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Orange Fab Asia unveils graduating startups from Fall 2015 season at Demo Day in Tokyo

Orange Fab

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.26

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 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.

See also:

Pamily (Korea)

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

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Japan’s Secual, smart home security startup, ties up with major vacation rentals agencies

Secual

Junya Mori 2015.12.25

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…

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
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Dentsu Ventures invests in health tracking lab-in-a-box developer Cue

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.25

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…

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:

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.

Edited by Kurt Hanson

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Japan’s From Scratch raises $8M to enhance integrated digital marketing platform

Takeshi Hirano 2015.12.24

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based From Scratch, the company behind an integrated digital marketing platform called B->Dash, recently announced that it has fundraised 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) from Global Brain, Dentsu Digital Holdings, and Nippon Venture Capital. Details such as a payment date and stock shares were not disclosed. This follows their first funding of about 300 million yen ($2.4 million) from Draper Nexus Venture Partners and Itochu Technology Ventures in May. The company will enhance their workforce to promote the development of big data and artificial intelligence, while developing markets and enhancing service features for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses). From Scratch CEO Yasuhiro Abe says the active marketing automation market encouraged this funding. He also addresses that their marketing platform B->Dash is used by more than 100 companies. Abe explains: At the time we fundraised this May, we were planning our next funding next year. However, the business in this field is booming, and most of all, we have been growing more than we had expected. In these surroundings, the only question we have is “who is going to dominate this field?” you see. This is why we decided to take early action. A…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based From Scratch, the company behind an integrated digital marketing platform called B->Dash, recently announced that it has fundraised 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) from Global Brain, Dentsu Digital Holdings, and Nippon Venture Capital. Details such as a payment date and stock shares were not disclosed.

This follows their first funding of about 300 million yen ($2.4 million) from Draper Nexus Venture Partners and Itochu Technology Ventures in May. The company will enhance their workforce to promote the development of big data and artificial intelligence, while developing markets and enhancing service features for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses).

From Scratch CEO Yasuhiro Abe says the active marketing automation market encouraged this funding. He also addresses that their marketing platform B->Dash is used by more than 100 companies.

Abe explains:

At the time we fundraised this May, we were planning our next funding next year. However, the business in this field is booming, and most of all, we have been growing more than we had expected. In these surroundings, the only question we have is “who is going to dominate this field?” you see. This is why we decided to take early action.

A previous interview revealed that this service is not budget-pleasing by any means. Their clients are supposed to be able to invest 3 to 5 million yen (about $2.5 to $4.1 million) monthly on the digital marketing budget, and a monthly cost starts from half a million yen ($4,100) with the extra cost charged depending on pageviews (12-month contract).

From the fact that more than 100 companies decided to use this service only within a year after its launch despite of its high cost, it can be assumed that their services match the market needs perfectly. A quick math shows that the company sold more than 600 million yen (about $4.9 million) a year. Marketo and Hubspot from abroad are often considered as the competitors.

Abe continued:

We explain to our clients that we are offering a system in which the business operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Clients can choose between hiring a person who handles that operation and utilizing a tool which handles that operation.

While the company is growing steadily, the more the company provides quality consulting support services, the more the company needs bigger operating capacity. The company is now looking at big data and artificial intelligence as solutions for this issue.

Simply put, from big data, they are trying to identify support patterns which their consultants are currently dealing with, and to use that as a system so that consulting services can be conducted by the system.

Abe claims that the “marketing automation” market is not that large, and thus their further success depends on how they can automate the system to enter the small business field.

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

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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…

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