How a Chinese Team Built a 200M Business Organizing Japanese Meeting Notes

Notta is a Chinese AI meeting notes platform that posted annual revenue of about $30 million, or roughly ¥200 million, in its 2026 annual report. It has over 10 million users worldwide, including 68 companies from the Nikkei 225. Founder Ryan Zhang launched the project in 2020 and set Japan as his main market.

The choice of Japan came down to practical math. More than 100 million people share one language, and the demand for meeting notes is frequent and concrete. Japanese speech recognition carries a real barrier; once Notta cleared it, late entrants could not close the gap with a generic translation tool. Pricing strategy mattered just as much: switching from US dollars to Japanese yen lifted paid conversion rates by 30%.

The shift from B2C to B2B is revealing. Early adopters paid out of pocket, then started sharing files with colleagues. That exposed gaps around permissions, security, and purchasing workflows—and created demand for an enterprise edition. On the Japan site, Notta ranks for 9,147 keywords and draws roughly 86,000 organic visits each month. SEO is both a customer acquisition channel and a market sensing system.

A quick note: in the SaaS supply chain, this is a vertical-scenario tool. Its real value is embedding into workflows, not just delivering raw technology. Japan’s enterprise services market runs on its own closed loops. Procurement cycles are long, and compliance and security expectations are high. That makes it nearly impossible to scale on product advantages alone—you need a local team to tear down trust barriers one deal at a time. Notta’s play is to turn Japan’s entry barriers into competitive moats layer by layer. Later players who want to copy the model will pay for more than product features; they will pay with time and accumulated local relationships.

Original article: How a Chinese team built a ¥200 million business by taking care of Japanese meeting notes