Tokyo-based Crowd Cast, a startup offering expense balancing apps such as BizNote for Yayoi Online and Staple, announced earlier this month that they have secured series B round funding from Saison Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Japanese leading credit card company Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and IMJ Investment Partners (henceforth IMJ-IP). While the particulars of this investment have yet to be made clear, funding is thought to reach into the tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars). As the series B round has not yet closed, Crowd Cast will continue inviting further investment from other companies, eventually looking to raise funding in the ballpark of about 1 million yen ($830,000).
Crowd Cast also secured an undisclosed amount of series A round funding from IMJ-IP in 2014. As for their investments from business firms thus far, this round’s investment from Saison Ventures comes after a $210,000 seed round contribution in May of 2013 from major Japanese accounting software developer Yayoi.
Crowd Cast began providing their expense balancing app for startups and mid-sized companies, Staple, in September of last year, but with this financial partnering with Saison Ventures, they are focusing on expanding Staple’s features and increasing users in cooperation with Credit Saison and their 35 million registered credit card user base. Concretely speaking, the methods of inputting expenses into Staple have been either manual input from receipts and invoices, etc., or by importing IC card use history data. In the future, however, it is expected that we will see functionality for connecting to online credit card use history data for Saison credit card users.
Crowd Cast CEO Takashi Hoshikawa spoke to The Bridge about this recent investment:
CEO Takashi Hoshikawa
This year we did IC smart card use history reading through NFC (near field communication), so next we want to implement an OCR (optical character recognition) feature for importing receipts. We’ll be expanding our features in the direction of the Electronic Books Maintenance Act of Japan. Also we’re looking to strengthen our back-end infrastructure as well as integration with credit card systems.
He continued:
With our corporate-aimed Staple Team, we’ve come to see the types of industries where our service will be made particularly necessary: advertising firms, real estate companies, and other industries with large numbers of employees. Especially in companies with many locations and large numbers of staff who aren’t supplied with computers for work, (expenses can be balanced using smartphones so) Staple Team is going to be an invaluable tool.
According to Hoshikawa, Crowd Cast has currently placed Staple Team in the research phase while they gather more information about the users’ needs, after which they will be proceeding with monetization. Moving into 2016, as many accounting type services will be boasting support for Japan’s new “my number” system, Crowd Cast says they aren’t particularly concerned with “my number” support. One reason for that might be that, rather than aiming to be a total accounting service, Crowd Cast are concentrating the focus of their solutions on expense balancing. In addition, they are currently considering the possibility of integrating their services with third party payroll management platforms.
Crowd Cast’s app designed for private-use, Staple, is free to use, but their commercial version built for team-based management, Staple Team, starts at 600 yen (about $5) a month. They have, however, began offering a “startup program” which makes Staple Team available to use for free for companies that are less than five years old, student entrepreneurs, as well as NPOs, so for startups in the early stages who don’t yet have a dedicated staff member handling accounting, this might be a good opportunity to try Staple Team.
See the original story in Japanese.This is part of our coverage of Global Brain Alliance Forum 2015. Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain this month held an annual startup conference event called Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF) in Tokyo. As a part of GBAF, a startup pitch event called the Global Startups Pitch Battle was held, where 10 startups from Japan and the other Asian countries competed. Japan’s Stellasia LED won the top award. The judges were: Shigeyuki Tsuchida, Senior Executive Officer, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan Ken Matsui, Project Manager, Mitsui Fudosan Venture Co-Creation Project, a.k.a. 31 Ventures Takashi Shibayama, Director of Content and Media Business, Furyu Chester Jungseok Roh, CSO, Reality Reflection The top prize winner: Stellasia LED (Japan) Stellasia LED is developing an AC-driven LED lamp for industrial use, in contrast to typical LED lamps driven by AC. Stellasia LED’s design eliminates the use of easily malfunctioning electric components, such as aluminum electrolytic capacitors in AC-driven LED, thus reducing failure rates, energy consumption, and noise. Although voltage differs by country, the AC-driven LED will enable standardizing circuits in products and unified production lines, thus reducing manufacturing costs. The team is planning to start new businesses, such as smart…
Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain this month held an annual startup conference event called Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF) in Tokyo.
As a part of GBAF, a startup pitch event called the Global Startups Pitch Battle was held, where 10 startups from Japan and the other Asian countries competed. Japan’s Stellasia LED won the top award.
Stellasia CEO Richard Matsuura (left) receives the award from judge Ken Matsui.
Stellasia LED is developing an AC-driven LED lamp for industrial use, in contrast to typical LED lamps driven by AC. Stellasia LED’s design eliminates the use of easily malfunctioning electric components, such as aluminum electrolytic capacitors in AC-driven LED, thus reducing failure rates, energy consumption, and noise.
Although voltage differs by country, the AC-driven LED will enable standardizing circuits in products and unified production lines, thus reducing manufacturing costs. The team is planning to start new businesses, such as smart lighting.
The Global Brain award winner: Kacific (Singapore)
Singapore-based Kacific aims to use communication satellites to provide broadband Internet service to isolated islands of countries in the Asia-Pacific region such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Leveraging existing technologies, it plans to provide an internet connection service of 50Mbps at cheaper rates than other services.
The satellites will be ordered in 2016 and launches will commence in 2018. The total investment is estimated to be $182 million. Fees will be collected by the wholesaling of the service to ISP or the government in each country. The control center for the satellites and the service will be in Japan.
Thailand-based Eatigo offers a mobile app for dining deals and restaurant reservations under the same name, attracting customers by providing discount information in off-peak hours. It launched domestically in June 2014, and is being developed for Singapore.
In comparison with typical customer services such as hotels or airlines having 73% and 74% of the usage rate for each, that for restaurants is only 35%. To lower vacancy rates of restaurants, this service supports user restaurants to shape their customer traffic.
Eatigo is developing a mobile app for Japan and India. Also, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia are targeted as future markets.
Eatigo CEO Michael Cluzel
The audience award winner: Axelspace (Japan)
Axelspace CEO Yuya Nakamura (right) receives the award from judge Takashi Shibayama.
Japan’s Axelspace was established as a spin-off from the University of Tokyo in 2008. The team developed a micro-satellite only 50 centimeters square and 60 kilograms in weight. It will launch satellites for Japan’s weather information service Weathernews (TSE:4825). Starting from three satellites in 2017, it will launch ten satellites every year from 2018, to construct a system of 50 low-earth orbit satellites for data collection of weather or topography. The data will be sold to public agencies or private companies. The launch of a typical satellite can cost several tens of millions dollars, however, the micro-satellite can be launched for about $8 million.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Liquid, a Japanese startup developing payment solutions leveraging a unique biometric authentication technology, announced on 25 December that it has fundraised from Itochu (TSE:8001), Information Services International-Dentsu (ISID, TSE: 4812), Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and The University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC). Financial details of the investment have not been disclosed. Prior to the latest funding, Liquid received government grants of about 42 million yen ($350,000) in 2014 and about 50 million yen ($416,000) in 2015 based on the qualification to the I-Challenge innovation initiative program by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, followed by receiving an undisclosed sum of investment from UTEC. In addition, the company disclosed that their shareholders include Japan’s major telco conglomerate NTT Group and Internet service giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while they have not disclosed when these companies joined as shareholders. Liquid was born out of the third incubation batch by Docomo Ventures. The company has developed a biometric payment system called Liquid Pay, which uses fingerprints to authenticate users. Traditionally, the fingerprint authentication used the 1:1 verification method that took time to identify the input fingerprint from a large number of registered fingerprint patterns. But this…
Prior to the latest funding, Liquid received government grants of about 42 million yen ($350,000) in 2014 and about 50 million yen ($416,000) in 2015 based on the qualification to the I-Challenge innovation initiative program by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, followed by receiving an undisclosed sum of investment from UTEC. In addition, the company disclosed that their shareholders include Japan’s major telco conglomerate NTT Group and Internet service giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while they have not disclosed when these companies joined as shareholders.
Liquid was born out of the third incubation batch by Docomo Ventures. The company has developed a biometric payment system called Liquid Pay, which uses fingerprints to authenticate users. Traditionally, the fingerprint authentication used the 1:1 verification method that took time to identify the input fingerprint from a large number of registered fingerprint patterns. But this company has employed a 1:N identification method using deep learning algorithms. With this method, it only takes a few seconds to identify the input fingerprint. Once users are enrolled in this system, they can purchase with their fingerprints, allowing them to go out without cash or credit cards. By registering the fingerprints from two fingers, the risk of misidentifying the fingerprint is reduced to 1 in one hundred million.
This system is used at Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Nagasaki, Japan, where visitors can pay at restaurants and make purchases at souvenir shops without having to bring their wallet, giving them a sense of freedom. It has also been implemented at a hotel in Sri Lanka where hotel guests enroll their biometric information at check-in. After that, they can then unlock the key and make purchases at partnered stores using just their fingerprints. Based on the Liquid Pay technology, the company rolled out a trial of a community currency system in Hokkaido in association with ISID, aiming to offer foreign visitors a more convenient payment option at travel destinations.
Based on the partnership with new shareholders on this funding, Liquid plans to focus on developing services for an increasing number of inbound visitors to Japan toward the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, expanding to the medical and public sectors, as well as regional service expansion to the Southeast Asian market. Having a dazzling selection of companies with expertise in global expansion, system development, finance, and payments infrastructure as shareholders, the partnership will give a boost to an expanding Liquid Pay and other applications based on the company’s biometric authentication technology.
See the original story in Japanese. Orange Fab Asia, an incubation program for the East Asian region hosted by French telecom major Orange, held a Demo Day event for the latest batch in Tokyo earlier this month. While originally this incubation program had been focusing on Asia including Japan, Korea and Taiwan, La French Tech, a business invitation program by the French government for European startups to Tokyo has joined the Demo Day from this time, in affiliation with French governmental business support initiative Business France. Therefore, 29 teams including 8 French startups made pitches and opened booth exhibitions in this event. See also: Startups enter the fray with arrival of fall exhibition season in Japan Although unfortunately we cannot cover all of them in this article, some outstanding startups are introduced below. BankGuard (Japan) The total damage from illegal money transfers using online banking systems around the world is said to amount at $2 billion per year. Super Matrix developed by Tokyo-based BankGuard is a safer and more inexpensive banking solution than the one-time password or conventional table of random numbers, which is distinguished by not utilizing characters or numbers but pictograms. Sealing non-disclosure agreements with Shizuoka Bank, Yokohama…
Orange Fab Asia, an incubation program for the East Asian region hosted by French telecom major Orange, held a Demo Day event for the latest batch in Tokyo earlier this month.
While originally this incubation program had been focusing on Asia including Japan, Korea and Taiwan, La French Tech, a business invitation program by the French government for European startups to Tokyo has joined the Demo Day from this time, in affiliation with French governmental business support initiative Business France. Therefore, 29 teams including 8 French startups made pitches and opened booth exhibitions in this event.
Although unfortunately we cannot cover all of them in this article, some outstanding startups are introduced below.
BankGuard (Japan)
The total damage from illegal money transfers using online banking systems around the world is said to amount at $2 billion per year. Super Matrix developed by Tokyo-based BankGuard is a safer and more inexpensive banking solution than the one-time password or conventional table of random numbers, which is distinguished by not utilizing characters or numbers but pictograms. Sealing non-disclosure agreements with Shizuoka Bank, Yokohama Bank and SBI Sumishin Net Bank, currently it has international patents pending. In addition to Super Matrix, the team has developed a cryptocurrency solution called Super Money utilizing the Bitcoin technology.
Geo-Line (Korea)
Korea-based Geo-Line offers a battery charge solution for electric vehicles called Plug & Pay. In general, the greatest concern for electric vehicle users may be the securing of battery charge measures away from home. The number or the location of charging stations are still limited due to the higher costs for installation and maintenance. Plug & Pay allows users to charge batteries from conventional electric outlets by attaching the devices to them, and moreover, notifies the amount of charged energy to the power company via an implemented mobile SIM. Therefore, if users utilize electric outlets in public facilities or a stranger’s home upon charging, they will be charged for the electric fees themselves, and that will not lead to accusations of power theft.
Mist Technologies (Japan)
Mist Technologies, which previously developed a predominant video distribution system using WebRTC named MistCDN, has launched its second product called Mist Inline Player. When one is to watch embedded videos on web pages with mobile browsers, not only browsers but video players will be started generally. Mist Inline Player provides video playable environment on browsers just by adding a single JavaScript code onto websites with HTML5. By synchronizing acceleration sensors in smartphones, it can also play videos interactively based on users’ motion. It is seen being utilized in video advertisement, on-demand video services and video services offering a panorama view.
Dogs are an emotionally weak animal and become easily depressed. If owners neglect to play with their dog or take it for a walk, the dog gets stressed and that causes self-injury in the worst case. Pamily is a golfball-sized dog toy which can move automatically by remote control upon operation with a mobile app. It is waterproof and wireless charging-enabled in addition to being capable of emitting light, sound and vibration according to the operation through the app. The team aims to strengthen sales activities through cooperation with petfood mnufacturers, pet insurance providers or telcos.
Ripple (Korea)
Korea-based Ripple has developed an in-ear microphone device for smartphones called RippleBuds, allowing communication with clear voices even under a noisy environment. Implementing both an earphone and a microphone inside, it picks up voices using bone conduction to prevent distraction due to noises around the user. Absence of noise-canceling tips, which are typically applied to such kind of products, has lowered its manufacturing costs and energy consumption. The team plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in January 2016, and expects the adoption in sports, military and police application.
StradVision (Korea)
StradVision is an object recognition solution which is an essential technology for self-driving cars, enabling recognition of other cars, pedestrians and even characters in traffic signs. The noteworthy function is its character recognition, which is capable of recognizing characters and even its context on notice boards or traffic signs written not only in English but also in Chinese. Although the recognition of Japanese was not exhibited this time, the availability of Chinese will facilitate the support for Japanese shortly. It is expected to be applied to the development of safer self-driving cars by linking with a car navigation system, GPS (global positioning systems), or ITS (intelligent transport systems).
Thinktank (Taiwan)
Taiwan-based Thinktank, which introduced a platform for measurement of audience feedback at events in real-time called Clappio at IdeasShow in Taipei in August, this time introduced a new service called Exit. People in subway stations are easily lost because they cannot use map apps sufficiently due to the weak GPS signals from satellites. This mobile app allows users to find appropriate exits quickly at subway stations. Currently it supports information for 179 subway stations in Taipei and Bangkok. Since the total number of daily passengers at these stations accounts for 6.84 million, utilization of the app will save a great deal of time if one gets lost.
Tobila Systems (Japan)
Nagoya-based Tobila Systems has developed an incoming call control solution called Tobilaphone in order to reject crank calls or fund-transfer frauds, serving land-line phones, smartphones and other phones. Based on the whitelists/blacklists shared among users, unauthorized phone numbers listed for each user, and lists made by the Metropolitan police or an independent survey by Tobila Systems itself, it blocks incoming calls from dubious callers. The concept of this product appears similar to Taiwan’s Whoscall (acquired by Line) or Korea’s Moya Calling.
VitaNet (Japan)
VitaNet is an encryption solution for communication technologies in IoT such as BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and Bluetooth. These wireless technologies broadcast recognition IDs for devices upon handshaking to connect with each other. So, if malicious users obtain these information, it might be used for illegal hacking. By applying VitaNet technologies, recognition IDs are masked and an encryption layer is added in communication so that it will bring more highly secured communication between IoT devices while minimizing the possibility of being hacked.
WhyNotTech (Taiwan)
WhyNotTech has developed a wearable ring device for voice recognition linked to a smartphone called ARING Pro. Conventional voice recognition solutions for smartphones including Google Voice Search and Siri are only available in specific app environments. ARING Pro realizes much smarter app operation without the character input, by selecting or starting up mobile apps manually and by inputting or indicating by the ring device. The team failed on a recent crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter but are planning sales of the product on Amazon. They are thinking to integrate the product with e-commerce sites like Amazon so that users can more quickly find a product to buy, as well as integrating with headphones connectable to the Internet in the future.
Coinciding with holding this Demo Day event, Open Fab Asia started receiving applications for the next batch, Spring 2016 season. If interested in business development not only in Asia but also in the European market including France, you are encouraged to check out their website to apply.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Secual, the Japanese startup developing smart home security solutions under the same name, announced today that it has fundraised about 60 million yen (about $500,000) from two vacation rental agencies / apartment rental companies in Japan: Adventure and Ambition. In addition to the funds, Secual has tied up with these two companies for a potential business synergy such as utilization of smart locks, home security cameras and other smart home products. Secual has successfully raised more than six times its initial goal of 1 million yen ($8,300) on the Makuake crowdfunding site this year. The company recently started receiving pre-orders for their products on AppBank Store, the e-commerce outlet of a leading iPhone/iPad service review website in Japan. They are also running a Secual giveaway campaign for users of Ietty, a Japanese apartment hunting platform. In our previous interview, the company asserted that they would expand their approach to the areas where they can find potential chemistry with users. Using the latest funds, they are expected to strengthen human resources for sales and development. Secual is now trying to start shipment of their first product from February next year. Translated by Masaru Ikeda…
Tokyo-based Secual, the Japanese startup developing smart home security solutions under the same name, announced today that it has fundraised about 60 million yen (about $500,000) from two vacation rental agencies / apartment rental companies in Japan: Adventure and Ambition. In addition to the funds, Secual has tied up with these two companies for a potential business synergy such as utilization of smart locks, home security cameras and other smart home products.
Secual has successfully raised more than six times its initial goal of 1 million yen ($8,300) on the Makuake crowdfunding site this year. The company recently started receiving pre-orders for their products on AppBank Store, the e-commerce outlet of a leading iPhone/iPad service review website in Japan. They are also running a Secual giveaway campaign for users of Ietty, a Japanese apartment hunting platform.
In our previous interview, the company asserted that they would expand their approach to the areas where they can find potential chemistry with users. Using the latest funds, they are expected to strengthen human resources for sales and development.
Secual is now trying to start shipment of their first product from February next year.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Dentsu Ventures, the corporate venture capital of Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TSE:4324), announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in San Diego-based Cue, the startup developing a health tracking device under the same name. Financial details have not been disclosed. For Dentsu Ventures, this is the fifth investment in a startup followed by Jibo (communication robot), Agolo (curated content generation), Nextbit (cloud-based smartphone), Sensai (bigdata analasys), and others. See also: Japan’s Dentsu Ventures invests in NYC-based automated content creation startup Agolo Japan’s Dentsu Ventures invests in SF-based cloud-first phone developer Nextbit Cue has developed a health tracking platform consisting of a lab-in-a-box device, five kinds of cartridges, and sampling sticks. By sampling saliva, blood, or mucous and using a cartridge intended for the symptom you want to know, the device can easily track inflammation, influenza, testosterone, and fertility. After completing an analysis, which typically requires several minutes, the device then sends the analyzed results to a mobile app so that you can check the status on your smartphone. When the platform was launched, Cue initially sold it via pre-orders on their website so that an investigational device exemption was applied and no…
Dentsu Ventures, the corporate venture capital of Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TSE:4324), announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in San Diego-based Cue, the startup developing a health tracking device under the same name. Financial details have not been disclosed. For Dentsu Ventures, this is the fifth investment in a startup followed by Jibo (communication robot), Agolo (curated content generation), Nextbit (cloud-based smartphone), Sensai (bigdata analasys), and others.
Cue has developed a health tracking platform consisting of a lab-in-a-box device, five kinds of cartridges, and sampling sticks. By sampling saliva, blood, or mucous and using a cartridge intended for the symptom you want to know, the device can easily track inflammation, influenza, testosterone, and fertility. After completing an analysis, which typically requires several minutes, the device then sends the analyzed results to a mobile app so that you can check the status on your smartphone.
When the platform was launched, Cue initially sold it via pre-orders on their website so that an investigational device exemption was applied and no FDA approval was needed. However, the company says it will shortly launch full-scale sales upon approval from governmental health authorities in each country. They aim to start sales in Europe and Hong Kong in early 2016, in the US in 2016, and in Japan in 2017. Inspectable symptoms will be expanded to about 20 kinds from the current five.
Cue has said it may integrate their platform with Apple HealthKit. However, there is the possibility that they will also integrate with other healthcare platforms by tech giants, such as Samsung Digital Health and Google Fit.
Cue fundraised $1 million in a seed round, followed by securing $7.5 million in a series A round led by Sherpa Ventures with participation from life science-focused fund Immortalana. Immortalna also invested in Cue in an angel funding round.
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
