TechCrunch Japan, the local version of US-based tech news blog, held an annual showcase event called TechCrunch Tokyo yesterday and today. At its startup battle competition where 12 finalists competed against each others in pitching, circuit board printing startup AgIC won the grand prize while OpenLogi, an outsourced logistics service for small/medium-sized companies and freelancers, won the judges’ special prize.
Our readers may recall that AgIC recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for the erasable enhanced version of its circuit pattern maker based on electro-conductive ink technology.
See the original story in Japanese. Docomo Ventures, an investment arm of the Japanese major mobile company, held a demo day event last week to showcase their incubation initiative, where four companies that graduated from the third batch each made a pitch to an audience of local investors and entrepreneurs. Unlog (‘Judges and audience’ award winner, ‘Unique Healthcare’ award winner) Unlog, literally meaning ‘poo log’, is a free iOS app that lets you input details about each poop that you make. You can specify the size, shape, and color of your poops, as well as input how bad it smelled or whether or not you experienced any discomfort. See also: Japanese poop-logging app has over 130,000 downloads MoneySmart (‘Innovative Life Design’ award winner) MoneySmart is a personal asset analysis app that offers advise on how to improve your life by altering spending habits. The app allows you to record where and for whom you have spent money. In this way, you can sort out useful or wasteful spending and refer to this information for better money management. MoneySmart is avaialble for iOS in the iTunes app store. Oton Glass (‘Social architect’ award winner) Oton Glass is a smart glass for…
Docomo Ventures, an investment arm of the Japanese major mobile company, held a demo day event last week to showcase their incubation initiative, where four companies that graduated from the third batch each made a pitch to an audience of local investors and entrepreneurs.
Unlog (‘Judges and audience’ award winner, ‘Unique Healthcare’ award winner)
Unlog, literally meaning ‘poo log’, is a free iOS app that lets you input details about each poop that you make. You can specify the size, shape, and color of your poops, as well as input how bad it smelled or whether or not you experienced any discomfort.
MoneySmart (‘Innovative Life Design’ award winner)
MoneySmart is a personal asset analysis app that offers advise on how to improve your life by altering spending habits. The app allows you to record where and for whom you have spent money. In this way, you can sort out useful or wasteful spending and refer to this information for better money management.
Oton Glass is a smart glass for aphasia sufferers, or people who cannot recognize characters or letters. Some 500,000 people in Japan, 1 million in the US, and 250,000 in the UK suffer from this disorder.
Oton Glass recognizes characters and tells users their meaning via a bone conduction speaker in the device. The product is named after the inventor’s father, whose aphasia affliction motivated the inventor to develop the device.
Liquid (‘Sony Select’ award winner)
Liquid is a fingerprint-based authentication service that allows users to complete payments without the need for a credit card or cash. The service was developed by Fukuoka-based startup Lacknet and offers an alternative to conventional customer loyalty cards at retailers. Their concept is similar to PayTango, a startup born out of Carnegie Mellon University.
TekkyuAR
In addition to the aforementioned four team from the latest batch, app development team SMDLab (Smart Design Laboratory) showcased their augmented reality app TekkyuAR to a crowd at this opportunity. The team is comprised of Hosei University students, and won the best award at Docomo Developer Application Contest 2nd in August. Users enjoy the game by controlling a ball in the 3D maze. Below is an interesting demo video clip produced by Epson America. So check it out.
Docomo Ventures recently an new initiative as part of their ‘Open Innovation’ efforts, called 39 Works. This initiative encourages entrepreneurs collaboratively develop a new service with NTT Docomo, so entrepreneurs can start discussing with Docomo Ventures representatives prior to the start of the development of a product or service. In terms of giving entrepreneurs a chance to launch a startup without a product, this concept is similar to Beenos in Japan, as well as local incubators in Los Angeles.
We will monitor the startups that graduated and report on any developments.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Japan’s AgIC, a startup born out of the University of Tokyo with the remarkable electrically conductive ink technology, launched a new Kickstarter campaign today, raising funds for an enhanced version of the AgIC Circuit Marker. The new product is called Erasable Circuit Marker, which allows users to erase circuit patterns that they have drawn with silver nano ink. See also: Circuit board printing startup AgIC wins pitching competition in Tokyo, advances to finals in San Francisco Through user feedback, the AgIC team learned that many users need the ability to erase circuit patterns that they have drawn. So they included an eraser in the new version. AgIC is seeking a modest sum of $10,000, planning to start shipping the new version in March 2015. In the previous Kickstarter campaign in March, they fundraised in a month about 8 million yen ($80,000) from over 900 backers for the current product version.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Japan’s AgIC, a startup born out of the University of Tokyo with the remarkable electrically conductive ink technology, launched a new Kickstarter campaign today, raising funds for an enhanced version of the AgIC Circuit Marker. The new product is called Erasable Circuit Marker, which allows users to erase circuit patterns that they have drawn with silver nano ink.
Through user feedback, the AgIC team learned that many users need the ability to erase circuit patterns that they have drawn. So they included an eraser in the new version.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. A2mato (pronounced as ‘ani-mart’) is a C2C flea market app focused on goods relating to Japanese subculture. Tokyo-based 7-bites, the company behind A2mato, announced today that it has fundraised an undisclosed amount from several Japanese investors. This round was led by CyberAgent Ventures with participation from East Ventures and angel investors like Ryu Okada (DeNA co-founding member) and Osamu Shibata. This follows their previous funding of $295,000 in June 2013. A2mato allows users to sell and buy their anime goods, fanzines, manga books, games, cosplay costumes, figures, and cards. Since its launch in January, the marketplace has listed over 250,000 items. An iOS app is available here. Upon this funding, 7-bites has partnered with Aucfun, the Japanese company behind a price comparison site under the same name. Aucfun acquired an undisclosed amount of 7-bites shares from shareholders in this round. Through this partnership, the two companies will integrate their systems – leveraging Aucfan’s database of prices and profiles for more than 20 million items. 7-bites CEO Shota Sawada explained: As our integration proceeds, users will be allowed to find items listed on A2mato through Aucfan.com. C2C users are less…
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
A2mato (pronounced as ‘ani-mart’) is a C2C flea market app focused on goods relating to Japanese subculture. Tokyo-based 7-bites, the company behind A2mato, announced today that it has fundraised an undisclosed amount from several Japanese investors. This round was led by CyberAgent Ventures with participation from East Ventures and angel investors like Ryu Okada (DeNA co-founding member) and Osamu Shibata. This follows their previous funding of $295,000 in June 2013.
A2mato allows users to sell and buy their anime goods, fanzines, manga books, games, cosplay costumes, figures, and cards. Since its launch in January, the marketplace has listed over 250,000 items. An iOS app is available here.
Upon this funding, 7-bites has partnered with Aucfun, the Japanese company behind a price comparison site under the same name. Aucfun acquired an undisclosed amount of 7-bites shares from shareholders in this round. Through this partnership, the two companies will integrate their systems – leveraging Aucfan’s database of prices and profiles for more than 20 million items.
7-bites CEO Shota Sawada
7-bites CEO Shota Sawada explained:
As our integration proceeds, users will be allowed to find items listed on A2mato through Aucfan.com. C2C users are less internet-literate and less familiar with market values. So we will list market quotes in item lists on the A2mato website through the integration.
Nearly a year has passed since our launch, and we’ve seen heavy users spending as much as 100,000 yen ($865) a month. They are mostly fangirls who buy goods of their favorite anime characters.
However, it was slow going for A2mato in its early days and has been struggling to grow the first three months since the launch.
Sawada continued:
We have drastically improved the user interface to enhance the perspicuity, changing one column to two. Results were good, and our users has been increasing in number since April. Today the user growth has reached 20% to 25% on a month-over-month basis, and their retention rate hit more than 40%. After a user submits an item on our app, it takes about five minutes to close the deal. We aim to shorten this time.
Sellers want to sell their items faster; buyers want to buy their items faster. So more users will use various flea market apps, and a fast selling market will win. We will enlarge our user base and accelerate the speed from the discovery of an item to its purchase for users. Because our app is focused on a niche market, it is more likely to matchmake sellers and buyers than other Japanese flea market apps like Mercari and Fril.
7-bites aims to transact 100 million yen a month in six months, 200 million yen a month by November of 2015. They expect their user base to grow by increasing public exposure through advertisements, etc.
The company will use the funds to strengthen marketing, user support, as well as enhance functionality.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese game developer Gumi’s IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange was approved today. The company will be listed on 9 December. Gumi was launched in June 2007 to provide a feature phone-based social network service under the same name. Subsequently they entered the mobile game development business and introduced notable titles via DeNA, Gree, and other app distribution channels. In July 2013, Gumi co-founded a company called Alim in partnership with Fuji Startup Ventures and B Dash Ventures, where they introduced a global smash-hit gaming title Brave Frontier. The company partnered with Japanese messaging company Line in August. See also: Feeding Asia’s growing games appetite: Gumi Asia CEO on expansion beyond Japan Japanese gaming company Gumi raises $50M, partners with Sega Networks for US market Reps from GREE, DeNA, and Gumi discuss how to win in global gaming
Japanese game developer Gumi’s IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange was approved today. The company will be listed on 9 December.
Gumi was launched in June 2007 to provide a feature phone-based social network service under the same name. Subsequently they entered the mobile game development business and introduced notable titles via DeNA, Gree, and other app distribution channels.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Kyoto- and Silicon Valley-based Nota, the company that provides screen capture and cloud storage platform Gyazo, announced today that it has fundraised $2 million from Japanese Internet company Opt, as well as two VC firms; YJ Capital and Miyako Capital. Gyazo allows users to capture a screenshot and share it with other users via a simple URL. Since its release in 2011, the service has acquired 3.75 million monthly unique users and about 13 million monthly uploads of screenshots. The service is available for free, but premium membership menu for corporate users provides additional features like enabling access privilege for their files, user support, as well as integration with Microsoft Office applications. In a view of geographical distribution, Nota has about 3,000 premium and freemium users – North America (33%), Europe (37%), Japan (14%), and Russia (4%). Prior to launching Gyazo, Nota developed a book search engine called Calil that allows users to make retrievals across libraries in Japan. CEO Isshu Rakusai started programming when he was 12. He has introduced news clipping software Kamicopi and has been approved as a “super creator” by the Japanese governmental IT promotion authority,…
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Kyoto- and Silicon Valley-based Nota, the company that provides screen capture and cloud storage platform Gyazo, announced today that it has fundraised $2 million from Japanese Internet company Opt, as well as two VC firms; YJ Capital and Miyako Capital.
Gyazo allows users to capture a screenshot and share it with other users via a simple URL. Since its release in 2011, the service has acquired 3.75 million monthly unique users and about 13 million monthly uploads of screenshots.
The service is available for free, but premium membership menu for corporate users provides additional features like enabling access privilege for their files, user support, as well as integration with Microsoft Office applications. In a view of geographical distribution, Nota has about 3,000 premium and freemium users – North America (33%), Europe (37%), Japan (14%), and Russia (4%).
Prior to launching Gyazo, Nota developed a book search engine called Calil that allows users to make retrievals across libraries in Japan. CEO Isshu Rakusai started programming when he was 12. He has introduced news clipping software Kamicopi and has been approved as a “super creator” by the Japanese governmental IT promotion authority, IPA in 2003.
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
Takeshi Hirano
Shintaro Eguchi
