Who We Are
The Akiya Company is founded by Jarrod Zenjiro Suda, Olivier Flamand-Lapointe, and Risa Nishida.
The team met as master’s students of international affairs and development studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Their shared vision of building responsible businesses and their curiosity for more sustainable ways of living led them on a path to Japan.
They completed the 2021 edition of the Kyoto Start-Up Summer School together, developing a minimum viable product and a business pitch in the process. The team graduated from the Geneva Graduate Institute in 2021.
Mission
We are on a mission to reinvigorate the rural communities that live in the Japanese countryside by renovating vacant and abandoned akiya townhouses.
Today, 11 million abandoned homes scatter Japan's cities and countrysides. In 2030, that number is estimated to increase to over 19 million.
A lack of job opportunities in rural areas has accelerated the rural to urban brain drain. As the oldest population in the world according to the World Population Review, Japan's rural elderly have fewer opportunities to enjoy the sound of schoolchildren playing in the streets and to be taken care of by their children and grandchildren.
By empowering a new generation of digital workers both domestic and abroad to work while closer to nature, we hope to foster renewed connections and mutual exchange between urban and rural people.
Together, we hope to build a future where modernity and tradition can thrive together.
Meet The Team
Jarrod Zenjiro Suda
CEO & CFO
Risa Nishida
Business Associate
Olivier Flamand-Lapointe
CEO & COO
Community
Our world is increasingly faced with declining birth rates, environmental degradation, and disparities between urban and rural areas. The Akiya Company was born with a mission to preserve Japan's architectural tradition by restoring the ever-increasing number of abandoned townhouses.
However, local artisans play a leading role in rebuilding, not just homes across Japan, but also the rural communities that live in them. We feel privileged to be partnering with them and working alongside them.
And we invite you to partake in their knowledge and to meaningfully contribute to our many ongoing projects.