with regional governments to increase the spread of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and renewable energy at the local government level. Furthermore, by leveraging synergies among its operations, Restar is working hard to strengthen its ability to recommend multidisciplinary proposals that both solve local governments’ problems and contribute to regional revitalization.

Uhuru supports and promotes DX (digital transformation) and data utilization by companies and society with the philosophy of “Using technology and outside the box thinking to create a sustainable society”. In recent years, based on the experience cultivated through such DX support, we are also working to provide overall design, service applications, and data linkage infrastructure for local governments to materialize the Super City Initiative (*1) and smart city (*2).

Through this capital and business alliance, we plan to integrate Restar’s various products and services utilizing electronics with Uhuru’s data connectivity service geared toward regional governments promoting ICT (*3) to leverage the strengths of both companies and provide a wide range of packaged solutions centered around the concepts of “Safety & Security” and “Regional Revitalization” to local governments. By providing solutions suited to issues that are peculiar to the size and characteristic features of the local government body, we aim to contribute to the realization of smart cities and sustainable urban development.

^*1 Super City Initiative
An urban design movement that utilizes AI and big-data to fundamentally change the way society should be (Cabinet Office, “Super City Explanation”)
URL: https://www.chisou.go.jp/tiiki/kokusentoc/english/super-city/index.html
^*2 Smart City
Defined as sustainable cities and regions that solve the various problems faced by urban and rural areas by improving management (planning, maintenance, management & operation) through the utilization of new technologies such as ICT, and continually creating new value, places for the advanced attainment of Society 5.0 (Cabinet Office, “Smart City” URL: https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/society5_0/smartcity/ (Japanese only)
^*3 Related press release: Uhuru Selected as a Major Operator in “Super City Framework” for 4 Regional Governments (Released May 2021)
^* The names of companies, products and services in this release are trademarks of Uhuru or the respective companies or organizations.

About Restar Holdings (https://www.en.restargp.com/)

Restar Holdings aims to be “the Electronics Value Platformer” that solves the world’s problems with the management philosophy of “helping society evolve by leveraging information and technology to create and deliver new value and services”. We promote sustainably increasing scale through synergies among our operations, active co-creation with external partners, and capital & business alliances expanding into various businesses and extending technical areas.

About Uhuru (https://uhuru.co.jp/en)

Based on our corporate philosophy “Create a sustainable society with technology and outside the box thinking”, Uhuru supports and promotes digital transformation (DX) and data utilization by businesses and society. We offer on-stop access to services such as consulting and system development based on our in-house products and solutions for edge devices and the cloud. To go beyond the framework of corporate activities and make DX for localities and industries happen, we are working on R&D in the domain of IoT + blockchain while advocating ways to introduce and standardize a system for trusted data distribution, an essential factor for smart cities and supply chains.