Nihon Kotsu as the "Prince of Taxis." The company was founded as a sole proprietorship in 1928 and reorganized as a stock company in December 1945. It began as a limousine operator and expanded to taxi service in 1940. NK operates the most popular taxi hailing mobile application in Japan, Japan Taxi. Toyota invested 500 million yen in the app in 2017, followed by a second 7.5 billion investment in 2018. Tokyo Musen, a major rival of Nihon Kotsu in the Tokyo area, joined the app later that year in an effort to counterbalance foreign rivals such as Uber and Didi Chuxing.
Scruff (app) and transgender community. In 2014, the company won several mobile app awards including "Time Out" New York’s Best App Award. In 2014, the company launched BenevolAds, which gives $1 million of free in-app advertising, annually, to LGBTQ community nonprofits, sports teams, public health organizations and community partners. The program also works with AIDS organizations, health agencies, and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to educate users about HIV and other diseases and to encourage testing. In 2015, the company added a traveler alert feature that notifies users when they reach one of approximately 100 countries where homosexuality is criminalized,