Tokyo-based Moff, offering a wearable smart toy Moff Band, showcased a preview of ‘Pac-Man Powered by Moff’ to be launched this spring, jointly developed with Japan’s major game developer, Bandai Namco Entertainment (TSE:7832). This preview is given this week at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. This is the first app by Moff based on its gamified fitness platform.
This preview version allows users wearing the Moff Band connected with Bluetooth to play Pac-Man remotely. For the official version, fitness elements will be added, while the basic game design of Pac-Man where players evade ghosts or eat power-cookies will be kept.
The launch of the game at this time, which is associated with the well-known Pac-Man character, should boost Moff’s name recognition in the US. The app was developed through a cooperative business arrangement between the two companies, subsequent to Bandai Namco Entertainment’s investment in Moff last September.
Moff CEO Akinori Takahagi said:
PAC-MAN Powered by Moff brings a brand-new user experience, while allowing enjoyment of games from olden days and exercising actively for families including children. Our aim is to build new relationships between families and wearable technologies by leveraging our gamified fitness technology through cooperation with leading companies in the entertainment field.
See the original story in Japanese. The creator of the Ring wearable device, Silicon Valley- / Tokyo-based startup LogBar, has just unveiled a new product called ‘iLi‘ at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. The iLi is a pendant worn around the neck that will translate between English, Japanese, and Chinese. Thanks to a built-in engine for speech recognition/synthesis and translation, Wi-Fi or other Internet connections are not needed to use iLi. The device has a button on its surface, which looks like the fingerprint sensor design on the iPhone. Users have to push it before speaking so that the device can recognize their speech and synthesize its translated result. The product price has not been announced, but it is said to be “affordable” as it opens up for pre-orders in March or April. The second version of iLi will handle French, Thai, and Korean, and the third version will add Spanish, Italian, and Arabic options. In addition to product sales, LogBar is exploring establishing a business network leveraging the device as a business model. The company may partner with travel agencies, hotels, transport operators, and car rental services, which cater to tourists and business travelers. Since the device specs have…
The creator of the Ring wearable device, Silicon Valley- / Tokyo-based startup LogBar, has just unveiled a new product called ‘iLi‘ at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. The iLi is a pendant worn around the neck that will translate between English, Japanese, and Chinese. Thanks to a built-in engine for speech recognition/synthesis and translation, Wi-Fi or other Internet connections are not needed to use iLi.
The device has a button on its surface, which looks like the fingerprint sensor design on the iPhone. Users have to push it before speaking so that the device can recognize their speech and synthesize its translated result. The product price has not been announced, but it is said to be “affordable” as it opens up for pre-orders in March or April. The second version of iLi will handle French, Thai, and Korean, and the third version will add Spanish, Italian, and Arabic options. In addition to product sales, LogBar is exploring establishing a business network leveraging the device as a business model. The company may partner with travel agencies, hotels, transport operators, and car rental services, which cater to tourists and business travelers.
Since the device specs have yet to be unveiled, it is uncertain whether or not the device is technically possible, or just vaporware. However, this is definitely the thing that turns ‘Honyaku Konyaku’ or translation jelly, a popular Sci-Fi gadget seen in the Doraemon Japanese comic series, into a reality. Following Jeplan which has recently developed the real De Lorean dream car from the Back to the Future movie, we are looking forward to the success of a Japanese startup attempting to turn Sci-Fi gadgets into a reality.
See the original story in Japanese. AirCloset is an outstanding startup in the Japanese fashion rental industry. Launched back in February of 2015, the company has been providing a subscription-based fashion item rental service for females under the same name. Its users combined surpasses 70,000 for now, which rapidly grew from 65,000 users in October of 2015. AirCloset announced today that it has fundraised slightly less than 1 billion yen (about $8 million) from several companies. Participating investors in this round include Jafco (TSE:8595, investment firm), Nakazono Holdings (operator of “White Kyubin” laundry shop chain), Saison Ventures (investment arm of credit card company Credit Saison), and Terrada Warehouse. With funding from such major companies, AirCloset will strengthen its structure by securing the financial base and maximizing business synergies between the warehouse management and laundry service businesses. Looking at what kind of synergies can be achieved with aforementioned investors, Terrada Warehouse, for examples, runs Minikura, a subscription-based box storage service which can be managed on the web. AirCloset partnered with the warehouse company slightly after launch, followed by securing funds from it in April of 2015. Going forward, the two companies will work together to streamline the logistics operations of accepting,…
AirCloset is an outstanding startup in the Japanese fashion rental industry. Launched back in February of 2015, the company has been providing a subscription-based fashion item rental service for females under the same name. Its users combined surpasses 70,000 for now, which rapidly grew from 65,000 users in October of 2015.
AirCloset announced today that it has fundraised slightly less than 1 billion yen (about $8 million) from several companies. Participating investors in this round include Jafco (TSE:8595, investment firm), Nakazono Holdings (operator of “White Kyubin” laundry shop chain), Saison Ventures (investment arm of credit card company Credit Saison), and Terrada Warehouse. With funding from such major companies, AirCloset will strengthen its structure by securing the financial base and maximizing business synergies between the warehouse management and laundry service businesses.
Looking at what kind of synergies can be achieved with aforementioned investors, Terrada Warehouse, for examples, runs Minikura, a subscription-based box storage service which can be managed on the web. AirCloset partnered with the warehouse company slightly after launch, followed by securing funds from it in April of 2015. Going forward, the two companies will work together to streamline the logistics operations of accepting, storing, managing, and shipping items, aiming to provide customers with improved services. In partnership with Nakazono Holdings running 8,500 laundry shops nationwide in Japan, AirCloset will work on strengthening its service operations.
AirCloset was founded by Satoshi Amanuma, Yusuke Maekawa, and Shoichi Kotani 18 months ago. The service has attracted many users since its pre-registration launch in late October of 2014, steadily growing its user base. It delivers a new endeavor with a surprise to our daily lives upon enjoying fashion. Having powerful supporters onboard, we cannot but keep our eyes on how AirCloset will fare from now on.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Medley announced in December that it had fundraised a total of 230 million yen (about $1.9 million) from Nikkei Business Publications (Nikkei BP), East Ventures, and Japanese angel investor Yuzuru Honda. East Ventures have invested in Medley in the past while Honda is the CEO of Japanese adtech company FreakOut (TSE:6094). The latest funding follows the company’s previous round in June of 2015, having raised 300 million yen (about $2.5 million) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Capital, MRT (TSE:6034, medical human resource), and Gree (TSE:3632, mobile gaming), as well as other angel investors. Medley provides an online job board for medical professionals, called Job Medley, as well as an online disease encyclopedia called Medley. Coinciding with the latest funds, Medley will partner with Nikkei BP to integrate Job Medley with Nikkei Medical Online, the publisher’s comprehensive information portal site for medical professionals. By utilizing the mutual strengths of both companies, they are looking to develop new services for 510,000 registered users of the portal site, encompassing 130,000 medical doctors. Medley CEO Kohei Takiguchi explained: Combining Nikkei Medical Online with our strength that engineers and medical professionals provide our services, I believe that both…
Tokyo-based startup Medley announced in December that it had fundraised a total of 230 million yen (about $1.9 million) from Nikkei Business Publications (Nikkei BP), East Ventures, and Japanese angel investor Yuzuru Honda. East Ventures have invested in Medley in the past while Honda is the CEO of Japanese adtech company FreakOut (TSE:6094). The latest funding follows the company’s previous round in June of 2015, having raised 300 million yen (about $2.5 million) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Capital, MRT (TSE:6034, medical human resource), and Gree (TSE:3632, mobile gaming), as well as other angel investors.
Medley provides an online job board for medical professionals, called Job Medley, as well as an online disease encyclopedia called Medley. Coinciding with the latest funds, Medley will partner with Nikkei BP to integrate Job Medley with Nikkei Medical Online, the publisher’s comprehensive information portal site for medical professionals. By utilizing the mutual strengths of both companies, they are looking to develop new services for 510,000 registered users of the portal site, encompassing 130,000 medical doctors.
Medley CEO Kohei Takiguchi explained:
Combining Nikkei Medical Online with our strength that engineers and medical professionals provide our services, I believe that both companies can better grow their businesses leveraging the mutual strengths.
The capital raised from this fundraising will be used to develop new collaborative services and for their operation. Although there is no official release of service content, they are creating brand new content for healthcare professionals.
We were told that the funds will be used to develop and operate a new service. Details of that are not yet disclosed but the company claimed that it will be something new for medical professionals.
The Job Medley platform has been steadily growing to date, building a sold revenue base for the company. It lists 47,055 positions for job-seeking medical professionals as of this writing. Instead of such a huge number of job postings, however, Takiguchi says that his team have fulfilled only about 10% of their objective which expects to list all positions available online.
Medley, the online medical resource, has attempted to enhance its service coverage, by adding a special feature page for prevention of influenza as well as a hospital search according to symptoms or the method of treatment. These efforts are based on the team’s intention to improve accessibility to existing medical database services for the public.
Takiguchi added:
Since existing medical database services are incomplete, we needed to build our own from scratch. It took more than expected to complete, but we have almost completed gathering and organizing symptoms, medical supplies, hospitals, and other related metadata information. We think that the next step is to provide users value based on our database. Using the symptom-based disease search function as well as the infection risk prediction model, we will explore new types of online medical services for users in 2016.
Medley has been receiving huge funding throughout 2015. The company has been devoted to developing the Job Medley platform to enhance the business prospects while developing the Medley database service to better serve users. They are steadily moving forward to disrupt the medical industry by inventing new online services.
Translated by Mariko Kobayashi via Mother First Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures, a VC firm focusing on seed-stage startups, announced the launch of its second fund today. The fund of $1.2 billion yen ($10 million) will be for investment in about 30 startups. See also: Up-and-coming investor hosts startup event in Tokyo, encourages global entrepreneurship Skyland Ventures CEO Yoshihiko Kinoshita says their typical scheme consists of a 15 million yen ($125,000) initial investment in a startup in a seed round with a potential follow-up investment of 5 million yen to 50 million yen ($42,000 to $420,000). Based on the scheme, Skyland Ventures wants to hold a 10% stake in the startup after its second round funding. Kinoshita says that his fund will make investments in several batches rather than doing a one-time major investment, in order to reduce the risk that the fund’s large stake in a startup may make it harder to get follow-up funding from other investors. Kinoshita has been conducting 15-minute mentoring sessions for acting and aspiring entrepreneurs every Wednesday. Through this effort, he has made investments in 20 startups in the last 40 months. The new fund will invest in startups in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, movie communication, smart…
Tokyo-based Skyland Ventures, a VC firm focusing on seed-stage startups, announced the launch of its second fund today. The fund of $1.2 billion yen ($10 million) will be for investment in about 30 startups.
Skyland Ventures CEO Yoshihiko Kinoshita says their typical scheme consists of a 15 million yen ($125,000) initial investment in a startup in a seed round with a potential follow-up investment of 5 million yen to 50 million yen ($42,000 to $420,000). Based on the scheme, Skyland Ventures wants to hold a 10% stake in the startup after its second round funding.
Kinoshita says that his fund will make investments in several batches rather than doing a one-time major investment, in order to reduce the risk that the fund’s large stake in a startup may make it harder to get follow-up funding from other investors.
Kinoshita has been conducting 15-minute mentoring sessions for acting and aspiring entrepreneurs every Wednesday. Through this effort, he has made investments in 20 startups in the last 40 months.
The new fund will invest in startups in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, movie communication, smart robotics, and other Internet sectors. Combining with portfolio startups in the previous fund, Skyland Ventures expects to have invested in 50 startups within two years.
Coinciding with the announcement, Skyland Ventures unveiled that they have invested in the following six startups:
TechCrunch Japan reported last week that Tokyo-based Freee, a Japanese startup behind a cloud-based accounting platform under the same name, has fundraised 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) from several investors including FinTech Fund, an investment fund recently launched by a subsidiary of Japanese financial service giant SBI Holdings (TSE:8473). In conjunction with the previous series C round funding in August, the latest funding means the company has fundraised 4.5 billion yen ($37.3 million) in 2015 to become the most-funded unlisted company in Japan last year. Meanwhile, SBI Holdings recently announced a strategic partnership with Yello Mobile, a Seoul-based conglomerate of Korean mobile startups, for cultivating FinTech businesses in Japan and Southeast Asia. Currently serving over 400,000 companies in Japan, the company announced in December that it has partnered with 11 Japanese megabanks including Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) and Mizuho Bank, giving them an access to accounting data of SMEs and freelancers using the Freee platform upon their approval so that these banks can provide new financial services such as loans using the data for eligibility of expenditures. In contrast to a study by University of Oxford predicting artificial intelligence will replace many jobs including accountants, Freee CEO Daisuke Sasaki…
TechCrunch Japan reported last week that Tokyo-based Freee, a Japanese startup behind a cloud-based accounting platform under the same name, has fundraised 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) from several investors including FinTech Fund, an investment fund recently launched by a subsidiary of Japanese financial service giant SBI Holdings (TSE:8473).
In conjunction with the previous series C round funding in August, the latest funding means the company has fundraised 4.5 billion yen ($37.3 million) in 2015 to become the most-funded unlisted company in Japan last year. Meanwhile, SBI Holdings recently announced a strategic partnership with Yello Mobile, a Seoul-based conglomerate of Korean mobile startups, for cultivating FinTech businesses in Japan and Southeast Asia.
Currently serving over 400,000 companies in Japan, the company announced in December that it has partnered with 11 Japanese megabanks including Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) and Mizuho Bank, giving them an access to accounting data of SMEs and freelancers using the Freee platform upon their approval so that these banks can provide new financial services such as loans using the data for eligibility of expenditures.
In contrast to a study by University of Oxford predicting artificial intelligence will replace many jobs including accountants, Freee CEO Daisuke Sasaki does not think this will happen because accountants will be able to provide business owners with useful advice on business decisions by leveraging automated systems like Freee.