Kei Shibata co-founded Venture Republic Inc. in 2001 and has been served as President & CEO since foundation. Venture Republic is Japan's leading online comparison shopping company that owns and runs a group of websites providing comparison shopping services, user generated product review services and reward point services through the Internet. The company is behind popular portals coneco.net (www.coneco.net) and Travel.co.jp (www.travel.co.jp), which combined can claim 5.9 million monthly unique visitors.

A seasoned executive, Kei is responsible for driving the company by shaping its strategy, making commercialization efforts and building organization. He brings in his extensive knowledge of e-commerce, business development and corporate finance to the company.

Previously, Kei worked at the Mitsubishi Corporation for 11 years. During his time with the company, among other roles, he played the key role in company's largest M&A deal in its history to acquire the Lawson Inc., a convenience store chain and led the company's joint businesses with Lawson on e-commerce to pursue its post acquisition strategy.

Kei received a B.A. in Law from Keio University in 1988 and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School in 1998.