Team

Why us

Product data is a correctness problem before it is an AI problem. We built a team for that.

  1. 01

    Recognised for this exact problem.1

    METI chose ZAG as one of three winners for helping manufacturers register product information.

  2. 02

    Engineers who prove before they ship.2

    Trained in competitive programming and algorithm research. We treat a product value like a proof: it holds only if its source does.

  3. 03

    The people who build it run it.

    We are a managed service. The engineers who wrote the pipeline are the ones who check your values and answer for them.

  4. 04

    Tokyo-based, built for the world.3,4

    Engineering across Japan and India, sharpened in Techstars Tokyo and JETRO's programme with ERA in New York.

People

  • Yoichi Goto

    Founder & CEO

    Yoichi Goto5

    Founded Pioneerwork in 2019 and leads ZAG. Built and profitably sold two businesses before it; earlier at Dentsu. Kyoto University MBA.

    Founder profile →
  • Selva Ragul Kumar Balakrishnan

    Lead Engineer

    Selva Ragul Kumar Balakrishnan6,2

    Leads engineering for ZAG: the reading pipeline, the source trail behind every value, and the cloud it runs on. Took Pioneerwork through JETRO's AI-CTO course with ERA in New York. Studied at MIT Anna University and IIT Madras.

  • Nikhil Ivannan

    AI Engineer

    Nikhil Ivannan2

    ICPC 2023 regionalist. As a Mitacs Globalink research intern at Dalhousie University, designed a trie-and-graph data structure in C++ that made a phylogenetics graph construction faster by a linear factor. B.Tech in Computer Science, SRM Institute of Science and Technology.

Sources

  1. METI, New Distribution DX Contest Utilizing Product Information Platforms: final results · 2026-02meti.go.jp/policy/economy/distribution/contest_merchandising_data.html
  2. Team members' professional profiles (self-reported)
  3. JETRO, “Techstars Tokyo announces 12 selected companies from 79 countries and regions” · 2024-08-19jetro.go.jp/news/announcement/2024/36bc8fbcf8c9586c.html
  4. JETRO, GSAP 2026: selected companies for all five courses · 2026-07-08jetro.go.jp/news/announcement/2026/71c9ef279e8bdfbb.html
  5. Yoichi Goto, career history as stated on his professional profile (self-reported)
  6. ERA Global, Founder Spotlight: Selva Ragul Kumar Balakrishnan, CTO and Co-Founder of Pioneerwork Inc. (LinkedIn) · 2026-09