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Tokyo’s FinTech startup hub FINOLAB holds its first growth hack seminar

FINOLAB

The Bridge 2016.04.14

This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.

FINOLAB, the FinTech center of Tokyo, on 12 April held its first growth hack seminar catering toward FinTech and other startups. The facilities~~, which earlier in the year was venue to FIBC 2016,~~ opened this February in the Otemachi/Marunouchi area (central business district) of Tokyo with backing from Mitsubishi Estate (TSE:8802) as well as the Dentsu group, comprising Dentsu (TSE:4324) and ISID (Information Services International-Dentsu, TSE:4812), in addition to support from FINOVATORS, an association for “financial innovation” established in Japan.

FINOLAB has already held other get-togethers so far, such as the first Techmeetup on 30 March, where for example Capy gave a presentation on use of the Google Cloud Platform for FinTech services. However, the seminar this time centered on the growth hack concept born in Silicon Valley, which combined with FinTech promises some interesting results for the future. The two speakers, producer Tomohiro Katayama and designer Daisuke Asano from Dentsu’s Business Creation Center, explained the basic concept behind growth hack for their audience.

katayama-asano-at-dentsu-growth-hackers — Dentsu’s Tomohiro Katayama (right) and designer Daisuke Asano (left) gave a lecture to the audience.

Entitled “Fintech Marketing Strategy as Seen from Business Schemes” the seminar attracted many FinTech businesses looking to expand their markets. In a nutshell the two speakers noted effective projection of user experience (UX) beyond user interface (UI) through application of the PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle. They also emphasized the fact that KGIs (key growth indicators) and KPIs (key performance indicators) should be considered with “Indexing” in mind… in other words, prioritization. Thus they noted that, whether for ToB (businesses) or ToC (consumers), communicating with the users and the market behooves a good Check effort reflected upon Action.

Katayama focused on the overall “key to success” in utilizing growth hack as a thorough understanding of similar fields, an example being the overlaps seen in the consumer products – like for detergents and foodstuff, having differing targets but overlapping user segments – and leveraging past records such as highlighting having been lauded for previous efforts. Asano provided more interface-level explanations of designing UX without reliance on words, focusing on use of UI color and images to “draw in” the users. They both agreed that “at first glance” impressions are clinchers in setting up growth hack strategies.

Those attending, such as Yosuke Shibuya of Smilable and Yasunori Sugii of CurrencyPort (one of the first tenants of FINOLAB) were very satisfied with the seminar and the venue… though Sugii did note that if more shops around FINOLAB would come to stay open later he would be able to attract more engineers. Toshiaki Hasumura, Planning Manager charged with FINOLAB activities, added that the plan was turn FINOLAB into a cornerstone for a global financial center in the near future and hopefully enhance business activities nearby. Regarding the growth hack seminar series, he said that there will be several more events upcoming later in the year.

Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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KDDI buys Japanese mobile game marketing startup AppBroadCast

Masaru Ikeda 2016.04.12

Tokyo-based Mediba, an ad business-centric subsidiary of Japan’s leading telco KDDI, announced on Friday that it has gained a major stake in AppBroadCast, the company behind a mobile game media called GameGift. Details of the deal have not been disclosed but it seems like the valuation of the startup upon this acquisition is some one billion yen, or tens of million US dollars, according to several information sources. Since launch back in January 2013, AppBroadCast started the GameGift service in form of an Android app, which has surpassed 4.1 million downloads to date, offering users complimentary virtual items, news updates and strategic know-how for trending game apps. The company currently offers other services like Sakipre, which allows users to participate in beta testing of new game apps, as well as Hayatoku, a pre-registration platform for early downloads of new game apps with rewards. Prior to acquisition, AppBroadCast secured an undisclosed sum of funding in January 2014 from several sources including KDDI Open Innovation Fund, the startup investment fund jointly managed by KDDI and Japanese investment firm Global Brain. In addition, the company has also been participating in Syn. portal partnership, the mobile company alliance run by KDDI group company Supership….

Since launch back in January 2013, AppBroadCast started the GameGift service in form of an Android app, which has surpassed 4.1 million downloads to date, offering users complimentary virtual items, news updates and strategic know-how for trending game apps. The company currently offers other services like Sakipre, which allows users to participate in beta testing of new game apps, as well as Hayatoku, a pre-registration platform for early downloads of new game apps with rewards.

Prior to acquisition, AppBroadCast secured an undisclosed sum of funding in January 2014 from several sources including KDDI Open Innovation Fund, the startup investment fund jointly managed by KDDI and Japanese investment firm Global Brain. In addition, the company has also been participating in Syn. portal partnership, the mobile company alliance run by KDDI group company Supership. The company says that it may expand the Gamegift business globally, focusing on the Asian market.

Via TechCrunch Japan

appbroadcast-management — The AppBroadCast management team: CEO Masashige Ohara (middle), Director Keijiro Nakamura (right)
Image credit: AppBroadCast

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Japan’s Recruit holds Tech Lab Paak Demo Day, teams from 3rd batch exhibit outcomes

Masaru Ikeda 2016.04.11

See the original story in Japanese. TECH LAB PAAK in Shibuya, Tokyo is a community space only for member IT creators, established by Recruit Holdings (TSE:6098, hereinafter called Recruit) in November of 2014. The facility is managed by Recruit’s R&D headquarters, and works as an incubator to support tenant startups. The tenant teams are roughly classified into ‘community members’ and ‘project members’ according to maturity of their developing services. Last month, a Demo Day was held for four teams from community member and six teams from project members to exhibit a half year’s outcome since they moved in. Below, we introduce what kind of services were or are going to be born out from TECH LAB PAAK, with a focus on prize winners. The following are judges for the pitch competition in the event. Yohei Sawayama, Managing Partner, 500 Startup Japan Kotaro Chiba, Co-founder and Executive Director, Colopl Ken Nishimura, Editor-in-Chief, TechCrunch Japan Shinichiro Isago, Evangelist, Microsoft Japan Yoichi Aso, Head of Media Technology Labs, Recruit Holdings TECH LAB PAAK award winner: RE:GAIN Supplemental prize: Amazon gift card worth 30,000 yen (about $270) RE:GAIN is an online matching platform for rehabilitation. By summarizing information about diagnosis or healthcare of employees in…

See the original story in Japanese.

TECH LAB PAAK in Shibuya, Tokyo is a community space only for member IT creators, established by Recruit Holdings (TSE:6098, hereinafter called Recruit) in November of 2014. The facility is managed by Recruit’s R&D headquarters, and works as an incubator to support tenant startups.

The tenant teams are roughly classified into ‘community members’ and ‘project members’ according to maturity of their developing services. Last month, a Demo Day was held for four teams from community member and six teams from project members to exhibit a half year’s outcome since they moved in.

Below, we introduce what kind of services were or are going to be born out from TECH LAB PAAK, with a focus on prize winners. The following are judges for the pitch competition in the event.

Yohei Sawayama, Managing Partner, 500 Startup Japan
Kotaro Chiba, Co-founder and Executive Director, Colopl
Ken Nishimura, Editor-in-Chief, TechCrunch Japan
Shinichiro Isago, Evangelist, Microsoft Japan
Yoichi Aso, Head of Media Technology Labs, Recruit Holdings

TECH LAB PAAK award winner: RE:GAIN

Supplemental prize: Amazon gift card worth 30,000 yen (about $270)

RE:GAIN is an online matching platform for rehabilitation. By summarizing information about diagnosis or healthcare of employees in companies, it matches those having a disorder and physical therapists. It has already been running in the US and yielded $6,000 as a net profit just in two months since launch last October, under which 170 rehab specialists have been registered.

Based on a B2B2E (business-to-business-to-employee) business model, it targets 4,000 US companies providing health plans with more than 1,000 employees, or 1,500 Japanese companies having an internal health insurance association. It has been used by Hawaii Pacific Health or sports club members at the University of California. In Japan, DeNA (TSE:2432) is going to start utilization from March as well, and other IT or healthcare companies are also considering adoption.

Microsoft Japan award winner: LandSkip

Supplemental prizes: choice sirloin of Oumi beef for BBQ and Microsoft Azure credit worth $120,000

LandSkip is a video distribution platform providing scenery videos from all over the world with 4K high-definition. Gathering video content owned by tourism industries including local governments or resort owners, this service distributes such online. User companies can display three-minute endless video clips on a large screen in office as an interior object.

The team plans to construct a system capable of distributing to more than 30,000 clients by cooperating with Japanese signage ad network company Microad Digital Signage (MADS). With most of the content being purchased from freelance filmmakers or others, alongside consumer plan users can utilize HD video distribution for free but are charged with that of 4K videos. As for a business plan, only 4K video distribution will be offered and be charged 30,000 yen (about $280) for monthly fee. In the future, it will enhance collection of overseas scenery videos.

TechCrunch Japan award winner: Lifilm by aba

Supplemental prizes: a pair meal ticket for the Azure 45 restaurant at Ritz Carlton Tokyo and an exhibition right at the TechCrunch Tokyo 2016 conference

Lifilm is an excretion sensor device designed for the elderly or the handicapped in need of nursing care. Most of bedridden people receiving nursing care wear diapers. However, caregivers cannot change diapers whenever necessary because excretion timing of care receivers cannot be known, so that caregivers do so at an undetermined time regardless of presence / absence of excreta. It has not been excreted (missing) at about 20% of the regular changing of diapers, and the loss time is a heavy burden on caregivers.

Lifilm detects the presence / absence of excreta using its own unique algorithm and notifies caregivers via tablets; it was developed by diverting inexpensive sensors from existing air cleaners, wherein the electrical resistance changes in accordance to odor or gas component changes. This device had been chosen for James Dyson Award Top 20, in addition to IoT Lab Selection by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. The team has already tied up with product manufacturers, and plans to start selling the products by early 2017 (the current expected price is about 50,000 to 60,000 yen, or about $500).

500 Startups Japan award winner: DAncing Einstein

Supplemental prizes: three meal tickets at house-boat Funasei; boarding with participants of Geeks on a Plane East Asia tour in April

DAncing Einstein, a startup focused on neuroscience, aims to develop more effective learning methods through clarification of the brain mechanism. Also, it has been holding seminars for enterprises or educators about learning based on MPS (memory platform system).

Colopla award winner: MagicPrice

Supplemental prizes: two coupons for choice portion of unfarmed tunas and boiled snow crabs

MagicPrice is an AI-powered strategic pricing platform which enables hotels or airline companies to propose optimal pricing at the time, neither too high for providers nor low for customers. Importing client companies’ data such as reservation history and crawling competitors’ data such as those of neighboring competitor hotels, it learns and computes the prices in real-time. The prices will be reflected on companies’ website or ticket reservation / OTA (online travel agent) website via ‘site controller’ systems.

The service eliminated functions requiring tech literacy, and was designed to automate operations as much as possible, for workers in hotels or airline companies are extremely busy. Leveraging the founder’s AdTech knowledge from previous positions, it provides the service in form of API (application programming interface). Currently, four companies are considering adoption.

Audience award winners: MagicPrice and Subot

Supplemental prizes: membership of TECH LAB PAAK as project members (tenant right for half a year) and AppleStore gift card worth 10,000 yen (about $93)

(MagicPrice explanation omitted since it has already been provided above.)

Subot is a scheduling robot that can be integrated with the Slack business chatting tool. When scheduling of a meeting is needed, you will need to search Google Calendar for participants’ spare time and present several choices. But this new tool improves working efficiency 2 to 10 times more compared to conventional manual scheduling with Google Calendar.

The beta version will be launched in early April. Although it supports only the combination of Google Calendar and Slack for the time being, further integration with other calendar and communication tools is planned for future.

TECH LAB PAAK has started accepting the 4th batch of tenants, and will start recruiting the 5th membership batch soon. Regardless of whether a corporation or an individual, and presence / absence of products, one can apply. Please check out the details at the TECH LAB PAAK website.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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360° video livestreaming platform HUG wins Open Network Lab 12th Demo Day in Tokyo

Open Network Lab

Masaru Ikeda 2016.04.11

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab held a Demo Day to showcase startups coming out of the 12th batch of its Seed Accelerator Program earlier this month. 93 teams including 19 teams from overseas had applied for this batch. Eventually, six teams were selected from among these for mentoring and support over a three-month period. Although details for one of these teams has not been disclosed, the other five teams made pitches. At the end of the event, the teams were judged and commended on the basis of votes from the main mentors or audiences. Best Team Award winner: HUG by Ducklings HUG is a platform for live streaming with cameras for a 360-degree view. The video can be watched on PCs or smartphones; in addition, the service supports distribution and sharing of 360-degree videos available for virtual reality devices, such as head-mounted displays, both in live or archived format by notifying the URL links. It can also accept comments on the video from viewers in real-time. According to Ducklings CEO Norikazu Takagi, while various cheap 360-degree cameras have been released by Samsung, LG, Nikon and other makers since the beginning of this year,…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab held a Demo Day to showcase startups coming out of the 12th batch of its Seed Accelerator Program earlier this month. 93 teams including 19 teams from overseas had applied for this batch. Eventually, six teams were selected from among these for mentoring and support over a three-month period.

Although details for one of these teams has not been disclosed, the other five teams made pitches. At the end of the event, the teams were judged and commended on the basis of votes from the main mentors or audiences.

Best Team Award winner: HUG by Ducklings

HUG is a platform for live streaming with cameras for a 360-degree view. The video can be watched on PCs or smartphones; in addition, the service supports distribution and sharing of 360-degree videos available for virtual reality devices, such as head-mounted displays, both in live or archived format by notifying the URL links. It can also accept comments on the video from viewers in real-time.

According to Ducklings CEO Norikazu Takagi, while various cheap 360-degree cameras have been released by Samsung, LG, Nikon and other makers since the beginning of this year, a simple distribution platform for them does not exist yet in the world so he commenced development of the service. Thus far, video streaming using the platform has been done 1,800 times by users in 100 countries. Also it has been used in introducing a new product by Nike at their event in Hong Kong, a live broadcast of a keynote speech at an event of American EduTech company Coursera, or a live broadcast of a cherry blossom viewing by Japanese meteorological company Weathernews.

Special Award / Audience Award winner: Shonika Online

Shonika Online, literally meaning Pediatrics Online, by KidsPublic is a platform to connect homes and pediatricians via smartphones. One can consult doctors about symptoms of their children via the Line messaging app, phone, Skype or Facebook Messenger. According to KidsPublic CEO Naoya Hashimoto, who is also a pediatrician, diagnoses for 80% of the children visiting emergency wards are considered to be slight. Their parents had no choice but to visit the emergency wards because they did not know well about the disease even after browsing on the Internet, or asking on hotlines provided by local governments.

With Shonika Online, pediatricians respond to users whether they should go to hospital, judging from medical interviews which is created by supervisory pediatricians, pictures of abnormalities photographed by smartphones or past medical treatment histories on electronic medical records. Currently ten pediatricians participate in this service as counselors, and it aims to monetize by serving the demand from companies, affiliation with nurseries or social services of municipalities, or meeting personal needs. Its goal is to construct a system where the check-ups at hospital can be judged by accumulating and analyzing case data without support from MDs.

Kakaku.com Award winner: BabyMap by Trim

BabyMap is an app focusing on search of tables for diaper exchange and nursing rooms for babies. It is not easy to find these information even with general search engines, and this led to development of the app. This app has more than 17,000 monthly active users and been realized through accumulation of information; more than 100 posts are sent from users per day. It is used for 2.5 years on average from birth of babies until potty training, and that results in a high retention rate.

Trim CEO Yusuke Hasegawa emphasized that it can be also utilized for marketing purposes by leveraging data accumulation of both users (attributes, activities or preferences) and facilities (details of facilities, products or word-of-mouth). For example, BabyMap can be partially used as preliminary surveys for city planning, so he suggests the possibility of monetization upon usage by developers or commercial facilities.

Listed below are startups that made interesting pitches though they missed winning prizes.

Túpac Bio Designer by Túpac Bio

Túpac Bio Designer is a DNA design software for drug development. The firm was founded by biomedical researchers at the University of Tokyo. Although major pharmaceutical companies typically spend much money for drug research and development, it is still not uncommon to end up with a failure. This platform aims to increase the success rate of drug development.

By digitalizing experiment processes which are being carried out manually, and by utilizing a custom drug library with synthetic DNA, periods of experiment processes which formerly required weeks or months can be shortened down to the level of several days. It aims to differentiate from similar platforms by using genome compilers, DNA sequences, collaboration functions, links with external databases or high-level processing capability.

Withfluence by HIP Stores

Withfluence is a marketing platform allowing requests to be made of top influencers in Asia for promotion work. It launched the beta version in Taiwan, Thailand and Hong Kong this February; clients can ask for promotion by suitable Instagrammers who match the purposes or conditions of projects.

Clients select influencers among the list on Withfluence by checking out their past works, and then request promotion projects. The feature of this service is that clients can also check increases / decreases in the number of influencers’ followers or changes in the number of “Like,” or engagement rates after ordering promotion. It has been sounded out about usage from an advertising agency in Southeast Asia or a mobile carrier in Thailand, and moreover, Japanese cosmetics major KOSE (TSE:4922) has already decided to utilize this service for promotion of its product Sekkisei in the Southeast Asian region.

According to Takayoshi Matsuda, the program director of Open Network Lab, the accelerator has produced 64 startups in total with the completion of this 12th batch. The total amount of market capitalization for all these startups being produced through 11 batches is 43.8 billion yen (about $405 million), showing a performance of 14.52 times as much as that at the start of investment.

Coinciding with the holding of this 12th Demo Day, Open Network Lab has started accepting applications to the 13th batch. It will provide 10 million yen (about $92,000) maximum as activity funding for this batch. Compared with conventional batches, it will enhance support to startups so that success overseas can be better attained. Also it plans to provide the right to use three bases (in Daikanyama of Tokyo, Kamakura, and San Francisco) gratis for a year, and mentoring by 70 startups that came out of the Accelerator Program through the 12th batch. The application deadline for the 13th batch is noon on May 27th.

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

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Android inventor Andy Rubin showcases his godfathered biped robot in Tokyo

Masaru Ikeda 2016.04.11

See the original story in Japanese. On Friday afternoon, Andy Rubin made a keynote speech at the New Economy Summit 2016 in Tokyo. Rubin developed the Android smartphone platform and sold it to Google, then joined Google as vice president of engineering before recently launched his own company called Playground Global. His new company will incubate and support hardware startups. According to Rubin, Playground Global is a cross between a typical venture capital firm in Silicon Valley and an IDEO-like design studio, employing about 50 in-house engineers focusing on industrial design, mechanical design, electrical engineering and other key areas. Despite only 11 months having passed since launch, the company has successfully fundraised $300 million for the purpose of investing in hardware startups last year. Looking back at the history of IT industry, we see a new computing platform emerging every 10 to 15 years. From Rubin’s perspective, he believes artificial intelligence (AI) will come next after the mobile platform. Given the paradigm shift driven by artificial intelligence, there will be a major change in how people interact with machines. By placing AI in the cloud as well as gathering information via sensors located sporadically, AI-powered engines will be taught and…

See the original story in Japanese.

On Friday afternoon, Andy Rubin made a keynote speech at the New Economy Summit 2016 in Tokyo. Rubin developed the Android smartphone platform and sold it to Google, then joined Google as vice president of engineering before recently launched his own company called Playground Global. His new company will incubate and support hardware startups.

According to Rubin, Playground Global is a cross between a typical venture capital firm in Silicon Valley and an IDEO-like design studio, employing about 50 in-house engineers focusing on industrial design, mechanical design, electrical engineering and other key areas. Despite only 11 months having passed since launch, the company has successfully fundraised $300 million for the purpose of investing in hardware startups last year.

Looking back at the history of IT industry, we see a new computing platform emerging every 10 to 15 years. From Rubin’s perspective, he believes artificial intelligence (AI) will come next after the mobile platform. Given the paradigm shift driven by artificial intelligence, there will be a major change in how people interact with machines. By placing AI in the cloud as well as gathering information via sensors located sporadically, AI-powered engines will be taught and trained.

A robot is definitely a complex aggregate of these sensors. To highlight this, Rubin invited Yuto Nakanishi onstage to ask him to unveil his biped robot under development. Nakanishi was CEO of Japanese robotics company Schaft, which was acquired by Google when Rubin was still with the tech giant. Nakanishi is currently continuing his R&D work at X (formerly Google X), the new tech development company under Google. Since Rubin has quit Google, he has no direct business relationship with Nakanishi for now but it seems Nakanishi agreed to make his new robot public upon request from the man who gave the go-ahead to investdin Nakanishi’s business years ago.

See also:

Google’s newly acquired robotics company wins DARPA Challenge Trials

Having no name yet, this robot is slightly shorter than the average human. Even on bumpy roads, it can walk while maintaining stability. Since it can walk up and down even on tiny steps of stairs, the use case includes autonomous stair-sweeping by attachment of vacuuming devices on its foot. However, applications for this robot are yet specifically to be determined by Google.

Rubin concluded the session with a prediction that computer engineers will need the skills of ‘training’ neural networks as well as programming. Hence, computer engineering will be replaced by the new concept of everyone teaching new things to robots or AI systems because of changes in how interactions with machines take place in coming years.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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French tech startup unveils diving-use cruise controller at Marine Diving Fair in Tokyo

The Bridge 2016.04.09

This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. Surf’s up! As things start warming up this Olympic year (though the venue is in the southern hemisphere, readying for cooler seasons) the seaside beckons. However, danger lurks for the unprepared. According to marine sports expert Nobunori Saito － looking forward to the 2020 Tokyo event where the first-ever Olympiad surfing competition promises dynamic video footage － open waters are most difficult to negotiate. As is, waves can be fickle, but considering other factors in combination, diving… whether for recreation or professionally, as I understand from my chat with industry people… is perhaps one of the marine activities requiring the utmost in care. notes the ShoreBlend owner. Along with the recent increase in diver population encompassing not only hobby purposes, including marine animal companionship and underwater photo-tourism, but also industrial ones ranging from aquaculture and construction to maintenance and resource search, there has been an explosion in the number of diving accidents and associated fatalities. PADI’s wading in but… Specifically for the diving field, in addition to governmental regulations there are industry organizations (in Japan, PADI Japan which is an…

This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.

Surf’s up!

As things start warming up this Olympic year (though the venue is in the southern hemisphere, readying for cooler seasons) the seaside beckons. However, danger lurks for the unprepared.

According to marine sports expert Nobunori Saito － looking forward to the 2020 Tokyo event where the first-ever Olympiad surfing competition promises dynamic video footage － open waters are most difficult to negotiate.

As is, waves can be fickle, but considering other factors in combination, diving… whether for recreation or professionally, as I understand from my chat with industry people… is perhaps one of the marine activities requiring the utmost in care.

notes the ShoreBlend owner.

Along with the recent increase in diver population encompassing not only hobby purposes, including marine animal companionship and underwater photo-tourism, but also industrial ones ranging from aquaculture and construction to maintenance and resource search, there has been an explosion in the number of diving accidents and associated fatalities.

PADI’s wading in but…

Specifically for the diving field, in addition to governmental regulations there are industry organizations (in Japan, PADI Japan which is an office of the half-century-old US-based organization) that ensure proper use of equipment like the scuba tank. PADI is officially Professional Association of Diving Instructors, but comprises a membership of not instructors alone but a large non-instructors as well.

The constant conundrum which, no pun intended, surfaces for divers is how to deal with the need to ascend from a deep (what with water pressure being quite powerful than laymen think, “only” 30 meters or more) dive as quickly in the safest manner possible when such need arises. The fact is, some people still lose their lives due to decompression problems known popularly as the bends even with all of mankind’s advances against the seas.

Diving into new markets

marine-diving-fair-2016-tokyo-padi.jpgcastellanet-from-bcdmaster-1 — Visit Seabed CEO Frederic Castellanet on the left

With this as a backdrop, Nice-based tech startup Visit Seabed unveiled its new diving equipment in Japan. Highlighting the fact that Asia has a promising market, President Frederic Castellanet chose the Marine Diving Fair in Tokyo to introduce its first product, the result of two years’ research efforts. Named BCDmaster, this item retrofits any Buoyancy Control Device (aka BCD) in vest form which provides for a hands-free, automatic ‘cruise control’ upon ascent, though it features a manual override as an added safety measure.

It seems most befitting that compatriots of the late Jacques Cousteau…who described for posterity’s sake the nitrogen narcosis or l’ivresse des grandes profondeurs issue vexing deepsea challenges…found an elegant solution to operational difficulties posed by such conditions in addition to the setting. BCDmaster, with 100% watertightness realized using resin encasement of induction-charge type battery/electro-circuitry, enables dynamic hovering and microadjustments for stability/autostop upon rising.

Preparing for The Season

As the summer months loom ahead, other related market activities can be espied on the horizon; just in terms of equipment there are dive computers and regulators beyond BCD vests, for example. It is also a fact that much of our planet is covered by the ocean, filled with opportunities. Further stories will surely appear for our readers’ benefit.

As regards BCDmaster, an announcement of a version meeting the American specification is slated later this month. M. Castellanet plans to visit Japan again during May, to showcase upgraded versions of his creation for Asian users, perhaps with an eye on Indonesia to the south. It behooves a close look at this French venture… after all, Tahiti and New Caledonia are prime destinations too.

Tokyo’s FinTech startup hub FINOLAB holds its first growth hack seminar

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KDDI buys Japanese mobile game marketing startup AppBroadCast