In the 1990s, with the rise of the Internet, the company began developing information services for the new media and expanded its verticals, to cover fashion and travel.

Today, a new generation of leadership is rebuilding the Recruit brand with the mission of “Follow Your Heart”.

In his opening presentation at WIT Japan, Yoshihiro Kitamura, president director of Recruit Lifestyle (left), said, “Our wish is to support individuals as they work towards their dreams.”

It’s a simple and big idea. At its core, Recruit wants to introduce technology that will liberate small businesses from the tedium of operations and payments to focus on customer service, and create more matching opportunities through smart devices.

Kitamura, who built up the Ponpare daily deals business for Recruit, spoke of the group’s 2020 Vision of an AirPlatform to power the back end of small businesses, giving them access to new customers and freeing them from the tedium of paperwork and payments to do what they do best – look after customers.

Aligning it with Japan’s Olympics 2020, Recruit wants to unleash “omotenashi” throughout the country – ‘omotenashi” is defined as “a service concept for which no simple translation exists. Thoughtfulness, dedication to customers’ needs and meticulous attention to detail are key elements of such service”.

“We want to free small businesses from troublesome work and focus on ‘omotenashi’,” he said.

Its vision is to expand the idea beyond Japan and “celebrate the diversity of Asia”, said Kitamura.

It was this statement that made me sit up and take notice because if there’s one challenge Japanese companies face when they try and expand abroad, it’s dealing with diversity and differences because of the homogeneity of their home market.

But this bold vision by Recruit is indicative of the new ambitions Japanese companies have to scale and expand beyond their shores – their home market has been good to them but let’s face it, it’s saturated and competitive – and also indicative of the transformation media companies know they have to make in the new world.

Make no mistake though. Recruit is no small company. Its revenues total US$10.5 billion, it employs 25,000 staff and it’s built up more than 200 services from the ground up (see chart on left).

Last year, it announced it was joining the Ponta loyalty points programme, a move that stirred market interest as it puts it in direct competition with Rakuten which runs a highly successful points programme.

And it’s been accelerating its expansion globally. Indeed, just today in Dublin, Recruit Holdings and Quest Venture Partners announced Series A investment inTripping, a US-based meta search for vacation rentals. The exact sum was not disclosed but speculation puts it between US$5 million and US$10 million.

There is also talk that Recruit may be going public this October. A report in Nikkei News speculated that it could have an initial valuation of more than 1 trillion yen ($9.78 billion), topping Suntory Beverage & Food’s roughly 970 billion yen debut last July.

Kitamura declined to comment on that piece of news but said that it saw technology as a good way to scale its business globally.

Last November, it launched AirRegi, a tablet-based solution that automates invoicing and accounting at retail stores and since its launch last November, has signed up more than 40,000 merchant accounts.

The idea is to “free merchants from operations and costs not directly related to the customers’ experience and enhance the relationship between every merchant and every customer”.

As an idea, it is huge. Asia is powered by SMEs, the toughest segment to crack. It’s easy to build scale for businesses of scale but harder to spread it out over the longtail, and especially across the highly fragmented market of Asia.

When you consider powerful Asian brands like AliBaba and Rakuten, they’ve all succeeded in building highly profitable marketplaces within their own shores but haven’t had the same success outside home.

Kitamura said the future was in “real-time innovation” and technology that blended offline and online so that the divide will eventually disappear.

“We want to empower small businesses so that people can discover the beauty and diversity in Asia,” he said.

It is understood that Recruit, which owns Jalan, has declared its aim to be the world’s largest travel company by 2030 although Kitamura also declined to comment on this on stage.

According to data supplied by Jalan at the WIT conference, it recorded 68.57 million guest nights on booking basis including cancellations from April 2013 through March 2014. In South-east Asia, Recruit has joint ventures for OTAs in Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.