Building a Cloud Based Drug Discovery Startup in Japan 🇯🇵 - Chiral Founders Koji Umeda & Qin Wan

In this episode of The Startup Vagabond, I’m joined by the international co-founders of Chiral, a Japan-based cloud platform revolutionizing the way scientists and biotech startups run drug discovery simulations.

🇨🇳 Qin Wan, originally from China, and 🇯🇵 Koji Umeda, from Japan, reconnected a decade after meeting in business school in Paris — and are now on a mission to lower the barriers to advanced scientific research through cloud-based tools.

We discuss:

✅ The origin story of Chiral and why they started in Fukuoka, Japan

✅ How their platform helps small and mid-sized biotech teams scale research without expensive infrastructure

✅ The current state of Japan’s startup ecosystem and why it’s an exciting place for global founders

✅ Their vision for AI-assisted, no-code scientific workflow builders

✅ Fundraising plans, cloud scalability, and what’s next for Chiral

🌏 From cross-border innovation to cloud-enabled science, this is a story of vision, engineering, and startup grit across continents.

If you're interested in biotech, cloud platforms, or the future of research infrastructure, this one’s for you.