Now we would like to start the Investors' Meeting for Operating segments of ITOCHU Corporation, Digital Strategy in the ICT and Financial Business Company, and The 8th Company. Thank you very much for joining us today. I would like to also thank you for your patronage for ITOCHU Corporation. I would like to act as a moderator. I am Amano of IR Division. As continuous DX demand is expected, we would explain our ICT and Financial Business Company and The 8th Company, which are unique to ITOCHU. Also, in terms of the corporate value, we will focus upon the improvement of the growth rate. Let me introduce the speakers. From ICT and Financial Business Company, Managing Executive Officer, President of ICT and Financial Business Company, we have Mr. Tatsushi Shingu. Next, Executive Officer, COO of ICT Division, Mr. Hiroshi Kajiwara. General Manager of Planning and Administration Department, Mr. Atsushi Hashimoto.
Next, participants from The 8th Company. Executive Officer, President of The 8th Company, Mr. Shuichi Kato. Next, General Manager of The 8th Company, Mr. Hiroshi Nakamoto. General Manager of Planning and Administration Section, Mr. Tetsuya Mukohata. As an observer, we have Mr. Tsuyoshi Hachimura, Member of the Board and Executive Vice President and CFO. First, Mr. Shingu, the President of ICT and Financial Business Company, will present the overview and the growth strategy. Mr. Kato, the President of The 8th Company, will talk about The 8th Company growth strategy utilizing FamilyMart's business foundation. We take questions. Now, Mr. Shingu, please.
Hello. My name is Shingu, President of ICT and Financial Business Company. Before I talk about the growth strategy, I'd like to give you the overview. This page shows organization and business overview. Our company was newly established in fiscal year 2017 to integrate ICT and Financial Business.
We are a relatively young company in ITOCHU. We are seeking to capture the new markets and expand by combining the ICT division's business development functions with the Financial and Insurance Business Division's customer network. I am the President, and under me, there are ICT Division, Financial and Insurance Business Division. Two divisions. Under ICT Division, there is, first of all, Information Technology Business Department, including IT solutions, digital marketing, BPO, venture investment, healthcare, and others. Space and satellite media contents, mobile-related services are under Communication and Mobile Business Department. We have two departments. Now, as the nature of the business and revenue expanded for ICT Division, from the 1st of April this year, we are establishing another department, including the Venture business, Healthcare, and Media business. The name of this new department will be Frontier Business.
We will have three departments, and we will try to further increase the revenue and the businesses. Next, about the Financial and Insurance Business Division, Credit Card, Consumer Credit business, and Fintech Services, as well as Retail Finance Businesses, are under Financial Business Department. Retail Insurance Distribution, insurance agency and brokerage, and others are under Insurance Business Department. There are two departments. Number of the group company is 34. Number of employees, non-consolidated, is 339. This is the trend of the financial highlights. We started in FYE 2017, and earning base increased through the asset expansion. In terms of total assets in FYE 2017, as you see in the blue bars, total assets were about JPY 700 billion. For FYE 2022, we expect the total assets to be around JPY 1.3 trillion.
As for the green bars showing the consolidated net profit, in FYE 2017, it was around JPY 40 billion, and we expect about JPY 103 billion for FYE 2022, including one-off gains. Looking from the ITOCHU Group, the total asset is about 11% of the total, and core profit is about 12% of the total. Now, in the ICT and Financial Business Companies, we are enhancing the group company management. We have strong operating companies in IT services. Recently, we have a strong tailwind of the digital transformation, or DX, and CTC has been pushed by this tailwind. About three years ago, WingArc1st was commercialized, and this is Japan's top market share in business form solutions. In relation to BPO, we have Bells ystem24 Holdings, one of Japan's largest contact center operators. In healthcare service, A2 Healthcare is one of Japan's foremost CROs.
In media, as you might know, one of Asia's largest satellite communications players, SKY Perfect JSAT. In communication and mobile, Japan's number two mobile phone sales agent, Conexio, is in ICT Division. In the Financial and Insurance Business Division, with the Credit Card, we are seeing the stable revenue from Orient Corporation. There will be explanation that we issue the Famima Card by Pocket C ard and overseas retail finance in Hong Kong and Thailand. The Consumer Financing business is providing us a very stable revenue, for example, UAF and EASY BUY . HOKEN NO MADOGUCHI became the consolidated subsidiary recently, and now the life insurance sales channel has been shifting to the distributors carrying the insurance products of multiple insurance companies. This page shows the areas of the focus in ICT Division.
There is IT or digital transformation, and then mobile-related business, including Conexio, and also the Retail Finance and Insurance. Those are the three major areas of focus for our company. Today, we are focused upon the digital strategies. What is shown in red at the top, we are focusing on the DX area and talk about the growth strategies. Now, let me explain the ICT and Financial Business Company growth strategy. Grow by providing market-oriented services aligned with accelerating business environment changes and diversifying customer needs. You might say that this is kind of vague, and you do not understand what we are trying to do. Simply put, so-called GAFA, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, those are the major IT platformers, providing the various digital services at very reasonable prices. I am sure that you all know this.
For example, in the area of e-commerce, using a smartphone, with one click, you can get the delivery of the product that you want the next day. This has already become the reality. Under those circumstances, existing businesses have to go through the digital transformation. That is one of the realities that we are facing. We are one of the companies who are faced with that. Digitization is an urgent thing that we have to do. For us, the ICT and Financial Business Company, we are strong in digitization and DX. We believe that these environmental changes are opportunities for us so that we can generate businesses. This is one of our core growth strategies. More specifically, there are three things which are listed on this slide.
First is to contribute to profits by strengthening and expanding DX support businesses to generate synergies with existing businesses and company-wide DX promotion. According to the trend of the digitization, the DX-related business demand is expanding. We will start with digitization of the ITOCHU Group. We will support the digitization, and then we would accumulate the know-how so that we can sell those products and services to outside of the company. That's the first point. Second, in the digital society, the importance of the startups and venture businesses are becoming more and more important. For example, ZOZO or Mercari are some of the examples, and I think that they have become a part of your daily lives.
As an ICT and Financial Business Company, through the Investments to the Venture businesses and also through creating the synergies, we want to have access to cutting-edge innovation and secure stable capital gains. This is the second part of our growth strategy. Third, as I said, IT platformers have emerged, and also with the penetration of the smartphones, various businesses are being born and disappear, and they grow and change. We have seen that happening, and we believe that trend will accelerate further. On a daily basis, we are seeing the new business models being generated. For us, the ICT and Financial Business Company, we want to generate the new business. This is what I call innovation. We want to make sure that we have ongoing and continuous new business development so that we can accelerate growth.
That's the third pillar of our growth strategy. Now, let me explain those three, starting with the expanding profit through DX support businesses. CTC is one of our major businesses, and also in contact center, we have Bells ystem24. When we consider the digital transformations, we need to have SI and BPO and other various companies to respond to the various needs. As a company, we would like to have a wide-ranging lineup of services and products so that we can provide solutions to respond to the various needs of digitization of the companies. In the area of the business consulting and management consulting, we collaborate with U.S. company AKQA. SIGMAXYZ is the company that we have a capital tie-up with in Japan for the IT business consulting.
For the digital consulting, we work with BrainPad for the data analytics and others, and also WingArc. Digital marketing and promotion, we have worked with ITOCHU Interactive. In addition, we work with FreakOut and Google-based cloud system integrator, G-I Cloud. We also have Dentsu Retail Marketing, the joint venture with Dentsu, which was commercialized. We want to be able to respond seamlessly to all the DX-related needs to generate the synergies among those businesses and companies. Now, let me give you some specific examples. In promoting the DX support businesses, we will start with the group-wide DX support. For example, NIPPON ACCESS . They used to issue so many invoices for the retailers and the food manufacturers. They needed to exchange those papers with their customers and mail them. Using the WingArc technology, we can digitize those invoices to improve efficiency.
Another example is also of NIPPON ACCESS . Ordering system used to depend upon the professional people using their intuition to place orders. Using AI engine, we can digitize it so that you can place an order and also reduce inventory and enhance the efficiency. This is an example of our cut principle. As for the example of the earn principle, we are working on the food data as a project with the food company. Here we are talking about taste. For example, convenience stores or retailers, even they actually develop the new products almost every month. For example, bitterness or sweetness or sourness, those tastes were expressed in the analog manner only. By digitizing this, this would be helpful for the new product development. This is the service that was developed, and we are selling this service. Those are the examples.
Each example, the revenue from them are not so large. What we want to achieve is to, for example, from the Consultation business, data analytics, or digital design, through those processes, we want to capture the needs for the DX so that we can hand them over to CTC or Bells ystem24. Those existing businesses can expand their revenues and profits. We believe that this type of synergy is possible. The second point of the growth strategy is to secure profit opportunities through Venture businesses. In the ICT and Financial Business Company, since the 1990s, we have secured access to the cutting-edge innovation and business models through the investment through the top-tier funds, starting with Silicon Valley companies in the 1990s until Appier. In Tokyo, we operate our own venture capital. More recently, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Estonia, we have expanded the investments.
The amount of the investment has increased to about five times from FYE 2012, and the return has increased to seven times. What kind of opportunities do we have through the Venture businesses? For this fiscal year, there is a special case of the sale of Paidy. Ultimately, the fintech major player PayPal of the U.S. bought this company at JPY 300 billion. In 2016, when the fintech or BN PL were not discussed in Japan, through the top-tier VC, which invested in the firm and Klarna, we received the information so that we decided to fund Paidy. We dispatched the personnel from the Financial and Insurance Business Division, and also we enhanced their credit with ITOCHU's. We wanted to foster this as an operating company. In 2018, we made additional investments and made this into a company under equity method.
If possible, we wanted to operate this as an operating company. Ultimately, PayPal wanted to acquire this company, and their conditions were considered to be a good one. We decided to sell all the shares to PayPal. This brings us about JPY 30 billion extraordinary gain after tax. This is a special case. M&As, IPOs, and commercialization, through those, we can secure profit opportunities through Venture businesses. The third is the innovation or new business development and growth through the ongoing new business development. What does this mean? I think you all know this, but there are various business models for the general trading companies. It started with trade, moving products and services from left to right. Then we experienced a period of hardship, and we started to invest. The gains from the investment supported the ITOCHU.
In the case of ICT and Financial Business Company, in addition to trade and investment, we need to go to new markets or services brought by new technology. We have to be very proactive to start from scratch to generate the new businesses. This is what I call new business development. Trading and investment. In addition to these, the third pillar is the new business development, which will bring us onto a new growth stage. More specifically, some of the examples are listed here. As a track record of the past initiatives, for example, CTC and Conexio, those were the spin-off operations from the line of trade at the headquarters. In addition to trade, CTC added system integration, development, and maintenance to create the current business model and has become one of the major businesses at our ICT and Financial Business Company.
It is not just CTC and Conexio, but also Asurion, which is the mobile after-service business, started as a joint venture, and portal site Excite, eGuarantee, and kabu.com. Those are the examples. As for the current initiatives shown at the bottom, in the area of DX, the AKQA U.S. digital consulting business, we are working together to develop business in Japan, and Google Cloud-based SI business, G-I Cloud, and Docquity. This is an SNS platform for doctors in Asia. Remote diagnostic support business, MNES, the Belong secondary phone distribution business, RBA, Asia-targeted license business, Money Communication, salary prepayment business, Gardia retail guarantee business, and PDP, Indonesia, P2P lending. There are tens of those examples.
Of course, not all of them will go well, but some of them will be supporting the revenue and profit of ICT and Financial Business Company in the future. I quickly went through the business overview as an ICT and Financial Business Company and talked about the growth strategies. I talked about three things. One is the DX support businesses. The second is Venture business. The third is business incubation or new business development. On the right-hand side of this slide, we are showing the lead times and expected revenue. Is it short-term or long-term, or how much revenue can be expected? I am showing them in different colors. After we finished this slide, I noticed that there are no numbers. Let me talk about some numbers.
As of now, for this fiscal year, as I said, in addition to the JPY 30 billion gain in relation to Paidy, we expect the consolidated net profit to be JPY 103 billion in FYE 2022. By FYE 2026, we want to achieve the JPY 100 billion in core profit and total assets, which was JPY 700 billion in FYE 2017 and increased to JPY 1.3 trillion with the new investments and others. We want to increase that up to JPY 2 trillion. That is the type of the image that we have for the balance sheet so that we can achieve the core profit of JPY 100 billion as a company. Thank you very much. That concludes my presentation of ICT and Financial Business Company.
Thank you for your attention. Hello. I am Kato, President of The 8th Company.
I'd like to talk about the growth strategy of The 8th Company utilizing the basis of the FamilyMart business. The 8th Company was established in July 2019, two years and nine months ago, to shift to the market-oriented perspective and further revitalize the organization and personnel throughout the company, which has the strength in non-resource, especially the retail business. We have three advantages or strengths as follows. First is the physical store network of FamilyMart, 16,600 stores, and also the business foundation with the strength in consumer-related sector, and also personnel with diverse background because people came from different companies and a member-like organization with high mobility. The third strength is the culture to flexibly generate businesses based on the market-oriented perspective, not restricted by the specific products or services. Depending on how you count, but the number of employees is a little less than 50.
We are working on more than 10 projects under four general managers. There are three major initiatives. First is to thoroughly strengthen ITOCHU's core business, FamilyMart business, to improve the three basics of the convenience store business, that is, the product appeal, convenience, and familiarity. In addition, we try to improve and make the supply chain more sophisticated. We are working on the expansion of the profit base as FamilyMart. Second, by using the store network of FamilyMart, 16,600, and also the capability to attract customers, 15 million customers per day, we are trying to generate the new businesses and also to promote the demonstrations of those new businesses at The 8th Company. When we prove or test the effectiveness of those new businesses, those services and technologies will be rolled out nationwide to all the FamilyMart stores and to other retailers and business categories.
Thirdly is to expand the customer contact point through external collaboration, increase data volume, and maximize the revenue from finance, advertising, and media, and to invest new profits to the convenience store business to further improve our capability to attract customers to stores. This page shows our initiatives in relation to FamilyMart. Now that the population is declining, we have a shortage of labor, and the convenience store market is maturing, and we are faced with intense competition with other formats of businesses, such as drug stores. We are seeing social and environmental changes due to COVID-19. In order to resolve those challenges, we are trying to improve the base of our revenue.
We are focused on the basics of the convenience store business and try to utilize the digital technologies at the maximum level so that we can create the new convenience store to realize the different growth. More specifically, together with the sustainable growth of the FamilyMart, we want to become indispensable for community and society and strengthen the base for the convenience store business and create new businesses. Those are the two axes of this growth cycle. On this slide, on the right-hand side, we are showing the increase of the customers to the stores and day sales by using the technologies and also supporting the store operation and diversify stores and reduce workload and strengthen the base of the convenience store business. On the left-hand side, we are showing the new businesses. As I mentioned, there are 15 million per day customers and 16,600 store network nationwide.
We want to make sure that we earn the new revenue from the new businesses, such as finance, advertising, and media business, and reinvest the profits from them for the convenience store business so that we can create the virtuous cycle and create the new storylines. Next, let me talk about the specific digital-related businesses. First, I'd like to talk about FamiPay. Some of you might be using this. Now, for the digital touchpoint, FamiPay app was launched in July 2019. In November last year, we achieved 10 million downloads. The number of downloads is increasing. Now, using the FamiPay app, we can expand the digital touchpoints, and we can combine this with the purchase data of 15 million per day, enhancing the existing businesses and generating new businesses.
As for the existing businesses shown on the right-hand side, through FamiPay, we can provide unique benefits and convenience and also enhance customer relation management or CRM through data analytics. Based upon the purchase data, we can work on the sales promotions, distributing coupons, stamps, and others that would make our customers happy. In addition, we are currently working on the new loyalty program. Through those measures, we want to increase the daily sales and increase the customer traffic. Bottom right shows the new businesses. I will talk about the advertising and media businesses later on. In the financial business, among the major convenience stores, we are the only one which has our own payment function. In September last year, we started the FamiPay next month payment in the case of a shortage of the e-money balance. In December, we started the FamiPay Loan.
This is the small-scale financial service. We have customers coming to the convenience stores with diverse needs. We want to respond to those needs, and we will be increasing those functions gradually from now on. By utilizing digital customer touchpoint, for example, you can pick up the products which are not always available in the store, or you can use the convenience store as a locker and others. We are currently verifying some of the new services. Second is that this is the first new business that The 8th Company generated called Data One. In October 2020, four companies, including ITOCHU and FamilyMart, having 55%, and Docomo, having 40%, and CyberAgent, 5%. Those four companies started the Data One for the digital ads distribution business and ad agency business, utilizing the purchase data of retailers.
By combining or synchronizing the FamilyMart purchase data and d Point member data of NTT Docomo, we hold about 20 million advertising ID, which is the biggest in Japan. Until now, as for the digital ads, it was difficult to understand the effectiveness of the advertising, to understand how consumers saw the advertising before making a purchase. Digital advertising of Data One, based on the purchase data, can distribute the advertising which the customers might be interested in for each ID or based on the ID. It is possible to evaluate advertising at the point of conversion, finding out how the customers came to purchase which products in FamilyMart stores. This can be highly evaluated by the advertisers. Also, it's possible to measure purchase behavior of users who received ads.
By having the multiple patterns of the video included or the advertising included in the social media or YouTube video, you can actually evaluate the creative and verify which creative was more effective for the conversion. Next is about the media business, Gate One. We had a one-year demonstration at 50 stores in Tokyo and 50 stores in Okinawa, and we launched Gate One in September 2021, six months ago. The equity stake is 70% FamilyMart, 30% ITOCHU. This is the media business using digital signage. We established this company to promote this as a new company, new business. In February last month, we completed the installation of the signages to 1,000 FamilyMart stores, and as a next step, we plan to increase it to 3,000 stores by June. This signage is installed 90 degrees from the customer queues.
Fifty to 60% of the customers will look at the signage and will have a certain impression of the signage. We could confirm this with the AI camera and exit research. Advertisers are already evaluating this as a new media. In addition, we can show the commercials of the products which are offered by the stores. That would also have a positive impact on the sales of the stores. The major pillar of the revenue is, of course, ad revenue or commercial revenue. If we only show the commercials, people will get tired of it and lose interest. In this business, I think that the content shown on the signage must be attractive so that the customers coming to FamilyMart would want to watch and listen to what we show on the signage screen.
For example, the promotional programs and also the original interviews for the TV shows and movies are shown, and we have popular actors and actresses appearing. There is a promotional video about this. People who become popular through TikTok and YouTube are introduced through this FamilyMartVision . By doing this, when the customers go to FamilyMart, naturally, they would look at the FamilyMart Vision. In between those content, they will see the commercials. There would also be some content, for example, about the rice bowl ranking top five. Through this, the value of the signage in the store as a media will be higher, and the value of the advertising can be increased as a result. This is the cycle that we want to create. This FamilyMart Vision by Gate One can also be localized.
In the near future, this can be utilized as a media which is tailored to the different localities. We plan to install the signage to 3,000 stores by June. That would be about the same reach as the local TV station. If we install this to 12,000 stores, that would be the equivalent of the key TV station in Tokyo. Within three years, we want to introduce the signages to all the stores, 16,600 stores where possible, so that this will become the third media after the TV and internet. That's kind of like a dream. This is a slide showing the business schemes. By synchronizing the Data One's targeted advertising services with Gate One's media business, utilizing our nationwide FamilyMart store network, we provide new added value to advertisers.
Now, in the world of advertising, as you see on this slide, 20%-30% of the revenues go to agency and distribution cost, and 70%-80% go to the media owner. Of course, among the media revenue, in some cases, media need to pay to create the creative. Sometimes there is an explanation. It is usually the percentage of 20%, 20%, 60%. For us, by doing both of them, we can maximize the advertising and media business revenues. In the future, by utilizing Data One's purchase data, we are considering the integrated marketing of online and offline, distributing the digital ads and FamiPay coupons to people who sell signages at stores. Next is about the humanoid AI assistant. The 8th Company is currently developing this. In 2019, we started the capital tie-up with Couger Inc., which is a startup company developing AI.
Couger has knowledge of gaming AI that can express the human-like emotions and technology to make AI reliable with blockchain and world-class technology in image recognition AI to understand the human expression and gestures. The president of this company actually gives presentations for the Stanford universities. By combining all of those technologies, we are currently co-developing the humanoid AI assistant to support the store operation of FamilyMart efficiently and give advice to the store managers. In comparison to the voice AI equipment, humanoid AI has a higher response to the inquiries or questions. This would reinvigorate and activate the communication and information delivery. We have done the demonstrations at about 40 stores right now, based upon the past store performances, such as sales and disposals and campaign information, weather and the day of the week, and also based upon the behavior data of the store manager and personality.
We are trying to build the effective communication model so that we can give advice to the store manager about the store operations. It is still a pilot stage, only 40 stores, but in stores where there is a daily communication with the AI assistant, we are starting to see the changes of the behavior of the store manager. Their purchasing improves, so their sales also improves. There are positive impacts, and we want to expand this into other FamilyMart stores. Of course, unless many store managers want to use this on a daily basis, the effectiveness would be limited. We want to make it possible so that store managers want to use this humanoid AI. We are currently making such improvements.
Next, as for the initiatives with the ICT and Financial Business Company, Bells ystem24 Holdings, in addition to providing the contact center for FamilyMart, they provide BPO operations in the various areas. Group companies such as Dentsu Retail Marketing, MyVoice Communications, and others, they collaborate with us in doing various experiments based upon the base of the stores of FamilyMart. As an example of the venture investments, Telexistence has a beverage automatic display robot to reduce the store personnel. We are working on those new initiatives using the technology. By using the robotics and AI technology, instead of the store staff, the robot can handle the display of 1,000 cans and bottles per day, 24 hours a day, so that the store workers do not have to leave their store floor to provide customer service and higher value-added work.
Also, ICT and Financial Business Company cooperate with us in providing personnel in various areas, loaning their people to Digital and Financial Business Department of FamilyMart, or finance people to FamilyMart Digital One and ICT people to Data One. As for the three- to five-year medium-term growth trajectory, as we promote and strengthen the existing business of the convenience store by using the technology and know-how of ITOCHU Group, we will be working on generating new businesses in advertising, media, and finance. Tested services and technologies will be rolled out to other retailers and other industries so that we can expand businesses. In advertising, we will form alliances with non-convenience store retail operators in other industries so that we can improve the breadth and quality of purchase data. Data One will try to target the sales of JPY 10 billion in fiscal year ending 2026.
In media business, as I said, we plan to introduce signage in all the stores within three years. In FYE 2026, we try to achieve the advertising sales of JPY 20 billion-JPY 30 billion. In financial business, we would utilize the capability of FamilyMart to attract customers and also the payment function included in the company's app or embedded finance and roll out the various insurance and financial services. Total of the three businesses, we plan to achieve JPY 5 billion-JPY 10 billion profit after tax in FYE 2026. The 8th Company will proactively invest in startups such as Couger so that we can utilize the technologies and services of the investees to the FamilyMart. We will roll out the solutions tested at the FamilyMart and try to secure revenue for ITOCHU. Thank you for your attention.