Ichiro Kawanabe, President & CEO of JapanTaxi,
selected for Keynote Speaker at CEATEC 2019

July 29, 2019

The CEATEC Executive Board – consisting of the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association, the Communications and Information Network Association of Japan, and the Computer Software Association of Japan – has announced that CEATEC 2019 will feature a keynote speech given by Mr. Ichiro Kawanabe, President and CEO of JapanTaxi, on October 15th, the first day of the event. Mr. Kawanabe is scheduled to talk under the theme Transport for people’s happiness. JapanTaxi initiatives – supporting the evolution of mobility. CEATEC 2019 is a comprehensive exhibition of Society 5.0, bringing together innovative CPS/IoT technologies from a wide range of businesses and industries. The exhibition will be held from October 15 (Tuesday) to 18 (Friday) at Makuhari Messe in Mihama-ku, Chiba-city.

CEATEC KEYNOTES in 2018, which garnered huge audiences, has been announced again with enhanced content. As one of the keynotes to be commenced on the first day of the exhibition, Mr. Kawanabe will be taking the rostrum for his role in innovating the field of transportation and mobility.

In the event of selecting Japan Taxi as one of the keynote speakers, Mr. Kawanabe commented as follows: “At JapanTaxi, our mission ‘Delivering Happiness, One Ride at a Time’ is not only about being the no.1 taxi-hailing app in Japan, but also about advancing our efforts in the area of Taxi DX and Next Generation Mobility. I invite you to join me at the CEATEC 2019 where I will be introducing our latest development, providing an insight into how we are embarking on the age of MaaS and reinventing the industry for the future of mobility.”

Born in 1970, Mr. Kawanabe graduated from the Keio University Faculty of Economics in 1993. After completing the MBA program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, he joined McKinsey & Company Inc. Japan, and in 2000, he entered Nihon Kotsu Co., Ltd. He became the CEO in 2005 and chairman in 2015. As the third chairman, Mr. Kawanabe integrated the Black Taxi (premium taxi), Labor Pain Taxi (aka maternity taxi supporting pregnant women to a hospital), and Kids Taxi (supporting parents with infants/small children, and children’s transportation service). He also helped introduce the power of IT into the taxi industry and, through providing the largest-scale taxi allocation app in Japan, JapanTaxi, and the development of diverse payment methods such as JapanTaxi Wallet, accelerated the reformation of taxis, which evolves on a daily basis, with “making people happy with travel” as the theme. Mr. Kawanabe became the chairman of the Tokyo Hire-Taxi Association in May 2014 and the chairman of the Japan Federation of Hire-Taxi Associations in June 2017.

The keynote speech is a part of CEATEC Keynotes, which is given by business leaders of various industries. Mr. Kawanabe’s keynote, which is a part of conferences, will be held at one of the convention halls in Makuhari Messe’s International Conference Hall from 16:30 (4:30PM) on Tuesday, October 15th. Conferences during CEATEC 2019 including other CEATEC Keynotes can be reserved online starting from August 1, 2019 at the CEATEC Official Website (http://www.ceatec.com/). Details of other Keynotes and conferences will be announced in the future.

CEATEC KEYNOTE

October 15 (Tue.) 13:00 – 13:45 Shinya Katanozaka, President & CEO of ANA HOLDINGS INC.
October 15 (Tue.) 14:45 – 15:30 Hiromi Tagawa, Chairperson of the Board, JTB Corporation
October 15 (Tue.) 16:30 – 17:15 Ichiro Kawanabe, President & CEO, JapanTaxi Co., Ltd.

Note: Rest of the keynotes will be announced shortly.

CONFERENCE Reservation