After Zaim officially released its household accounting app back in 2011, it has gone on to partner with Japan’s largest recipe sharing community Cookpad, raising 42 million yen (approximately $420,000) from the company. They’ve also added an OCR feature to the app back in April, so users can record their expenses by taking pictures of their receipts.
The startup will continue to work closely with Cookpad, as it has recently announced the Zaim app will integrate app with a specific Cookpad service to provide users with bargain updates from their local supermarkets. This bargain search service was launched back in February on Cookpad, and is currently serving about 500,000 users. It allows supermarket clerks to feature certain merchandise in a more quick and efficient manner than traditional hand-delivered fliers.
In addition to monetizable streams like analyzing user data, the startup is likely to expand business by driving user traffic towards real purchase opportunities. According to a survey that Cookpad conducted back in July of 2012, 37% of its user base no longer subscribes to any newspaper, meaning they won’t see such supermarket fliers.
Also operating in this space is a service from Toppan Printing called Shufoo, which allows households to check the latest supermarket discounts online. The service is provided in partnership with NTT Broadband Platform using their WiFi access points, typically located at railway stations in urban areas.
See the original story in Japanese. Thanks to the progress that companies like Rakuten and Amazon have made in the e-commerce market, we can now easily purchase quality items for better prices online. But in Japan, the online retail market still accounts for less than 10% of the nation’s overall retail market, which means there’s still lots of potential for further growth. One player out there is hoping to disrupt the Japanese market from a unique angle. Coach United is the Tokyo-based startup behind Cyta.jp, one of Japan’s leading marketplaces focused on private lessons. According to CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu, their newly launched smartphone-optimized interface will be a turning point for the company, capitalizing on Japan’s increasing affinity for all things mobile. They plan to create a new kind of business where instead of selling just products online, they focus on ‘service e-commerce’. Cyta.jp provides users with information about 140 different private lessons (such as language learning, music study, or qualification acquisition) which are available at 3,000 locations around the country. Unlike other marketplace services which typically connect potential students to lesson teachers, the startup assures the quality of the lessons they introduce on the website by checking into who will…
Thanks to the progress that companies like Rakuten and Amazon have made in the e-commerce market, we can now easily purchase quality items for better prices online. But in Japan, the online retail market still accounts for less than 10% of the nation’s overall retail market, which means there’s still lots of potential for further growth.
One player out there is hoping to disrupt the Japanese market from a unique angle. Coach United is the Tokyo-based startup behind Cyta.jp, one of Japan’s leading marketplaces focused on private lessons. According to CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu, their newly launched smartphone-optimized interface will be a turning point for the company, capitalizing on Japan’s increasing affinity for all things mobile. They plan to create a new kind of business where instead of selling just products online, they focus on ‘service e-commerce’.
Cyta.jp provides users with information about 140 different private lessons (such as language learning, music study, or qualification acquisition) which are available at 3,000 locations around the country. Unlike other marketplace services which typically connect potential students to lesson teachers, the startup assures the quality of the lessons they introduce on the website by checking into who will teach or where it will take place. Since launching back in June of 2011, have served a total of about 20,000 users.
Shifting to Smartphones
Ariyasu explained the recent shift in their users’ preferences.
Smartphone access is rapidly increasing. It used to account for just 10% of all access, but it reached 45% back in June and has now surpassed desktop access.
Cyta.jp access statistics by browsing device (June 2011 – June 2013)
As we reported several times before, smartphone access is increasing across many Japanese web services. Mr. Ariyasu believes in this trend, and is going to adjust his service accordingly.
We learned that people use smartphones during commutes and at home. Over the last two months, we’ve been focusing on developing a smartphone-optimized interface in order to provide [all] available features to smartphone users.
The startup isn’t selling physical products on side, but rather lessons in the form of a service. It requires a business strategy different from that of conventional online retailers. The company expects to standardize its strategy and expand business to other local community-based services. He adds:
We plan to allow users to book a local service using our website and consume it offline. These services include things like baby sitting, waterworks repair, and even decorative nail painting. Major e-commerce sites such as Rakuten or Amazon will not be able to sell these services online. But we believe consumers will want to buy them online.
This concept is somewhat similar to the group-buying service trends initiated by Groupon. It’s relatively easy to build a system that allows users to discover and find a service they may be interested in. However, in order to encouraging consumers to buy the service and give them a positive user experience, it probably requires a little more know-how. In fact, with group-buying services there have been difficulties in terms of how participating retailers delivered their services, often resulting in poor service quality.
Cyta.jp has been trying to ensure quality by interviewing lesson teachers prior to hiring, or carrying out surprise inspections of lessons via ‘mystery shoppers’ (so to speak). It is through this extra effort that the company plans to be a leader in the service e-commerce industry.
Personally I was a little unsure if this quality assurance policy could co-exist with business scalability. But Ariyasu explained:
I don’t think a costly business is unscalable, it’s a bit of a misconception. In fact, group-buying businesses were using a bunch of people for sales, but their business were successfully scaled. Whether or not your business is scalable depends on the whether you can be persistently profitable, so you can receive funds and invest in the business to scale up when needed.
It will be interesting to see what kind of an impact Cyta can make. And it will be perhaps even more interesting to see if many other young startups follow in this sort of service e-commerce in the future.
Emoji and emoticons have always been a big part of Japanese texting culture. It’s not just for texting, but they’re wildly popular on all kinds of social networks including Twitter, 2ch, and others. We previously mentioned a number of apps that provide emoji. But here’s a new one called Kaocole Palette which was just released July 12. We think it’s pretty great. Kaocole Palette is a list of cute emoji sorted by situation and ranking. The app’s user interface is simple, letting you save your favorite emoji as well. It has been released on iOS as Kaocole and Kaocole Mew, and has been downloaded over 700,000 times to date. What’s unique about this particular app is that it runs in the background, and by sliding your finger from right to left on your screen, you can access your list of emoji at anytime, no matter what app you’re in. The common process for most emoji apps requires you to close your current app and open another in order to paste. But the Kaocole app has successfully removed this troublesome step, and users are responding positively in their reviews over on Google Play (currently with a 4.6 average rating). The app…
Emoji and emoticons have always been a big part of Japanese texting culture. It’s not just for texting, but they’re wildly popular on all kinds of social networks including Twitter, 2ch, and others. We previously mentioned a number of apps that provide emoji. But here’s a new one called Kaocole Palette which was just released July 12. We think it’s pretty great.
Kaocole Palette is a list of cute emoji sorted by situation and ranking. The app’s user interface is simple, letting you save your favorite emoji as well. It has been released on iOS as Kaocole and Kaocole Mew, and has been downloaded over 700,000 times to date.
What’s unique about this particular app is that it runs in the background, and by sliding your finger from right to left on your screen, you can access your list of emoji at anytime, no matter what app you’re in. The common process for most emoji apps requires you to close your current app and open another in order to paste. But the Kaocole app has successfully removed this troublesome step, and users are responding positively in their reviews over on Google Play (currently with a 4.6 average rating).
The app was created by the same company behind the unique photo sharing app Bokete. That company, Halo, claims that this sort of sliding feature for emoji is first of its kind in the world.
Kaocole Palette is free to download on Google Play if you’d like to try it out for yourself.
Tokyo-based stock brokerage company Crowd Securities Japan held a press briefing yesterday to announce that it will launch the country’s first investment crowdfunding platform in August. The service is called Crowd Bank. The company’s president Kaz Ohmae, explained a little about the upcoming service. People in Japan keep more than 839 trillion yen ($8.39 trillion) in their savings, more than any other country in the world. However, as little as 8.2 billion yen ($82 million) has been transacted in the Japanese crowdfunding market, less than 5% of the US [transaction volume]. So Japan has great potential for growth in the crowdfunding market. We plan to launch the country’s first investment crowdfunding platform and help SMEs raise funds easier with this service. According to Ohmae, crowdfunding services are categorized into five types corresponding to what you can get in return for investments: donations, rewards, loans, funds, and equity. Regarding the first two, these are relatively easy to launch since no license is required. But for the latter three types of crowdfunding services, operators are requested to get licenses from the Japanese monetary authority. Taking full advantage of its status as a stock brokerage company, they plan to launch a loan crowdfunding…
From the left: CSJ’s President Kaz Ohmae, Chairman Yoshito Denawa
Tokyo-based stock brokerage company Crowd Securities Japan held a press briefing yesterday to announce that it will launch the country’s first investment crowdfunding platform in August. The service is called Crowd Bank.
The company’s president Kaz Ohmae, explained a little about the upcoming service.
People in Japan keep more than 839 trillion yen ($8.39 trillion) in their savings, more than any other country in the world. However, as little as 8.2 billion yen ($82 million) has been transacted in the Japanese crowdfunding market, less than 5% of the US [transaction volume]. So Japan has great potential for growth in the crowdfunding market. We plan to launch the country’s first investment crowdfunding platform and help SMEs raise funds easier with this service.
According to Ohmae, crowdfunding services are categorized into five types corresponding to what you can get in return for investments: donations, rewards, loans, funds, and equity. Regarding the first two, these are relatively easy to launch since no license is required. But for the latter three types of crowdfunding services, operators are requested to get licenses from the Japanese monetary authority.
Taking full advantage of its status as a stock brokerage company, they plan to launch a loan crowdfunding service in August and an equity service next year. They aim to transact 10 billion yen ($100 million) among 10,000 customers using the platform by March of 2015.
The company was previously known as D-brain Securities, focused on dealing with unlisted stocks on Japanese stock exchanges (the Green Sheet Market). They have previously served more than 9,000 clients and managed underwriting for 140 companies. 16 companies of those have exited to an IPO or M&A, and to date the company has provided capital worth 10.7 billion yen ($107 million) to Japanese SMEs from the market.
Prior to joining this company, president Ohmae worked at E-Trade Japan, and was involved in an launching Exchange Corporation, the startup behind Japan’s leading social lending service Aqush.
The video below shows Ohmae giving a brief demo of how the new platform will work.
Japan’s Line Corporation has announced that it will be establishing a new location in the country’s western city of Fukuoka by the fall of 2015. This particular location is being built to help focus on the company’s Asia growth, it’s proximity to other Asian cities makes that a little easier. Line’s popular chat app has 190 million users to date, and could possibly hit 200 million later this month. The new building will be centrally located near Hakata Station, and is expected to be able to accommodate over 1000 people. This will also contribute to the local economy through job creation as well, as it looks like they are already hiring. Our readers may recall that we spend some time in Fukuoka a few months back to cover the B Dash Camp tech conference. Interestingly, one of the headline speakers at that event was Line’s CEO Akira Morikawa, who at the time explained that his company does not plan to establish regional subsidiaries in many countries – but rather operate in a more flexible manner as a sort of borderless company. So far the company has been very good at doing business in this way, and it will be interesting…
Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa
Japan’s Line Corporation has announced that it will be establishing a new location in the country’s western city of Fukuoka by the fall of 2015. This particular location is being built to help focus on the company’s Asia growth, it’s proximity to other Asian cities makes that a little easier.
Line’s popular chat app has 190 million users to date, and could possibly hit 200 million later this month.
The new building will be centrally located near Hakata Station, and is expected to be able to accommodate over 1000 people. This will also contribute to the local economy through job creation as well, as it looks like they are already hiring.
Our readers may recall that we spend some time in Fukuoka a few months back to cover the B Dash Camp tech conference. Interestingly, one of the headline speakers at that event was Line’s CEO Akira Morikawa, who at the time explained that his company does not plan to establish regional subsidiaries in many countries – but rather operate in a more flexible manner as a sort of borderless company.
So far the company has been very good at doing business in this way, and it will be interesting to see if they can keep winning with this game plan as they push for more share around Asia and other parts of the world.
Line will join a number of prominent Japanese tech companies have a presence in Fukuoka already, including CyberAgent, Gumi, Mixi, and Paperboy just to name a few.
For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.
See the original story in Japanese. Terra Motors is a Tokyo-based startup manufacturing mid-range and high-end electric bikes for Asian markets. The startup held a press briefing yesterday and unveiled a brand new model called the A4000i. The new model’s big feature is connectivity with iPhones. When you set your handset on the bike’s handlebar, it will keep you updated with real-time metrics during driving, such as fuel efficiency, tracking routes, and power consumption. With this new function, the startup aims to help courier companies become more efficient in their delivery work. Their strategy is to give consumers in Asia a high-end offering, so the new bike only supports iPhone, as opposed to other smartphone devices. Its price will be around 450,000 yen (about $4,500) in Japan, and will be about the same in other Asian countries. This means the bike will not be cheap for consumers in the region, so the startup hopes that their competitive edge can be in branding rather than pricing. For the company’s mid- to long-term vision, it plans to use data collected from users to develop a new service in partnership with big data solution companies. They’re still preparing a navigation feature as well….
Terra Motors is a Tokyo-based startup manufacturing mid-range and high-end electric bikes for Asian markets. The startup held a press briefing yesterday and unveiled a brand new model called the A4000i.
The new model’s big feature is connectivity with iPhones. When you set your handset on the bike’s handlebar, it will keep you updated with real-time metrics during driving, such as fuel efficiency, tracking routes, and power consumption. With this new function, the startup aims to help courier companies become more efficient in their delivery work.
Metric monitoring interface (under development)
Their strategy is to give consumers in Asia a high-end offering, so the new bike only supports iPhone, as opposed to other smartphone devices. Its price will be around 450,000 yen (about $4,500) in Japan, and will be about the same in other Asian countries. This means the bike will not be cheap for consumers in the region, so the startup hopes that their competitive edge can be in branding rather than pricing.
For the company’s mid- to long-term vision, it plans to use data collected from users to develop a new service in partnership with big data solution companies. They’re still preparing a navigation feature as well.
Terra Motors has developed a prototype for the new model, and plans to start mass production this winter. They expect to sell more than 100,000 bikes by the end of 2015, and they’re currently inviting potential retailers and distributors from around Asia to get in touch.
Terra Motors was founded back in April of 2010, and it received investment worth of 221 million yen (or about $2 million) back in 2011. The investors include Mizuho Capital and several angel investors such as ex-Sony and ex-Google Japan CEOs.
The startup’s CEO Toru Tokushige spoke of his aspiration to be Asia’s answer to Tesla Motors in the region’s electric markets. But he’ll have a big challenge ahead.
Terra Motors’ CEO Toru Tokushige at press briefing on Thursday
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Rick Martin
Junya Mori
