Press Room

October 1, 2012

NIFTY Corporation
SANKEI LIVING SHINBUN Incorporated
Mitsubishi Corporation
COOKPAD Incorporated

SHUFUMO-COOKPAD Partnership To Improve Everyday Shopping and Cooking Convenience

SHUFUMO provider, NIFTY Corporation (NIFTY), SANKEI LIVING SHIMBUN Incorporated (SANKEI), Mitsubishi Corporation (MC), and COOKPAD Incorporated (COOKPAD), today entered a partnership that connects SHUFUMO’s grocery store discount information service to COOKPAD’s recipe information service. NIFTY runs SHUFUMO, which is a free smartphone and mobile service providing discount information from local supermarkets. COOKPAD runs the largest recipe upload/search service in Japan, also available for smart phone. Particularly aimed at housewives, combining these two services will undoubtedly make everyday shopping easier and more fun for consumers. MC will continue to provide wholesalers and related parties with necessary information regarding food products and services while SANKEI will ramp up advertising and promotion in its publications.

This partnership is a dream come true for the four companies’ as it brings together their shared desire “to make it easy for people to carry out their everyday household chores more conveniently”. In three easy steps, “plan , shop, cook”, householders can shop more conveniently for the meal they plan to prepare while keeping the intended recipe in mind.

COOKPAD has started a new service, linked to SHUFUMO, which allows free users to search for recipes while looking up discount information using the same (COOKPAD) smart phone application (*1). Once the COOKPAD user has registered a local grocery store, s/he will be able to look up discount information for that grocery store and search for recipes wich include those discounted products. Premium Member users are able to register more than one grocery store (*2).

NIFTY, SANKEI, and MC expect that this initiative will lead to an increase in the amount of discount information provided by grocery stores around the country (some 9,300 participating stores as of September 2012) through the services provided by SHUFUMO. This will have the added benefit of increasing convenience for consumers in their everyday household management chores while at the same time promoting the use of supermarkets and contributing to increased sales for food and beverage manufacturers.

SHUFUMO and COOKPAD will continue to deliver products and services to the market that meet consumers’ needs while making their everyday lives “more convenient, more economical, and more fun”.

The four companies hope this partnership will help COOKPAD’s 20 million usersa month to discover and enjoy new pleasures in the world of cooking.

■Reference: A Peak at How the Service Works

（*1）Access available only with internet browsers on smartphones and Android Apps.

（*2） COOKPAD’s Premium Service

Allows users to utilize additional applications such as recipe search rankings for a monthly fee of 294 yen (including tax).

※iPhone and iPad apps are priced at 350 yen per month (including tax).

■About NIFTY Corporation

（http://www.nifty.co.jp/）

NIFTY is an internet service company which manages “@nifty”. As expressed through its corporate message,“With Us, You can.”, NIFTY aims to provide high-quality, safe, and reliable services that contribute to enriching and making peoples’ everyday lives more convenient.

■About SANKEI LIVING SHIMBUN Incorporated

（http://www.sankeiliving.co.jp/）

SANKEI is a “marketing company with an overall focus on women” which seeks to bridge a connection between women, local communities and business interests. Through the publication of three main free magazines, “Living Shimbun”, “City Living”, and “Anfan”, SANKEI provides information that is useful to people’s daily lives, women’s development and the advancement of local communities. Sankei is a group of companies which specializes in marketing to women through various media, ranging from direct promotions among women’s organizations to market research and analysis.

■About Mitsubishi Corporation （http://www.mitsubishicorp.com/）

Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) provides a diverse range of services in the consumer market. MC leverages its comprehensive network of affiliated companies and business partners as well as its knowledge base to provide food and beverage manufacturers and grocery stores with a platform for marketing and promotion in an effort to help them attract more customers for their goods and services.

■About COOKPAD Incorporated

（http://info.cookpad.com/）

COOKPAD runs “COOKPAD”（http://cookpad.com） which is based on the concept of making peoples’ everyday cooking fun. COOKPAD is Japan’s biggest food recipe upload/search service which started in March 1998. The service is used by 80-90% of all Japanese women in the 20-30 age cohort and has more than 20 million users per month (including both computer and mobile users).

※The numbers above were calculated on the basis of total population figures provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and on surveys held among different age segments of COOKPAD users.

※Based on a survey held in July 2012, 58.6% of personal computer users also use mobile phones or tablet computers.

[Records from the July 2012 Survey]

Monthly COOKPAD users: more than 20 million users

(Personal Computer Users: 12.69 million, Mobile Phone Users: 13.42 million)

Number of Recipes: 1.27 million

※ “Android” is a trademark or a registered trademark of Google Inc.

※ “iPhone” and “iPad” are trademarks or registered trademarks of Apple Inc.

※Names of products in this news release are generally their company’s trademarks or registered trademarks.”

Inquiry Recipient

Mitsubishi Corporation
Telephone:+81-3-3210-2171 / Facsimile:+81-3-5252-7705