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Berlin’s indoor farming startup InFarm wins Innovation Weekend Grand Finale in Tokyo

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.23

See the original story in Japanese.

Innovation Weekend is a periodical pitch competition event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Preliminary sessions were held in New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Osaka this year. The top two finishers of each session were invited to pitch at the final Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2015 event in Tokyo on December 11th.

Here are the products and the market potential of award-winning startups.

1st place winner: InFarm (Berlin, Germany)

Berlin-based InFarm has developed a production technology for growing vegetables indoors. By renovating a warehouse situated inside the city of Berlin, the company supplies urban communities with locally-grown fresh vegetables. Since vegetables are all organic, they are 40 times more nutritious than other commercialized vegetables.

As the company strongly believes that everyone should be able to consume organic vegetables, it has released a small gardening kit called Microgarden last year. It is made of plastic for users to easily grow their own vegetables at home. In the same year, the company ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, successfully exceeded its initial goal and raised 27,000 euros. Users can start growing their own vegetables immediately with seeds that come with the kit. All they need to do is to place the kit by a window. In addition, a plastic sheet of the kit can be recycled after usage.

2nd place winner: Agolo (New York, USA)

New York-based Agolo (formerly known as Ninoh) has developed a curated content publishing platform under the same name. Using natural language processing and a big data analysis engine, the platform automatically sorts out and reedits a large amount of unstructured data, such as reports, articles, social network posts, news updates and images. It allows media site owners to change the method of digesting information as well as to automate the article generation process. In addition, it allows them to handle real-time content-based marketing and contextual advertising.

The company secured an undisclosed sum in a seed round from Dentsu Ventures, a corporate venture capital of Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TSE:4324) in August this year.

2nd place winner: Nomiku (San Francisco, USA)

San Francisco-based Nomiku has invented sous-vide immersion circulators designed for home cooking. Sous-vide cooking is a method of slowly cooking vacuum-sealed food in controlled and low-temperature water, enabling food to be cooked properly without overcooking. Nomiku’s immersion circulators are connected to Wi-Fi to facilitate programming the water temperature based on the temperature recommended by chefs. Furthermore, users can control the temperature remotely via Internet so that they can safely leave home while cooking.

This startup was born out of Shenzhen-based hardware accelerator HAX (formally HAXLR8R) in 2012.

Reference:

The Best Maker Business Story I’ve Ever Heard… (Markezine)

Microsoft Award winner: Liquid (Tokyo, Japan)

Tokyo-based Liquid has developed a new biometric payment system. Traditionally, the fingerprint authentication used 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 any cash or credit card. By registering the fingerprints from two fingers, the risk of misidentifying the fingerprint is reduced to 1 in one hundred million.

This system is actually used at Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Nagasaki, Japan, where visitors can pay at restaurants and purchase at souvenir shops without their wallet, giving them a sense of freedom. It is also 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 purchase at partnered stores only with their fingerprints. This startup was born out of the third incubation batch by Docomo Ventures.

Japan Air Lines Award winner: Quatre (Osaka, Japan)

Quatre has built a cross-border e-commerce platform called Pukka. The company observed that many foreign tourists favor Japanese cosmetic products for their high quality. Prior to starting Quatre, the company’s founder Takayuki Yokomachi was a hairstylist. Subsequently he was working at @cosme, a Japanese leading cosmetic products portal. Pukka is now specializing in selling Japanese beauty and cosmetic products to mainland China.

iwgf-2015-pukka_screenshot — The Pukka website (in Chinese)

Translated by Mariko Kobayashi via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

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Swingdo, to-do management app from Japan, automates prioritization of what to do

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.22

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based BHI has been offering solutions focused on protecting users from information overload, represented by Swingmail. Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox and reply-only app that aggregates messages from multiple social network accounts which helps reduce information overload and clutter. BHI has also developed Swingbook, a prioritizing contact list seamlessly integrated into the Swingmail app, as well as Swingcal, a minimalistic calendar app that focuses on the agenda one has with someone up to a week in the future. But both functions of these apps have been incorporated into the Swingmail app. See also: Japan’s BHI launches mobile apps that prevent info overload in messaging Swingmail: A new app from Japan to better manage email and social messages The company introduced a new app called Swingdo on Friday, aiming to help users streamline their task management like managing todos and appointments on calendar, or check e-mails that they forget to reply to by telling them what to do next automatically. Based on a user’s input and its history, this app determines the priority of every task and inserts appointments scheduled on the Swingcal or scheduler app within these tasks when necessary. Generally speaking, “stock-type” information…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based BHI has been offering solutions focused on protecting users from information overload, represented by Swingmail. Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox and reply-only app that aggregates messages from multiple social network accounts which helps reduce information overload and clutter.

BHI has also developed Swingbook, a prioritizing contact list seamlessly integrated into the Swingmail app, as well as Swingcal, a minimalistic calendar app that focuses on the agenda one has with someone up to a week in the future. But both functions of these apps have been incorporated into the Swingmail app.

See also:

The company introduced a new app called Swingdo on Friday, aiming to help users streamline their task management like managing todos and appointments on calendar, or check e-mails that they forget to reply to by telling them what to do next automatically. Based on a user’s input and its history, this app determines the priority of every task and inserts appointments scheduled on the Swingcal or scheduler app within these tasks when necessary.

Generally speaking, “stock-type” information management tool like Trello would be helpful to manage todos from the point of view seeing which task is completed or not. To communicate with one’s counterpart or business partner, Slack and other “flow-type” messaging tools like chat and e-mail apps are convenient. In addition, a calendar tool would be convenient for managing planned tasks or the history of these in a time sequence.

That said, one will probably need three different types of tools at least in managing tasks the three aspects of time sequence, completeness/incompleteness and contacts. However, we merely see these three solutions synchronizing updates of tasks with each others (For instance, Trello will never add task updates automatically based on interactions on Slack.)

Swingdo aims to manage tasks in one app by integrating these three items. In the app, the priority of each task will be automatically determined according to the due date and estimated amount of work that a user inputs. Regarding tasks based on received e-mails and scheduled appointments in a calendar app, their work amounts are set as 15 minutes by default but users can change this manually. Following the priority that the Swingdo app presents, all the users have to do is to complete such tasks accordingly.

BHI CEO Yasuhiro Himukashi explained:

When using our app, one will no longer experience the pain of thinking what to do next. Regardless of the pros and cons in our team, we decided to make the app that automatically determines the priority of each task and can’t be manually adjusted. Otherwise, users would be likely to put off tedious tasks for later and tend to forget to do them.

This latest Swingdo app is version 1.0 and still remains technically dubious. However, the company wants to keep updating it as their development advances thus they want to incorporate natural language processing and machine learning into the app so that it will better understand the context when adding tasks based on e-mails and calendar updates.

Possible integration with self-driving vehicles

Himukashi says, it will be possible to integrate the Swingdo app with self-driving vehicles in the future when many people are using it on a daily basis.

When one goes out, one’s self-driving vehicle would be able to assume where to do if knowing one’s appointment. So if one has saved a task in the Swingdo app, one can trust the driving to the vehicle even without telling where to go.

If one’s tasks are totally managed in the Swingdo app, it may automatically hail a ride-sharing car by interacting with the Uber app when one needs to go somewhere for an appointment. The company claims that Swingmail is intended to review what one has done while Swingdo is to look at what will happen to someone.

Leveraging the location data as well as task updates registered in the Swingdo app, it may be possible for the platform to predict what one wants to do next by leveraging artificial intelligence.

He added:

From the big data perspective, this can be applied to predicting traffic jams in the future.

Coinciding with the launch of the Swingdo app, BHI has upgraded the Swingmail app to version 7.0 while adding new functions like curating e-mails and highlighting critical messages. It plans to integrate with messaging platforms of mobile carriers around the world to give users a better experience.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Culture Convenience Club introduces 10 finalists from second incubation batch

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.21

See the original story in Japanese. Earlier this month, Culture Convenience Club (CCC for short, TSE:4756), the Japanese company well known for its CD/video rental and bookstore chain called Tsutaya, held the final public screening event for the second batch of its startup incubation program called T-Venture Program, in cooperation with IMJ Investment Partners or CCC’s investment arm. See also: Japan’s Culture Convenience Club selects 7 finalists for its first incubation program In this review, ten teams which had cleared the second round of judging gave their pitch as finalists. After being examined for four criteria including value creation, potential growth and branding by judges, eventually four startups were selected as award winners. Unlike typical incubation programs, this review considers possibilities of synergies or collaboration plans with CCC as important points upon examination. The judges for the screening event were: Muneaki Masuda, Representative Director and CEO, Culture Convenience Club Atsuki Ishida, Director & CIO, Culture Convenience Club Kazuhiko Kitamura, Vice President, CCC Marketing Kazuo Nakanishi, CEO, T-Media Holdings Yuji Horiguchi, CEO, IMJ Investment Partners Takeshi Yoshimura, President and CEO, Digital Hollywood Lin Kobayashi, Founder and Chair of the Board of International School of Asia, Karuizawa Norihiko Sasaki, Chief Editor, NewsPicks Taizo…

See the original story in Japanese.

Earlier this month, Culture Convenience Club (CCC for short, TSE:4756), the Japanese company well known for its CD/video rental and bookstore chain called Tsutaya, held the final public screening event for the second batch of its startup incubation program called T-Venture Program, in cooperation with IMJ Investment Partners or CCC’s investment arm.

See also:

Japan’s Culture Convenience Club selects 7 finalists for its first incubation program

In this review, ten teams which had cleared the second round of judging gave their pitch as finalists. After being examined for four criteria including value creation, potential growth and branding by judges, eventually four startups were selected as award winners.

Unlike typical incubation programs, this review considers possibilities of synergies or collaboration plans with CCC as important points upon examination.

The judges for the screening event were:

Muneaki Masuda, Representative Director and CEO, Culture Convenience Club
Atsuki Ishida, Director & CIO, Culture Convenience Club
Kazuhiko Kitamura, Vice President, CCC Marketing
Kazuo Nakanishi, CEO, T-Media Holdings
Yuji Horiguchi, CEO, IMJ Investment Partners
Takeshi Yoshimura, President and CEO, Digital Hollywood
Lin Kobayashi, Founder and Chair of the Board of International School of Asia, Karuizawa
Norihiko Sasaki, Chief Editor, NewsPicks
Taizo Son, Founder and CEO, Mistletoe

Top Award Winner: Street Academy

Supplemental prizes: T-Point worth 300,000 yen [1], air-cleaning machine and humidifier from luxury home appliance brand Cado.

Street Academy is a skills marketplace enabling anyone to be an instructor. Focusing on connecting instructors and students, it provides off-line learning opportunities. Conventionally, there were no evaluation websites of skills mastery in Japan’s skills learning industry like Tabelog (a Japanese restaurant review portal) in the restaurant industry. Therefore, founder Takashi Fujimoto implemented word-of-mouth functions among students regarding how instructors are good at teaching on the website. In this manner, the team aims to provide an environment for casual learning in town.

Since its launch back in August 2012, Street Academy has acquired 3,500 instructors registered and 100 genres of service content consisting of 4,000 lectures, such as an accounting lecture by an accountant in a café, or a back-flip lesson for gymnastics amateurs. 25% of the total services are conducted in local areas other than Tokyo.

Tying up with Tsutaya Bookstore Tenjin in Fukuoka coincidentally, Street Academy recently held a public lecture event also aimed at sales promotion of the textbook which was written by a lecturer based on teaching activities at Street Academy. Through cooperation with CCC, online reservations at Street Academy website and trial lectures held at Tsutaya stores might attract new customers to shopping complexes of CCC.

See also:

Outstanding Startups Award winner: GeneQuest

Supplemental prize: T-Point worth 100,000 yen [1].

GeneQuest is a startup focusing on gene analysis, established by researchers at the University of Tokyo and others in 2013. Sending back one’s saliva collected by the sampling kit which was sent from the lab after the order, one can receive evaluation with 300 items regarding congenital onset risks of diseases or constitutions based on the results of gene analysis.

As for possibilities of cooperation with CCC, the team emphasized that more effective marketing would be achieved by adding genetic health data to purchase information of the customers if acquired 550,000 users for GeneQuest would account for 1% of the total number of T-Point members [1]. Moving forward, the company plans to build a genetic information database on top of the service with an expectation that pharmaceutical companies leverage it for their R&D activities.

Although the probability of business opportunities is still unknown, GeneQuest seems to have the advantages in terms of analysis of disease onset trends based on the genetic information of Asian or the yellow race including Japanese in contrast to Western companies which are specialized in analysis of Westerners, for patterns of genetic information differ depending on race.

See also:

Outstanding Startups Award winner: Factelier

Supplemental prize: T-Point worth 100,000 yen [1].

Kumamoto-based Lifestyle Accent spent three years constructing an apparel e-commerce platform called Factelier, offering inexpensive but high-quality fashion items by affiliating with 480 sewing factories all over Japan including ones are engaged in outsourced manufacturing of notable fashion brands overseas. Connecting factories and consumers directly in the supply chain, it cuts the wholesale and retail costs. That enables Factelier to sell products under the own brand name, and also bring more orders to factories.

Mineaki Saito, former CEO of Hermès Japon, had joined the team as its advisor. Factelier has been accessed from 130 countries since the start of the service to overseas customers two months before. In the future, the company aims at receiving an order for uniforms of the Japan national team in 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

See also:

Skipping the middleman: Japanese startup goes to the source for high-quality shirts

Tsutaya Award Winner: Anikore

Anikore is an anime evaluation website having 13 monthly page views and 2.3 million unique users on a monthly basis. It has already gained 1.35 million review posts for anime since its launch five years ago.

Although having reached most domestic anime freaks, the team is conscious of not being recognized by overseas freaks or anime fans who dare not follow anime information on the Internet.

Through utilization of 35,000 ranking patterns made by Anikore users, special features of rental video according to various ranking at Tsutaya stores can be planned. While overseas development will be propelled gradually upon confirming reaction from fans in each country, launch of an English version first was requested by Judge Son.

The followings are the startups which unfortunately missed prizes but conducted excellent presentation as finalists.

ClubFm

ClubFm (pronounced ‘club f-minor’) is a rental platform for pictures or contemporary arts owned by major galleries in Japan for 4,800 yen (about $40) a month. Focusing on new demand development such as houses or offices having little opportunities to be decorated with pictures before, it also offers a function on the website to simulate room decoration with pictures or foliage plants collectively. As of September 2015, it dealt with 1,200 pictures in partnership with 70% of domestic major galleries, aiming at a 90% share.
The company plans to propose a lifestyle surrounded by arts to T-Site visitors or T-Point members through cooperation with CCC [1] [2].

Voice Marche

Voice Marche is a telephone counseling platform staffed by female counselors, exclusively for female users. Users may access experienced counselors to talk about subjects they cannot even discuss with close people for 55 minutes at 12,000 yen (about $100).

All of current 368 registered counselors have passed the interview by the company. Thus, its high degree of the user satisfaction can be assumed from 1,543 experience stories posted on the website.

The team suggested that the Voice Marche app can be preinstalled in smartphones of TONE mobile, CCC’s mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), through the partnership. Also it may be available for health management or caring for the elderly by tying up with the Furusuma mobile company and the municipalities.

Eichiii

Eichiii is a rental platform dealing with 800 meeting spaces on demand in Tokyo. Most of the listed spaces on the website are like dining bars which open in the evening, or co-working spaces with idle time. The owners can additionally receive benefits by utilizing dead time.

Enhancing the linkage by being published on the website of T-Site, Eichiii aims to collect customers via T-Site through holding events or seminars at meeting spaces listed on Eichiii [2]. Besides, it looks for ways to utilize T-Point or coupons [1].

Wellnote

Wellnote is a social network platform focusing on limited use within families, allowing records sharing of daily life or of growth even between grandchildren and grandparents. While it has been distributing various content such as recipes for baby food or daily life information through cooperation with kid-raising support company Akachan Honpo or educational content publisher Gakken, the team emphasized that cooperation with CCC would enable offering movie recommendations for families, picturebooks for grandchildren or events for kids.

Recently, Wellnote tied up with a Japanese TV morning show ZIP! and planned an educational program for teaching dance to kids. Also it has started to formulate a creative educational program conducted year-round supported by pedagogy expert Dr. Manabu Sato, Emeritus Professor of the University of Tokyo.

Sensy

Sensy is a personal artificial intelligence (AI) app for fashion and outfit coordination. As implied by ‘personal,’ the app can be customized according to each user’s taste or demand. Incidentally, it had been selected as the first case handled by IBM Watson in Japan.

Currently, 12,000 brands participate in Sensy; for example, Isetan Mitsukoshi (TSE:3099) , one of Japanese major department stores, adopted Sensy as a service app for dealing with visiting customers. Visitors can receive proposal of fashion items suiting them by calling each personal AI profile with e-mail. Moreover, by calling AI profiles of Isetan Mitsukoshi’s top buyers, users can learn their sense of coordination via the app.

The team said it wanted to develop a point card implementing the personal AI profile to leverage cooperation with CCC.

See also:

Japanese startup invents fashion coordination app based on artificial intelligence

Pratechs

Generally, medical information including medical chart belongs to doctors, and is rarely exposed to patients. Pratechs proposes a healthcare environment that allows users to keep their own daily vital data and to get necessary supports by releasing the data to a third party. The service mainly consists of a personal app for users called Healthplayer, measuring stations and a console for business operators.

Specifically, it can be applied in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at pharmacies. In addition, a possible approach with cooperation with CCC includes a system to motivate users to continue recording their vital data by giving T-Point or coupons exchangeable for merchandises to users who visit the pharmacies [1]. Also it may be available for the health management or caring the elderly through tying up with the Furusuma mobile company and the municipalities.

See also:

New Japanese app helps you collect and organize your personal health data

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

Operated by CCC, T-Point is a customer loyalty and rewards program available at Tsutaya bookstore chain and other affiliate online/offline retailers. ↩
Operated by CCC, T-Site is a brand given to online/offline shopping complexes, aiming to propose new lifestyle, fashion and creative items as well as selling books. ↩

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From Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto: 14 startups pitch at Launch Pad competition

Takeshi Hirano 2015.12.19

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2015 Fall in Kyoto, Japan. See the original story in Japanese. Infinity Venture Partners, a Tokyo-based global investment fund, organized its semi-annual startup showcasing event in Kyoto earlier this month, where 14 startups exhibited their products to investors and entrepreneurs. Hokkaido-based Agri Info Design won the top prize with their mobile app solution called AgriBus-Navi. Here’s a quick rundown of the top five winners and finalists. 1st prize winner: AgriBus-NAVI (by Agri Info Design) AgriBus-NAVI is a mobile app for installation on farm machinery like tractors, crop harvesters, and self-propelled sprayers for checkrow planting. One of the utmost difficulties in farmwork is confirmation as to agrochemical spraying having been performed properly because rough chemical spraying causes fertilizers to be wasted. This mobile app replaces conventional GPS-based systems that have been used to solve such issues. 2nd prize winner: Nutte (by State of Mind) Nutte is a crowdsourced platform of seamstresses, receiving orders for all manufacturing processes for creation of clothing, from design to sewing. Differentiating from similar Japanese services like Sitateru, Nutte allows users to order their originally designed clothing or items using an image sketch. See also: Sitateru:…

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2015 Fall in Kyoto, Japan.

See the original story in Japanese.

Infinity Venture Partners, a Tokyo-based global investment fund, organized its semi-annual startup showcasing event in Kyoto earlier this month, where 14 startups exhibited their products to investors and entrepreneurs. Hokkaido-based Agri Info Design won the top prize with their mobile app solution called AgriBus-Navi.

Here’s a quick rundown of the top five winners and finalists.

1st prize winner: AgriBus-NAVI (by Agri Info Design)

AgriBus-NAVI is a mobile app for installation on farm machinery like tractors, crop harvesters, and self-propelled sprayers for checkrow planting.

One of the utmost difficulties in farmwork is confirmation as to agrochemical spraying having been performed properly because rough chemical spraying causes fertilizers to be wasted. This mobile app replaces conventional GPS-based systems that have been used to solve such issues.

2nd prize winner: Nutte (by State of Mind)

Nutte is a crowdsourced platform of seamstresses, receiving orders for all manufacturing processes for creation of clothing, from design to sewing. Differentiating from similar Japanese services like Sitateru, Nutte allows users to order their originally designed clothing or items using an image sketch.

See also:

Sitateru: Japan’s matchmaking platform for independent fashion brands and garment factories

3rd prize winner: CloudSign (by Bengo4.com)

ivs-2015-fall-kyoto-launchpad-bengo4.com-cloudsign — Bengo4.com Taichiro Motoe

Bengo4.com, the company behind Japan’s foremost legal portal under the same name, was listed on the TSE Mothers Market in December 2014. The company recently launched an online contract signing platform called CloudSign.

Using the CloudSign platform, a sender of a contract is requested to upload an agreement form in PDF format designating which part of the form should be filled by a recipient. Then the recipient will receive an e-mail containing a unique URL to browse the form. As the recipient signs the form with a digital signature, the finalized version of the form will be shared on both sides by each other via the platform.

See also:

Japanese legal portal Bengo4.com raises $208,000 from Kakaku.com

4th prize winner: Anyca (by Anyca)

Anyca is a car-sharing platform for individuals. When a user books a car registered on the platform, the owner of the car will be requested to approve the use. Upon the approval, both parties can arrange a delivery place of the car each other. The user will be requested to return the car to the owner after the use. Allowing users to apply for a car insurance by the day, the service is aimed to secure both easiness and safety. The service is a provided by a group company of DeNA (TSE:2432), a Japanese leading mobile gaming company.

5th prize winner: Repro (by Repro)

Repro is a startup behind a mobile app analysis and marketing tool, having won pitch competitions at startup events like our Mixer Tokyo and B Dash Camp.
In addition to quantitative analysis, this tool provides mobile developers with qualitative analysis visualizing user behaviors on screen by using movies. It also allows the developers to send push notifications or in-app messages to their users.

Adopted by and implemented into 1,025 apps from 17 countries worldwide, paying mobile developers comprise 5.6% in the entire user base of the analysis platform. The company fundraised 1 million yen (about $820,000) from DG Incubation and other companies in April.

See also:

Japan’s mobile analytics company Repro secures $835,000 from DG Incubation, others

Below are the startups selected as finalists.

Wizpra NPS (by Wizpra)

Founded in March 2013, Wizpra has been providing a user experience management platform called Wizpra NPS and an employee experience management (EEM) platform called Wizpra Card. Wizpra NPS has been adopted by more than 1,000 retailers in Japan including fitness gyms in the six months since launch.

The company fundraised a total of 230 million yen (about $1.9 million) from Gree Ventures, Mobile Internet Capital, SMBC Venture Capital and Mizuho Capital in January.

See also:

Japan’s customer experience management platform Wizpra raises $2 million

LiveConnect (by Z-Works)

Z-Works has developed a home gateway device, a cloud platform and mobile app leveraging sensors corresponding to the Z-wave standard, a wireless communication specification for home automation. Amongst their products, LiveConnect is an IoT (Internet of Things) service for home security.

Aiming to support care for the elderly, for instance, their smart lock solution allows caregivers to lock a room using a mobile app and a motion sensor by detecting the sign of wandering behaviors of their charges.

Medicine Delivery (by Minacolor)

Minacolor has been offering advice on medicines and treatments by pharmacists online. The company started an on-demand medicine delivery service in November of 2013.

Using the service, a pharmacist from the company will choose an appropriate medicine according to one’s symptom and their deliverer will bring it to the door of one’s home within the shortest delivery time of 30 minutes after receiving the order. The service is currently available in the central district of Tokyo, or the southern part of the area surrounded by Yamanote Loop Line.

Users will need to place an order using a mobile app so that it will record their order history upon considering multiple drug intake or future ordering convenience. The company takes about 5,000 yen (or about $41) on average from each order with an average profitability of 10%, aiming to crowdsource jobs to 80,000 qualified pharmacists who want to work at home.

Popcorn (by Coubic)

Coubic is a startup known for a freemium scheduling and appointment booking solution under the same name. The company provides a mobile app offering special deals on last-minute bookings for beauty and massage salons, called Popcorn. Available only for booking up to 15 minutes prior to receiving, the app adopts advance payment to reduce the risk of cancellation for salon owners. These salon owners can use the Coubic platform to better manage customers.

See also:

Japan’s Coubic launches last-minute beauty salon booking app Popcorn

Spectee (by Spectee)

Spectee shows users critical incidents and events happening now in an easier manner by curating updates from social media and sorts them based on geotags or keywords contained in every tweet or message post. About 60 locations across Japan are set in the app where users can see what is happening in real time in every location.

See also:

Spectee: Japanese app delivers local news faster than newspapers and TV

Fitty (by Scala International)

Fitty is a mobile app that helps women find the proper fit for lingerie pieces. By entering several selections like bra size or body shape into the app, it will suggest users the best-fit selection of bras. In order to enable presentation of best suggestions to users, the company has been collecting up-to-date product profiles from fashion retailers and manufacturers to incorporate them into the app.

As an extension of the recommendation result, the app will give users a link so that they can purchase bra items online. The company is considering launch of a business which provides statistical data of bra wearers to lingerie manufacturers.

Partee (by g&h)

Partee is a mobile app that allows users to create a T-shirt or smartphone cases using their favorite pictures. Users can also create it using pictures uploaded by not only them but also their friends. When one’s picture is used by other users, some revenue will be shared with the owner of the picture.

Monomy (by Fun Up)

Monomy is an iOS app that offers an online marketplace for creatives, allowing people to make accessories they like with ease using smartphones. The platform was launched in August by Fun Up, the Tokyo-based company which has been running several online services since 2011.

The difference between trendy marketplaces for handmade goods and Monomy is that users only need to design the accessories they want. What happens is that Monomy takes care of the whole process from receiving orders through production in their own workshop. They can take large orders such as orders for 1,000 items and make them all in their workshop, with the accessories being made by experienced craftspeople by hand.

See also:

Monomy: Japanese mobile app that lets you create accessories of your own design

LaFabric (by LifeStyle Design)

LaFabric is a made-to-order fashion e-commerce site. Since its launch back in February of 2014, starting with custom-made business suits and shirts, they have expanded to jeans and other casual fashion items to cover people’s needs.

LifeStyle Design, the company behind the service, fundraised about 100 million yen (or about $830,000) from Nissay Capital in May.

Translated by Moto Tsujino via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

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Whomor, Japan’s crowdsourced comic studio, raises $1.6M from Digital Garage

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.16

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Whomor, the Japanese company offering a crowdsourcing platform focused on illustrations and 3D computer graphics, unveiled today that it has fundraised 200 million yen (about $1.6 million) from DG Incubation and DK Gate. DG Incubation is the investment arm of Japanese internet giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while DK Gate is a joint venture company of Digital Garage and Kodansha, a Japanese leading publishing company. Since its launch back in January of 2011, Whomor has established a crowdsourcing platform for comics and storyboards, enabling mass-produced high quality content by optimized job dilution in the production process from jotting down ideas, to drawing and finishing sketches. At Rising Expo 2015, a startup showcase event hosted by CyberAgent Ventures in August, Whomor CEO Mikiya Shibatsuji claimed in his pitch that the company has acquired 3,000 crowdsourced creators on the platform, while 70% of them are coming from Japan and the remaining 30% workforce from outside Japan. In addition to receiving outsourced comic productions, they have been developing original comic series based on their intellectual property as well as monetizing new comic media. Producing native advertising content using comics, the company started publishing these ads in the…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Whomor, the Japanese company offering a crowdsourcing platform focused on illustrations and 3D computer graphics, unveiled today that it has fundraised 200 million yen (about $1.6 million) from DG Incubation and DK Gate. DG Incubation is the investment arm of Japanese internet giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while DK Gate is a joint venture company of Digital Garage and Kodansha, a Japanese leading publishing company.

rising-expo-2015-whomor-1 — Whomor CEO Mikiya Shibatsuji delivers his pitch at Rising Expo 2015.

Since its launch back in January of 2011, Whomor has established a crowdsourcing platform for comics and storyboards, enabling mass-produced high quality content by optimized job dilution in the production process from jotting down ideas, to drawing and finishing sketches. At Rising Expo 2015, a startup showcase event hosted by CyberAgent Ventures in August, Whomor CEO Mikiya Shibatsuji claimed in his pitch that the company has acquired 3,000 crowdsourced creators on the platform, while 70% of them are coming from Japan and the remaining 30% workforce from outside Japan.

In addition to receiving outsourced comic productions, they have been developing original comic series based on their intellectual property as well as monetizing new comic media. Producing native advertising content using comics, the company started publishing these ads in the game media section of Yahoo Japan this year. They also claimed they’ve enhanced partnerships with media websites introducing apps, intellectual property owners in the gaming industry in Japan and rest of the world, and comic-focused media websites in China and Korea.

Whomore has been massively collaborating with other comic publishing platforms through efforts like securing partnership with DeNA Mangabox and Manga Gift as well as acquiring Androbook from Voyage Group (TSE:3688). In addition to receiving outsourced comic productions, they have been developing original comic series based on their intellectual properties as well as monetizing new comic media. Producing native advertising content using comics, the company started publishing these ads in the game media section of Yahoo Japan’s portal this year. They also claimed they have enhanced partnerships with media websites introducing apps, intellectual property owners in the gaming industry in Japan and rest of the world, and comic-focused media websites in China and South Korea.

In partnership with Kodansha Advanced Media, DK Gate is dealing with digital distribution and global expansion of Japanese books and comic publications. Through the partnership with DK Gate upon latest funding, Whomor is expected to accelerate the global expansion efforts of their original content.

whomor-comics-sample — Examples of Whomor’s original comics

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Health 2.0 Asia showcases five most prominent healthcare startups from Japan

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2015.12.13

See the original story in Japanese. Health2.0, started in California in 2007, is the global conference introducing the latest technologies and advanced solutions in the medical and health sector. The conference was held in Japan for the first time over a two-day period of November 4 and 5. Five prominent startups from Japan challenging the sector each with own style entered the Afternoon Pitch Competition posited on Day 1. The judges for the competition were: Akira Kurabayashi, Managing Director, Draper Nexus Ventures Yasutaka Sakon, Executive Director, Strategic Planning and Business Operations, Docomo Healthcare Shumpei Fukui, Principal, Archetype Satoshi Fukushima, Senior Associate, Globis Capital Partners Symax (competition winner) Symax analyzes urine by attaching it inside a toilet for analyzing health conditions. It enables early detection of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and gout with 99% accuracy leveraging the original algorithm. Some similar existing services cost no less than tens of millions yen (or tens of thousand US dollars). Compared to these, Symax is superior in the number of diseases it can detect and continous use at low cost. The company claims that this solution can discover 86% out of all different types of lifestyle diseases. An individual user can also use…

See the original story in Japanese.

Health2.0, started in California in 2007, is the global conference introducing the latest technologies and advanced solutions in the medical and health sector. The conference was held in Japan for the first time over a two-day period of November 4 and 5.

Five prominent startups from Japan challenging the sector each with own style entered the Afternoon Pitch Competition posited on Day 1.

The judges for the competition were:

Akira Kurabayashi, Managing Director, Draper Nexus Ventures
Yasutaka Sakon, Executive Director, Strategic Planning and Business Operations, Docomo Healthcare
Shumpei Fukui, Principal, Archetype
Satoshi Fukushima, Senior Associate, Globis Capital Partners

Symax (competition winner)

Symax analyzes urine by attaching it inside a toilet for analyzing health conditions. It enables early detection of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and gout with 99% accuracy leveraging the original algorithm.

Some similar existing services cost no less than tens of millions yen (or tens of thousand US dollars). Compared to these, Symax is superior in the number of diseases it can detect and continous use at low cost. The company claims that this solution can discover 86% out of all different types of lifestyle diseases.

An individual user can also use it for 980 yen (about $8) a month while companies can use it for their employees’ health and adjustment of medical expenses by installing it it a building or facilities. Some high-class nursing homes and condo developers have shown interest in it because they can reduce an initial investment to about one-tenth that for conventional similar solutions which usually costs more than hundreds of thousand US dollars. Using the vital data collected, offers of data marketing business to health insuarance societies and companies are planned.

See also:

Japan’s preventive healthcare startup Symax secures funding from Draper Nexus, others

Clintal

Over a million “hospital refugees” are being found in Japan; many patients feel anxious and dissatisfied about doctors’ explanations and treatment plans. Clintal is an online platform where doctors with optimal skills can be searched for such patients in accordance with their diseases and symptoms. They can see the list of skilled doctors just by selecting diseases and treatment departments.

Its characteristic is that it is searchable not by hospital units but doctors, using both qualitative and quantitative data for selecting skilled doctors and evaluating accessibility to such doctors. Regarding the recommendation service, it provides a skilled doctor’s details in about a week’s time after inputting information from the web form. It deals with subjects such as increases in medical expenses and medical quality improvement, as these are becoming social problems in Japan.

Though a question considering resistance to doctors’ achievement disclosure was tossed by the judges, high evaluation has been given by doctors with positive and cooperative attitude can be seen for improvement of information accuracy instead. There are 500 skilled doctors listed on Clintal at this point and they aim to list the top 3 to 4% out of 250,000 doctors throughout Japan within a year.

See also:

Clintal, “Michelin Guide” for medical care, boasts over 500 skilled doctors in Tokyo

Handiii

Exiii explores a new form of myoelectric hand called Handiii using the 3D printing technique and the release of open source. Myoelectric arms are for people without hands for control with remaining muscles intuitively. As there has been no change in the function over a half century this kept the market small at several thousand people. Thus, customization needs for the size and shape of persons wearing an artificial hand have been hurdles.

For these reasons, an artificial hand so far costs about 1.5 million ($12,000) yen each. The diffusion of artificial hands stays at 0.7% because of the high cost. Handiii is an attempt which turns artificial hands into easier choice with its cost and design. It costs about 30,000 yen ($250) to make each artificial hand. The world where people can express handicaps as their personalities instead of hiding them is coming. Communities around the artificial hands have been formed and various customizations are put into practice all around the world.

See also:

Japan’s functional prosthetic hand Handiii beats funding goal in five days

HealthServer

The Dricos team has developed HealthServer which prepares supplement drinks to safekeep good health. HealthServer is the extremely easy solution for modern people to maintain good health.

Coordinating with various wearable devices, it analyzes the supplements which are necessary for user body. Then, the server prepares drinks according to the contents. The server also reads biomedical signals and produces an energy drink which fits each person who touches the machine itself when wearables are not in use.

38% of Japanese take some kinds of supplements today and its market amounts 1.5 trillion yen (about $124 billion) in scale. As the first stage, they have already started action to establish a sports gym next spring targeting people who go to the gym with high health awareness. And continuous sales are expected since the supplements of HealthServer are replenished by exchanging cartridges.

Cocololo

There are people who have mental problems in over 70% of the offices in Japan. Cocololo can visualize a mind condition not using wearables but with only smartphone which is familiar to us. It reads stress and relax numerical values with finger placement on the smartphone camera. The result is expressed as eight feeling types and the reliability of measurement accuracy is about 80%. Since its launch seven months ago, the app has acquired over 300,000 downloads to date.

After measuring the stress level, there is also a function which recommends music and spa coupons according to the stress condition. And as a stress check is going to be mandatory for enterprises from this December, the Cocololo team will also be providing solutions for corporations.

As you can see the five companies which made pitches this time provide a variety of medical or healthcare forms, approaches and targets. As technologies and devices develop in the future, data will be collected no matter what. The point is how to use them for solutions to solve people’s problems. Healthcare services are increasingly attracting interest; those within and outside Japan should be scrutinized from now on.

Translated by Azusa Murano via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

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