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Japanese mobile game developer Akatsuki files for IPO

Akatsuki

Takeshi Hirano 2016.02.13

aktsk-genki-shiota-tetsuro-koda — R to L: CEO Genki Shiota, COO Tetsuro Koda (Photo: Akatsuki’s website)

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Akatsuki, the mobile developer behind game titles like Cinderella Nine and Thousand Memories, announced that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange was approved on Friday. The company will offer 2.2 million shares for public subscription and sell 495,000 shares in over-allotment options for a total of 1.1 million shares. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting.

Its share price range will be released on 26 February with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 1 March and pricing on 8 March. According to the consolidated statement as of July 2015, they posted revenue of 4.3 billion yen ($38 million) and an ordinary profit of 601 million yen ($5.3 million). In the latest fiscal quarter, they posted revenue of 3.9 billion yen ($34 million) and an ordinary profit 1.4 billion yen ($12.3 million).

Led by the company’s CEO, Genki Shiota, (holding a 39.92% stake), its major shareholders include the company’s COO Tetsuro Koda (19.52%), Globis Capital Partners (4.54%), Link and Motivation (4.03%), and Globis Fund (2.72%).

Since its launch in June 2010, Akatsuki has been seeing a rapid growth in mobile social game titles through game distribution platforms like Mobage and Gree. The company introduced mobile role-playing game Thousand Memories in November 2013 for iOS, followed by an Android version in December 2013, which acquired 2 million users in only six months after the launch.

The company announced in May 2014 that former partner at IBM Venture Capital Group, Hisashi Katsuya, and former Mixi CFO, Fumiaki Koizumi, have joined the management board. Koizumi is involved with many startups, including Japanese mobile flea market startup Mercari.

See also:

Japanese mobile app developer raises $14M, sets up shop in Taiwan

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson

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Japan’s online coding bootcamp platform TechAcademy acquired for $5 million

Takeshi Hirano 2016.02.07

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based United (TSE:2497), the Japanese listed company focused on developing mobile apps and adtech platforms, announced on Wednesday that it will acquire a whole stake in Kiramex, a Japanese startup behind online crowdsourced programming school service TechAcademy. According to disclosed information, the listed company will acquire Kiramex for about 600 million yen (about $5.1 million) through stock swap and payment in cash. This deal is expected to be closed on February 19th. Since its launch back in May of 2010, Kiramex had been offering a Groupon-like group-buying platform called Kaupon, starting as the second business of its kind in Japan. Riding a wave of popularity, the company secured angel investments only a month after launch, followed by $2.4 million in funding from Globis Capital Partners in September the same year. However, the Japanese group-buying industry subsequently became fiercely competitive and saturated because of the number of similar services continuously coming online. In 2013, the situation forced Kiramex to withdraw from the group-buying business (ownership of the Kaupon platform was subsequently handed over to Japanese internet company Cybridge). Prior to shutdown of its group-buying business, the team launched online crowdsourced…

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based United (TSE:2497), the Japanese listed company focused on developing mobile apps and adtech platforms, announced on Wednesday that it will acquire a whole stake in Kiramex, a Japanese startup behind online crowdsourced programming school service TechAcademy. According to disclosed information, the listed company will acquire Kiramex for about 600 million yen (about $5.1 million) through stock swap and payment in cash. This deal is expected to be closed on February 19th.

Since its launch back in May of 2010, Kiramex had been offering a Groupon-like group-buying platform called Kaupon, starting as the second business of its kind in Japan. Riding a wave of popularity, the company secured angel investments only a month after launch, followed by $2.4 million in funding from Globis Capital Partners in September the same year. However, the Japanese group-buying industry subsequently became fiercely competitive and saturated because of the number of similar services continuously coming online. In 2013, the situation forced Kiramex to withdraw from the group-buying business (ownership of the Kaupon platform was subsequently handed over to Japanese internet company Cybridge).

Prior to shutdown of its group-buying business, the team launched online crowdsourced programming school platform TechAcademy in 2012. It has acquired more than 7,000 aspiring programmers as students to date. Additionally, it’s been adopted by about 100 companies for their in-house employee training. In partnership with the new parent company United, Kiramex aims to expand the TechAcademy business further by leveraging the former’s marketing expertise and efforts.

masayuki-murata-yozo-kaneko — From the left: Kiramex CEO Masayuki Murata, United President/COO Yozo Kaneko

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s SmartHR, cloud-based personnel management platform, secures seed round

Kufu
SmartHR

Junya Mori 2016.02.07

See the original story in Japanese. Kufu is a Japanese startup behind SmartHR, a cloud-based personnel management platform. The company recently announced that it has secured funds from East Ventures, DG Incubation, and Beenext. The exact amount is yet to be announced but it is said to amount to several tens of millions in Japanese yen (hundreds of thousand US dollars). SmartHR automates procedures related to social insurance and unemployment insurance. It was developed to free up managers or human resources representatives from tiresome and time-consuming personnel management. Launched back in November 2015, this release was announced during the “Startup Battle” pitch competition of TechCrunch Tokyo 2015 where they were victorious. This service gained a great response right after its release, and 2 months later the number of companies using the company’s service has grown from 200 to 450. Noted Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata upon the funds, It has been growing much larger than we expected. It’s grown 170% from the preceding month so we are re-calculating profit and loss. Although the majority of SmartHR users are companies with 50 to 100 employees, there are also large companies with some 400 to 500 employees. He also commented: We have huge…

kufu-shoji-miyata — Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata

See the original story in Japanese.

Kufu is a Japanese startup behind SmartHR, a cloud-based personnel management platform. The company recently announced that it has secured funds from East Ventures, DG Incubation, and Beenext. The exact amount is yet to be announced but it is said to amount to several tens of millions in Japanese yen (hundreds of thousand US dollars).

SmartHR automates procedures related to social insurance and unemployment insurance. It was developed to free up managers or human resources representatives from tiresome and time-consuming personnel management. Launched back in November 2015, this release was announced during the “Startup Battle” pitch competition of TechCrunch Tokyo 2015 where they were victorious. This service gained a great response right after its release, and 2 months later the number of companies using the company’s service has grown from 200 to 450.

tctokyo-2015-top-prize-winner-smarthr — Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata (right) receives the award from TechCrunch US writer Kim-Mai Cutler.

Noted Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata upon the funds,

It has been growing much larger than we expected. It’s grown 170% from the preceding month so we are re-calculating profit and loss. Although the majority of SmartHR users are companies with 50 to 100 employees, there are also large companies with some 400 to 500 employees.

He also commented:

We have huge demand and numerous inquiries. That also accelerates the improvement of the product.

With the funds raised this time, Kufu plans to strengthen development and the support service system. Keiko Umino, a certified social insurance labor consultant at SmartHR, established a social and labor consultant corporation to deal with the legal procedures under Act on Public Consultants on Social and Labour Insurance; the two companies will cooperate and offer complementary services to users.

See also:

Cloud-based personnel management tool SmartHR wins Open Network Lab 10th Demo Day

Miyata says:

At this moment our service is only for the enterprises but in the future we are thinking about providing the management displays to consultants as well. The response from the users made us consider this. SmartHR aims to enable anyone to handle the simplified tasks so certified social insurance consultants can effectively commit highly-valued consulting time.

Upon reflecting on the response from users, Miyata commented that “2016 is the year to brush up on the product!” and has set his target for this year – introducing 3,000 companies – which has remained the same since the site release. However, he has revised the target for 2017 upwards to 30,000 companies.

It looks like SmartHR can alter this industry for the first time in ages and we bid godspeed to this endeavor.

Translated by Minako Ambiru via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Smartphones ‘Designed in Japan’ are going global under Japan’s Aratas brand

Masaru Ikeda 2016.02.06

See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Gooute, which was incorporated in Singapore, last month announced the launch of a new design brand for smartphone body or UI in low-end models, called Aratas. It mainly focuses on the emerging market in Asia and plans to commence sales of its series such as KAZE01, KAZE02, NAMI01 or NAMI02 from this spring. At a recent press conference, CEO and co-founder of Gooute Shunya Yokoji said that iPhones are still predominant as the current business model, leveraging the app store, although Android is ready to prevail throughout the world. On the other hand, emerging smartphone manufacturers around the Asian region dealing in low-end smartphones for Android have been showing rapid growth. He founded ARATAS in order to catch up with this trend. He explained: As fabless enterprises, tip manufacturers or design houses go on the rise, now anybody can become a smartphone manufacturer. Yet for low-end smartphone developers, it is unprofitable and only offers cut-throat competition if they cannot sell more than 10 million smartphones each year. ARATAS provides these manufacturers with design of smartphones and opportunities to maximize profits. It especially focuses on the three features of Device (chassis design), UI (user…

See the original story in Japanese.

Japan’s Gooute, which was incorporated in Singapore, last month announced the launch of a new design brand for smartphone body or UI in low-end models, called Aratas. It mainly focuses on the emerging market in Asia and plans to commence sales of its series such as KAZE01, KAZE02, NAMI01 or NAMI02 from this spring.

At a recent press conference, CEO and co-founder of Gooute Shunya Yokoji said that iPhones are still predominant as the current business model, leveraging the app store, although Android is ready to prevail throughout the world. On the other hand, emerging smartphone manufacturers around the Asian region dealing in low-end smartphones for Android have been showing rapid growth. He founded ARATAS in order to catch up with this trend.

He explained:

gooute-yokomichi-demo — Gooute CEO and co-founder Shunya Yokoji exhibits Aratas smartphones

As fabless enterprises, tip manufacturers or design houses go on the rise, now anybody can become a smartphone manufacturer. Yet for low-end smartphone developers, it is unprofitable and only offers cut-throat competition if they cannot sell more than 10 million smartphones each year.

ARATAS provides these manufacturers with design of smartphones and opportunities to maximize profits. It especially focuses on the three features of Device (chassis design), UI (user interface), and NET (information service bundled with the devices).

On the iPhone packages, one can spot the sentence ‘Designed in California.’ It represents the policy that no matter where it was manufactured, branding of the context or the design of the product was being emphasized. Gooute aims to bring this iPhone “trademark idea” to low-end Android smartphones, by providing proprietary UI or UX through tie-ups with manufacturers that have fabrication facilities or potential customers.

DJ Kawasaki composed a theme song for the brand, while the package design for mid-range smartphones KAZE01 and KAZE02 was handled by the architectural designer Tei Shuwa, who was referred to in a previous article about KAMARQ. No similar example of this unique strategy that focuses on product imaging from the very beginning can be easily found among Japanese startups. On the face of the smartphones under the ARATAS brand, in which many Japanese creators including Digital Hollywood graduates have been involved, the phrase of ‘Designed in Japan’ is engraved.

gooute-aratas-loucus — The Loucus feature distributes a variety of life-style information to Aratas smartphone users.

In addition to smartphone sales, Gooute engages in an ad platform business called LOUCUS which enables display of advertisement for targeted users regardless of the device vendors, partnered with Japan’s mobile ad major inMobi. Also, using the entertainment information platform Goume, which allows localization of companies’ unique content and global distribution thereof, Gooute aims to maximize its profitability. It plans to install these services in 50 to 100 million smartphones within this year.

Gooute was launched in June of 2013. CEO Yokoji had been involved in music/image distribution service before at Japan’s internet service company Nifty (TSE:3823), not to mention building up Milmo into a rich content distribution service then spinning it off.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Nine matchmaking app connects users through best nine Instagram photos

Lip
Nine

Masaru Ikeda 2016.02.01

See the original story in Japanese. Did you know that a photo-sharing campaign called #2015bestnine has swept the social media sphere around the world? It allows users to curate the year’s top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline and put them into a collage image to share on social media with other users. Since this service has penetrated worlwide in a winkling of an eye, about 15 million people including celebrities like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Michelle Obama and Donald Trump, have been reportedly enjoying its use. The campaign was conducted by Tokyo-based Lip, a Japanese startup also known for its matchmaking apps like Lemon and 5pm, aiming to tether a new mobile app just launched globally today. The company launched a mobile app called Nine for iOS, which is available on iTunes AppStore worldwide. Thanks to the successful result of the #2015bestnine campaign, the app went live today but has already acquired 130,000 users worldwide, especially from New York City and Los Angeles. See also: This Japanese duo launches limited-time-period matching app ‘5pm’ in San Francisco Japan’s Lip drops new app Lemon, AI-curated social network for university students Nine is a mobile matchmaking app for…

See the original story in Japanese.

Did you know that a photo-sharing campaign called #2015bestnine has swept the social media sphere around the world? It allows users to curate the year’s top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline and put them into a collage image to share on social media with other users. Since this service has penetrated worlwide in a winkling of an eye, about 15 million people including celebrities like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Michelle Obama and Donald Trump, have been reportedly enjoying its use.

nine-cereblities-profiles — More than a few celebrities enjoyed #2015bestnine.

The campaign was conducted by Tokyo-based Lip, a Japanese startup also known for its matchmaking apps like Lemon and 5pm, aiming to tether a new mobile app just launched globally today. The company launched a mobile app called Nine for iOS, which is available on iTunes AppStore worldwide. Thanks to the successful result of the #2015bestnine campaign, the app went live today but has already acquired 130,000 users worldwide, especially from New York City and Los Angeles.

See also:

Nine is a mobile matchmaking app for Instagrammers, allowing them to curate top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline over the past year and put them into a collage image to be placed on their profile page. Users can connect with others who may have a similar feeling by repeating flick-right to connect or -left to pass, much in a manner similar to the Tinder app.

MG_2402 — From the left: Lip’s Yusuke Matsuura and Mai Sekiguchi

Thanks to the appeal of simplicity in expressing someone’s inner character and outer appearance with as little as nine pictures, Nine’s user base is rapidly increasing by the day. Lip co-founder Mai Sekiguchi told us that 75% of their users are females, which is very unlikely for this kind of apps. In proportion to the geographical demographics of Instagram users, the Nine app has 40% of their users in the US, followed by Indonesia and UK. Due to acquisition of a huge user base in Android-dominant markets, the team plans to release an Android version in mid-February.

The app is based on an remarkably interesting idea but I’m curious as to how they will make money. In response to this my question, Lip co-founder and CEO Yusuke Matsumura explained:

We will provide a premium plan for a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 or 1,200 yen. It will provides three premium functions: Unlimited Likes, Neighborhood Discovery and Unlimited More Photos.

Unlimited Likes and Unlimited More Photos will allow users to display photos from a wider variety of those in an archive than the maximum limit for the freemium edition. Neighborhood Discovery will allow users to connect with other users in the same city or town while the default freemium setting will connect users with each others within 50 kilometers. Lip thinks they will flexibly alter these settings or criteria for the premium menu while analyzing user behaviors.

Founded in November 2014, Lip raised an undisclosed amount of funding in November 2015 from CyberAgent Ventures, Venture United, Incubate Fund and Primal Capital, in addition to accepting individual investment from Japanese mobile gaming developer Colopl’s co-founder Kotaro Chiba.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Kaizen Platform, online experience optimizer, secures $8 million in series B

Kaizen Platform

Takeshi Hirano 2016.02.01

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Japanese startup Kaizen Platform, offering website user interface improvement solutions, announced today it has fundraised $8 million in a series B round. Participating investors are YJ Capital, NTT Docomo Ventures, Saison Ventures, Colpl, Eight Road Ventures Japan (previously known as Fidelity Growth Partners Japan), Gree Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. Eight Road Ventures Japan, Gree Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners participated in the previous round. With the latest funds, Kaizen Platform has fundraised a total of $17.8 million for three years since launch. The funds will be used to strengthen management foundation, product development and global expansion. Upon announcement at this time, the company announced that their platform for enterprise users, launched back in August 2013, has been adopted by 170 companies and added $200 million in revenue through their websites by optimizing the online experience of website visitors. According to Kaizen Platform CEO Kenji Sudo, the company’s online experience improvement solutions are leveraging more than 2,900 crowdsourced growth hackers worldwide. See also: Japan’s growth hacking startup Kaizen Platform appoints new CFO Japanese growth hacking startup Kaizen Platform raises $5 million Kaizen Platform’s A/B test service wins BDash Camp…

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Japanese startup Kaizen Platform, offering website user interface improvement solutions, announced today it has fundraised $8 million in a series B round. Participating investors are YJ Capital, NTT Docomo Ventures, Saison Ventures, Colpl, Eight Road Ventures Japan (previously known as Fidelity Growth Partners Japan), Gree Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. Eight Road Ventures Japan, Gree Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners participated in the previous round.

With the latest funds, Kaizen Platform has fundraised a total of $17.8 million for three years since launch. The funds will be used to strengthen management foundation, product development and global expansion.

Upon announcement at this time, the company announced that their platform for enterprise users, launched back in August 2013, has been adopted by 170 companies and added $200 million in revenue through their websites by optimizing the online experience of website visitors. According to Kaizen Platform CEO Kenji Sudo, the company’s online experience improvement solutions are leveraging more than 2,900 crowdsourced growth hackers worldwide.

See also:

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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