We’re thrilled to announce that NEXTBLUE, Asia’s first fund dedicated to women’s wellbeing and female founders, has invested in bgrass, Japan’s first platform empowering female engineers and transforming corporate hiring to enhance diversity and competitiveness. This pre-Series A round raised approximately 125 million yen ($0.85M).
Addressing Critical Gaps in Female Engineer Careers in Japan
bgrass develops solutions to bridge the gap between female engineers seeking fulfilling careers and employers aiming to build more diverse and inclusive teams.
Founded with a mission to support women in tech while transforming corporate structures, culture, and evaluation systems, the team has steadily built on their achievements while working to make fair evaluation a societal norm in Japan—shifting it from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have.”
With this investment, bgrass will expand its career support services for women in tech—“WAKE Career” and “WAKE Freelance”—and accelerate the development of a new business, “Fair Pass”, designed to enhance fairness in corporate hiring. By addressing both individual support and systemic change within companies, bgrass aims to create a society where bias-free selection and evaluation are the norm.
Comprehensive Services for Female Engineers and Employers
WAKE Career –
A job search and coaching platform tailored for female engineers, helping them find companies aligned with their technical expertise, career aspirations, and work-life balance needs. It also supports women returning to work after life events, addressing overlooked skills.
DEI Consulting for Employers –
WAKE Career requires that all job postings undergo bgrass’s proprietary Gender Diversity Diagnostic, which assesses whether women can work on equal terms in the organization. This diagnostic forms the basis for guidance to improve hiring processes and organizational structures, helping employers create more equitable and supportive workplaces.
Fair Pass (New) –
A consulting service helping companies uncover and mitigate unconscious bias in recruitment, enhancing selection processes and equitable evaluation. This enables companies to expand female talent pools, increase pass rates for women, and improve overall diversity and competitiveness.
Why we invested
bgrass’s achievements with WAKE Career and WAKE Freelance show steady progress in creating an environment where women can pursue their aspirations without compromise. The team’s commitment to transforming societal norms through tangible results and impactful business solutions aligns with NEXTBLUE’s mission.
The newly launched Fair Pass is an ambitious initiative addressing hiring biases at the corporate level and transforming structural frameworks. NEXTBLUE believes strongly in bgrass’s potential to expand opportunities for women from “individual effort” to “organizational systems” and support a society where diverse talents are fairly evaluated and leveraged as organizational strengths.
