Yakult Honsha Company, Limited (株式会社ヤクルト本社, Kabushiki-gaisha Yakuruto Honsha) is a Japanese company founded in 1955 to sell its flagship product, Yakult—a beverage made using industrial lactic milk, a bacterial strain discovered by Minoru Shirota in the 1920s.

The initiative, meant to utilize Japanese women in the workforce, is responsible for up to 60% of all bottled Yakult sales.

[4][5] In 1998, the company gained international attention for its losses in the derivatives market, totaling US$813 million.

[6] In 2000, The Japan Times reported that Yakult Honsha had been paying a criminal syndicate annually to keep them from disrupting shareholder meetings, but that the money was concealed as payments to an advertising company.

[7] Yakult established a US subsidiary and committed to building a factory in Fountain Valley, California in the United States in 2010, and it began production in 2014.