Cover Stephen Chan, founder and group CEO of Inforich, the parent company of portable phone charger sharing service ChargeSpot (Photo: courtesy of Inforich)
Stephen Chan, founder and group CEO of Inforich, the parent company of portable phone charger sharing service ChargeSpot (Photo: courtesy of Inforich)
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From rapping under the stage name of Nycca to becoming “the battery guy”, Stephen Chan speaks to Tatler about his journey building Inforich, the parent company of portable battery sharing service ChargeSpot
While pitching Japanese landlords on installing power-bank rental stations inside their storefronts, Stephen Chan made a point of not mentioning his past life in the music industry—though one of his tracks, released in 2007 under the stage name Nycca, became a walk-out anthem in Japan's Major League Baseball.
“I like to be underestimated, to be the underdog,” says Chan, the founder, president and Group CEO of Inforich—the Japanese parent company of battery-sharing platform ChargeSpot—in an interview from the company’s Hong Kong office. “I wanted people to say, ‘Oh, you're just a battery guy. You're nothing more than that.’ I think that gave me power and strength to really push the business forward in Japan.”
Above Stephen Chan by a ChargeSpot station (Photo: courtesy of Inforich)
Stephen Chan by a ChargeSpot station (Photo: courtesy of Inforich)
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Known for its bright blue-and-white power banks, the ChargeSpot brand grew out of a Hong Kong battery-sharing concept called Cha Cha Station, founded in 2017. Recognising its potential, Chan acquired a 51 per cent controlling stake through Inforich, then formally launched it in Japan in 2018. ChargeSpot now operates nearly 96,000 rental stations across ten markets, including Japan—its largest market, with 64,000 stations and more than 85 per cent domestic market share—Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore, with 23 per cent year-on-year growth in station count.
In Hong Kong, ChargeSpot operates more than 6,000 charging stations, ranging in size from a toaster to a wardrobe. At convenience stores like 7-Eleven or train stations, users can scan a QR code via the ChargeSpot app, unlock a portable power bank, and charge at an hourly rate before returning the device to any network station. To stand out from the competition, ChargeSpot also collaborates with brands like Hong Kong designer Kasing Lung’s Labubu, Hong Kong Disneyland, the Football Association of Hong Kong, and ComplexCon Hong Kong.
Read more: Meet the man behind the Labubu madness: Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung
Behind ChargeSpot’s low-tech power banks lies a broader move toward high-tech digital services that Chan says build on localised, real-time consumer interactions. Inforich’s “location times technology” network spans SpotJobs, a gig-worker platform with 2.5 million monthly active users in Japan; NaviSpot, an “AI concierge” on certain charging stands that can help passersby answer questions; and ShareSpot, an app bundling bike, umbrella, office and EV-charging rentals into a single platform.
For Chan, leading Inforich through this next phase has meant tapping into his multicultural identity. Born in Hong Kong to a Hakka-Chinese father and a Japanese mother, Chan—whose Japanese name is Hironobu Akiyama—has centred Inforich’s philosophy on “bridging beyond borders”. Before founding Inforich, Chan consulted for Japanese consumer brands like Kagome and Ichiran, helping them establish footholds in Hong Kong. “It’s really understanding what the core needs they are asking for,” Chan notes. “And that’s not language, that’s really understanding the people.”
Following its debut in December 2022 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market, Inforich grew revenue roughly 30 per cent year-over-year—a pace that mapped onto the company’s Vision2030 plan, laid out in August 2023. Even so, its stock price languished. Chan says public capital markets have repeatedly struggled to price hardware-heavy sharing platforms, treating them as low-margin utility businesses.
In February 2026, Inforich agreed to a management buyout backed by Bain Capital in a deal valued at roughly 50 billion yen. Completed in June, the buyout came at roughly a 123 per cent premium, leaving Chan with a reinvested minority stake alongside Bain’s majority holding. The move was about “giving the business room to invest ahead of growth, in markets like Europe and the US, without the constraints of quarterly shareholder expectations,” Chan added in emailed comments to Tatler.
Inforich’s buyout came amid a historic surge in Japanese private equity dealmaking, in which take-private transactions accounted for nearly half of the market’s 4.8 trillion yen total deal value in 2025, according to a June report by consulting firm Bain & Company (of no relation to Bain Capital). Spurred by ongoing corporate governance reforms targeting undervalued companies, the report added that take-private deals remained a key feature of Japan’s market.
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Looking ahead, Inforich aims to layer on higher-margin software services like CheerSpot, a fan-engagement feature on its app. Users can pay for ads, or "cheers", for their favourite singers or dancers, with 30 per cent of their purchases sent directly to artists and their production houses. Chan says it’s his way of giving back to the music industry. “When I was an artist, if you released a CD or a song under a label, basically an artist just got less than 5 per cent,” Chan says. “I just wanted this concept to have more revenue streams to generate for the artists to make their own songs or make their productions.”
To prepare for a potential relisting by 2030, the CEO draws on a leadership philosophy summed up in two phrases: “people sharpen people” and “role over rank”—an ethos he traces back to the 1990s hip-hop scene, and what he calls “keeping it real”.
He points to the 1995 Grammy-winning hip-hop track, I’ll Be There for You / You're All I Need to Get By by Method Man featuring Mary J Blige, a song centred on loyalty, mutual dedication and standing by one’s partner through thick and thin. Chan specifically draws motivation from Method Man’s verse: “Surely I can/ I’ll be there for you /If you keep it real with me/ I keep it real with you.”
Above I’ll Be There for You / You're All I Need to Get By by Method Man, featuring Mary J Blige
To Chan, the line is a business ethos. “I really believe that ‘keeping it real’ builds trust,” he says. “The way I like to do business is very simple and very direct, and it’s really about earning trust.”
Inforich’s business model for its millions of app users still relies on light blue kiosks at street corners and shopping centres, waiting for passers-by to run out of battery. As the company pursues higher-tech ambitions, Chan is still happy to be the “underdog”—for now.
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Cat Wang is an editor at Tatler Asia based in Hong Kong, where she covers business, wealth, innovation, and impact. Previously, she was a Forbes Asia reporter and assistant editor of the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list, spotlighting startups and small companies on the rise across the Asia-Pacific. She began her career as a trainee reporter at the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s newspaper of record. Born in New York City, she graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a B.A. in political science.
