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Hong Kong-based brokerage service ‘8 Securities’ now online in Japan

Rick Martin 2014.05.21

Hong Kong-based online brokerage 8 Securities has officially launched its localized Japanese website just a few hours ago (8securities.co.jp), which will support its services for Japan when they launch in the coming weeks. The company’s Wealth Management service is scheduled to launch in early June, and its Social Trading Portal will follow in July.

With intentions to expand from Hong Kong to cover both Japan and the Greater China area, this step into Japan represents a bold move for the company which looks to be growing well. I understand that currently 8 Securities will be operating profitably in 2014, with its bottom line increasing $4 million from 2012 to 2013. It boasts about 50,000 customers [1], with the average customer holding about $40,000 of investments.

About 8% of their users access trading on mobile (the portal is web-based), and that approach will certainly serve them well in Japan where smartphone usage is relatively high.

Unique to Japan

Regarding the Wealth Management offering, the company’s CEO, Mikaal Abdulla, elaborates on how it works:

We are offering Japan customers a simple way to invest in a global portfolio of up to 17 exchange traded funds. Customers complete a 3 minute online survey to assess their risk profile and time horizon and we deliver a global portfolio that matches their goals. Its that simple.

8 Securities’ Social Trading Portal is, in my view, its most intriguing technology, a peer-to-peer service that lets users view how the community is trading as a whole, and even get push notifications for activity on watched stocks, traders, geographies, or times. Mikaal adds, “Unlike social trading mobile apps or bulletin boards, we have combined the social interaction and the actual trade. This has not been done before.”

Interestingly, 8 Securities is aiming to eventually offer this particular service via the web at no cost, with the goal of attaining 1 million registered users. That could serve as a great way to bring potential customers in the door who might then might begin investing with a brokerage account. That’s really clever.

Mikaal explains that they are also planning to launch the Social Trading Platform in Mainland China in late 2014. He explains that they develop all their products in English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Japanese, so expansion of the tech itself will be more or less a turn-key process.

These services promise to help Japanese individuals to invest in global markets more easily, and Mikaal notes that both product lines “are totally unique in Japan and solve real customer problems.”

To learn more about 8 Securities and its push into Japan, do check out the company’s YouTube Channel which has a number of informative new videos in Japanese, including this brief introduction to the service.

Mikaal explains that this is 50,000 active accounts with assets, which differs slightly from some previous reports (like this one) about 8 Securities because of a redefinition of ‘active’, which I understand is now in line with industry norms. ↩

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Japanese homescreen customization app breaks through 25M downloads, enjoys international success

Rick Martin 2014.05.20

United Inc, the Japanese maker of smartphone customization app Cocoppa, announced today that their flagship app has surpassed 25 million downloads, as of May 16. Cocoppa is a standout Japan success story in that it has quite successfully won fans in overseas markets, with 84% of their users from outside Japan. The service originally started back in July of 2012, averaging just over a million new downloads a month. As for user engagement, Cocoppa has seen 600,000 screen icons contributed to its platform, as well as 130,000 wallpapers. As you can see in the chart below, Cocoppa’s user base skews towards iOS. The Android version of the app has only been around for about a year (launched in May 2013), so expect this to be a more balanced distribution quite soon. Recently Cocoppa was challenged on its home turf by mobile giant Line, which launched its own homescreen customization app, Line Deco. That application is doing respectably well in major Asian markets, so this could be an interesting battle to watch in the coming months.

United Inc, the Japanese maker of smartphone customization app Cocoppa, announced today that their flagship app has surpassed 25 million downloads, as of May 16.

Cocoppa is a standout Japan success story in that it has quite successfully won fans in overseas markets, with 84% of their users from outside Japan. The service originally started back in July of 2012, averaging just over a million new downloads a month. As for user engagement, Cocoppa has seen 600,000 screen icons contributed to its platform, as well as 130,000 wallpapers.

As you can see in the chart below, Cocoppa’s user base skews towards iOS. The Android version of the app has only been around for about a year (launched in May 2013), so expect this to be a more balanced distribution quite soon.

Recently Cocoppa was challenged on its home turf by mobile giant Line, which launched its own homescreen customization app, Line Deco. That application is doing respectably well in major Asian markets, so this could be an interesting battle to watch in the coming months.

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Selected startups move on from Orange Fab Tokyo to demo in Paris

Rick Martin 2014.05.20

Back in February we briefly introduced the eight startups joining Orange Fab Tokyo, one of the regional accelerator programs from the French telecom Orange. Those startups, if you need a refresher, are: Abeja: An insights solution for retail stores that uses image recognition technology to estimate age and gender of customers. Jin-Magic: Internet traffic optimization technology that aims to stabilize TCP sessions. Livepass: Push notification platform for mobile app developers, enabling better contact with users Locarise: Analytics service for retail stores that makes use of wi-fi signals from smartphones (Related) Mashroom: Developing a telecommunications device for touch-screen devices called FlashTouch, which allows the transmission of data using visible light and capacitive touch. NetLED: Network lighting control system, leveraging the cloud to more efficiently use and monitor wirelessly networked lights. Pigmal: Developing PnPkin, an ID for smartphones that users the audio jack. (Related) sMedio: Lets you share photos, videos, music, or applications using Miracast technology. This past week Orange Fab held a demo day where eight of these startups pitched to an audience of about 100. Five of the startups – Abeja, Jin Magic, LivePass, Locarise, and NetLED – were selected (prior to the event) to move on to Orange’s global…

Abeja: An insights solution for retail stores that uses image recognition technology to estimate age and gender of customers.
Jin-Magic: Internet traffic optimization technology that aims to stabilize TCP sessions.
Livepass: Push notification platform for mobile app developers, enabling better contact with users
Locarise: Analytics service for retail stores that makes use of wi-fi signals from smartphones (Related)
Mashroom: Developing a telecommunications device for touch-screen devices called FlashTouch, which allows the transmission of data using visible light and capacitive touch.
NetLED: Network lighting control system, leveraging the cloud to more efficiently use and monitor wirelessly networked lights.
Pigmal: Developing PnPkin, an ID for smartphones that users the audio jack. (Related)
sMedio: Lets you share photos, videos, music, or applications using Miracast technology.

This past week Orange Fab held a demo day where eight of these startups pitched to an audience of about 100. Five of the startups – Abeja, Jin Magic, LivePass, Locarise, and NetLED – were selected (prior to the event) to move on to Orange’s global demo day in Paris on June 12. They will join other Orange family startups from the US, France, Poland, and Israel.

It will be especially interesting to see Abeja and Locarise get some global exposure, given that they are both retailer metrics solutions, a sector that is more and more popular of late. NetLED will also be one to watch, considering the recent buzz around the Internet of Things and Google’s recent acquisition of smart thermostat startup Nest.

We understand that Orange Fab has already begun accepting applications for its ‘second season’ here in Tokyo, and they are also accepting interested startups for first batches in Seoul and Taipei. To learn more about those programs, more information can be found here.

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Japan’s code learning startup TribeUniv raises $400,000 from CyberAgent Ventures

Junya Mori 2014.05.19

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based TribeUniv, the company behind the online programming lecture service CodeCamp, announced today that it has raised about 40 million yen (or $400,000) from CyberAgent Ventures. Tribe-Univ was formed during the fifth edition of Incubation Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. Following their $30,000 funding from Incubate Fund last July, they launched the learning platform last October. The startup boasts a former Cybird employee previously in charge of training new employees at that company, who has developed curriculum at Tribe-Univ for a programming course. Since launching six months ago, the course has acquired more learners than initially expected, most of whom are entirely new to programming. To better serve such people, the company recently also launched new courses in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Jquery. Even non-engineers often need to have some basic technical understanding of programming in order to efficiently communicate with engineers. To that end, many website directors or designers have applied to join courses, accounting for about 80% of all learners. CodeCamp provides lectures by professional programmers on a one-to-one basis in contrast to typical online learning services, so a student may progress faster…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based TribeUniv, the company behind the online programming lecture service CodeCamp, announced today that it has raised about 40 million yen (or $400,000) from CyberAgent Ventures.

Tribe-Univ was formed during the fifth edition of Incubation Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. Following their $30,000 funding from Incubate Fund last July, they launched the learning platform last October.

The startup boasts a former Cybird employee previously in charge of training new employees at that company, who has developed curriculum at Tribe-Univ for a programming course. Since launching six months ago, the course has acquired more learners than initially expected, most of whom are entirely new to programming. To better serve such people, the company recently also launched new courses in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Jquery.

Even non-engineers often need to have some basic technical understanding of programming in order to efficiently communicate with engineers. To that end, many website directors or designers have applied to join courses, accounting for about 80% of all learners. CodeCamp provides lectures by professional programmers on a one-to-one basis in contrast to typical online learning services, so a student may progress faster than if he or she studied at a conventional school.

The company’s CEO Hironobu Ikeda told us that they expect to have 1,500 students by next March. In addition to user acquisition, they have also started approaching companies to let them adopt the platform for in-house employee training. That initiative has gotten a good response this far.

Regarding the variety of languages, we understand they may add new courses for mobile development later on. If you have struggled to learn programming before, you may want to try CodeCamp. Note that it’s only available in Japanese.

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Japanese adtech startup FreakOut has filed for an IPO

FreakOut

Takeshi Hirano 2014.05.19

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese ad platform operator FreakOut applied and was approved for an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers Market today. The company is expected to be listed on June 24th, with plans to offer 530,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 112,500 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 332,500 shares. The company was launched back in October of 2010, and subsequently introduced demand-side platform FreakOut in January of 2012 and data management platform Mother in March of 2013. Their major shareholders include Kronos Fund, Jafco, YJ Capital, GMO Venture Partners, Batara Eto, and Shogo Kawada. [1] To elaborate on those organizations and individuals: Kronos Fund is an investment fund by Japanese investor Taiga Matsuyama. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan. Batara Ito is the co-founder and former CTO of Japanese internet company Mixi, currently managing his own investment fund East Ventures with Taiga Matsuyama. Shogo Kawada is an angel investor as well as the co-founder of Japanese internet company DeNA. ↩

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese ad platform operator FreakOut applied and was approved for an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers Market today. The company is expected to be listed on June 24th, with plans to offer 530,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 112,500 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 332,500 shares.

The company was launched back in October of 2010, and subsequently introduced demand-side platform FreakOut in January of 2012 and data management platform Mother in March of 2013. Their major shareholders include Kronos Fund, Jafco, YJ Capital, GMO Venture Partners, Batara Eto, and Shogo Kawada. [1]

To elaborate on those organizations and individuals: Kronos Fund is an investment fund by Japanese investor Taiga Matsuyama. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan. Batara Ito is the co-founder and former CTO of Japanese internet company Mixi, currently managing his own investment fund East Ventures with Taiga Matsuyama. Shogo Kawada is an angel investor as well as the co-founder of Japanese internet company DeNA. ↩

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Japanese startup launches social quiz app ‘BrainWars’

Masaru Ikeda 2014.05.19

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Translimit recently launched a social quiz app called BrainWars. The new app is available for iOS in both English and Japanese. BrainWars pits players against one another in three sets of mental exercise games (15 seconds each) to see which player performs better. Our readers may recall that we mentioned this app when the company secured funding from Genuine Startup and Skyland Ventures back in March. Since then, their team has been largely devoted to improving the app’s interface. So today we’d like to focus a little more on the functions that were added as part of their improvement efforts. BrainWars lets you compete against other players online, but you can compete even when that person is offline since the system virtually reproduces them as your competitor based on their past records. They call this their ‘ghost’ function. In this way, you can encourage your friends to play against you or others by sharing just a link via Facebook, Twitter, or Line. The company is planning to first invite serial entrepreneurs as their users and then market the app by having new users to play against such notable people. Making the grade…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Translimit recently launched a social quiz app called BrainWars. The new app is available for iOS in both English and Japanese.

BrainWars pits players against one another in three sets of mental exercise games (15 seconds each) to see which player performs better. Our readers may recall that we mentioned this app when the company secured funding from Genuine Startup and Skyland Ventures back in March. Since then, their team has been largely devoted to improving the app’s interface. So today we’d like to focus a little more on the functions that were added as part of their improvement efforts.

BrainWars lets you compete against other players online, but you can compete even when that person is offline since the system virtually reproduces them as your competitor based on their past records. They call this their ‘ghost’ function.

In this way, you can encourage your friends to play against you or others by sharing just a link via Facebook, Twitter, or Line. The company is planning to first invite serial entrepreneurs as their users and then market the app by having new users to play against such notable people.

Making the grade

They initially planned to deploy a very simple grading system, assigning a level like beginner or professional, where a user’s grade increases as he or she improves. But at the time of launch, they decided on a more elaborate system with 25 grades, starting first with a chicken, then a turtle.

You can choose three out of 12 quiz game categories (like FlickMaster, DoubtColor, and High and Low) in determining what kind of questions you expect to see in the match. If you don’t choose categories, the system will choose them automatically. If you intentionally choose the categories, you will need to consume a coin, which requires an actual purchase.

Every user has several ‘heart’ points when starting out, but one ‘heart’ point will be consumed every time you play a match. This stamina-based purchase model is, of course, common in many mobile games these days.

The company also plans to advertise using the aforementioned ‘ghost’ player function. Major brands can market themselves by encouraging consumers to playing against their characters in the app. Considering the categories, you may assume demographics are broad ranging, but we understand that the app can show ads according to age or gender, which lets brands easily target a certain user base.

The company appears to have a much improved user interface at launch. The quality of animated graphics and sound effects should allow the app to attain the same kind of popularity as many game titles. Let’s wait and see how it does!

Hong Kong-based brokerage service ‘8 Securities’ now online in Japan

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