Infinity Venture Partners (aka IVP), an investment fund focused on early-stage startups in Japan, China and Taiwan as well as elsewhere, announced today that it has secured an additional $25 million in funding for Infinity e.ventures Asia III, L.P. (“IVP third fund” for short), meaning that the funding raised has reached $75 million in total to date. Starting with $32 million back in November of 2014, the fund has now more than doubled from the original size; the aim now is to fundraise $100 million in total by the second half of 2016. Coinciding with this announcement, the firm unveiled that the total valuation of all three of its funds including the third fund is now valued at three times the initial funding amount.
Limited partners, or simply investors, for the third fund include Recruit Holdings, Daiwa Securities, Sammy Networks, Orso, Mixi and United, in addition to other individual business owners of internet and mobile services in Japan and the rest of the world. Of the $25 million additional funding raised at this time, IVP told The Bridge that it has fundraised $20 million from Taiwan’s state-run National Development Fund, Executive Yuan (NDF).
IVP has been proactively supporting global expansion efforts of Taiwanese endeavors such as Pinkoi and KKBox, both of which are outstanding in terms of successful market entry into the Japanese market. The firm has an incubation space called TechTemple in three locations in China – Beixinqiao (Beijing), Sanlitun (Beijing) and Shenzhen – which may have encouraged the Taiwanese government to consider it as being relevant to helping Taiwanese startups expand into the Chinese market that many of them are likely to target.
See the original story in Japanese. This article is part of our coverage of Microsoft Innovation Day in Tokyo. A couple of months ago, I had an opportunity to have four startup founders or executive members gather for a panel session held at Microsoft Japan’s office in Tokyo. To discuss topics rarely discussed at other places, I decided to feature startups that aim or have the potential to challenge the global market… this being one of The Bridge’s missions. Although we often hear the phrase ‘global startup’ it is not easy to create a service which is acceptable anywhere around the globe. This is not only because of differences in culture or languages, but because of the maturity of the market or needs from societies that vary by country (investors or entrepreneurs in English-speaking countries oftentimes express the requirement of some item for alleviation of ‘pain’ in society as a definition of startups). However, startups creating new concepts or values may be seen being likely to develop globally. As I invited a few candidates to consider such things, the discussion panel members unintentionally came to comprise fintech/near-fintech startup people. Since the values brought by these startups seem to be much…
A couple of months ago, I had an opportunity to have four startup founders or executive members gather for a panel session held at Microsoft Japan’s office in Tokyo. To discuss topics rarely discussed at other places, I decided to feature startups that aim or have the potential to challenge the global market… this being one of The Bridge’s missions.
Although we often hear the phrase ‘global startup’ it is not easy to create a service which is acceptable anywhere around the globe. This is not only because of differences in culture or languages, but because of the maturity of the market or needs from societies that vary by country (investors or entrepreneurs in English-speaking countries oftentimes express the requirement of some item for alleviation of ‘pain’ in society as a definition of startups). However, startups creating new concepts or values may be seen being likely to develop globally.
As I invited a few candidates to consider such things, the discussion panel members unintentionally came to comprise fintech/near-fintech startup people. Since the values brought by these startups seem to be much needed anywhere in the world, they can be said to have a background acceptable to global companies or customers alone due to efforts upon localization.
I asked about their status thus far and their future strategies, and together mulled means of nurturing Japan into a global startup hub.
The entrepreneurs on the panel session were as follows:
Shirabe Ogino, CEO of Zaisan.net
Hiromitsu Kuwabara, CEO of Doreming Asia
Yuji Koizumi, COO of Knowledge Communication
Tomoya Kitayama, Head of Japan R&D, Alpaca db. Inc
Shirabe Ogino, CEO of Zaisan.net
The mobile app named Kabuto Yohou provided by Zaisan.net informs one of economic news thought impacting stock prices. Once reported, economic analysts who participate in the app will vote on whether the news will impact stock prices or not. The votes are tallied in 30 minutes after reporting said to cause an effect on stock prices, and the vote results are fed back to users. The targeted users are day-traders monitoring stock prices closely. Although even experienced traders’ prediction accuracy for stock prices is said to be about 60%, the app succeeded in raising it to 81% by leveraging the aggregation of analysts’ knowledge.
Since the service can be available in any country which has a stock market, we are going to consider possibilities for cooperation with overseas fintech companies or stock markets.
As part of this, he participated in the fintech conference Finovate held in San Jose earlier on in May.
Hiromitsu Kuwabara, CEO of Doreming Asia
Fukuoka-based Doreming Asia’s mission is to reduce poverty and inequality in emerging countries. Although it is the poor who really require financial services for a stable life and security, not enough such services are provided in emerging countries. If low-income people with poor credit ratings can receive loans, the service plans will be limited to ones with annual interests of 100%, 300% or even 1,600% due to the high probability of these becoming irrecoverable.
Doreming Asia has developed a payroll system enabling calculation of the salary amount real-time before the closing date of companies. Counting the expected amount of work up to that time as security in return, workers can purchase products. The firm has a base in the co-working space called Rocket Space in San Francisco, as well as at Level39 fintech-focused accelerator in London.
Yuji Koizumi, COO of Knowledge Communication
Knowledge Communication, established eight years ago, originated in providing a community website in the educational field for local cram schools. Since experiencing increases in user traffic especially during the examination season, the firm had introduced Amazon Web Service, which newly started its service in Japan at that time in 2011, into the community website and coincidentally entered the cloud integration business.
Recently, the firm has launched a cloud service named Knowledge-Com AI for easy utilization of AI (artificial intelligence) and Deep Learning. Knowledge-Com AI has shortened the algorithm selection time for machine learning to two weeks, which is one-fourth that of the conventional one, and realized automation of the process by a round-robin method of algorithms and parameters. The firm participated in MUFG FinTech accelerator 2016, and its six months’ outcome will be shown on Demo Day of the accelerator being held in August.
Tomoya Kitayama, Head of Japan R&D, Alpaca db. Inc
Alpaca has been developing the trading platform Capitalico with Deep Learning, as introduced so far on The Bridge several times. According to Kitayama, only 5% of the entire trader base can generate profit with general investment trading. By adopting the power of science to trading, Capitalico aims to maximize the possibility of generating profit. User traders can turn their trading idea into an algorithm without any programming knowhow. Speeding up the process of the back test, it will implement a function to inform the best timing for trading to the users’ smartphone.
Among the four firms introduced above, Alpaca may be most likely to show a movement toward global expansion. The firm started its business in Japan originally, but has been headquartered in Silicon Valley where CEO Yoshi Yokogawa and CTO Hitoshi Harada engage in daily operations.
‘Corporate Strength’ that matches global needs
CEO of Zaisan.net Ogino called himself originally as a ‘man of IT, not of finance’ in referring to his work history, having been and engaged in business development department of Itochu Technology Ventures and Gree. He had been interested in bringing knowledge of people who’d been activated by the Internet into the financial field. In this field, a profitable service may be realized only with about 10,000 users due to the great volume of money entailed in transactions, unlike the game or some such field. The app Kabuto Yohou does not charge users, but monetizes by bringing users to stock brokerage firms.
On the other hand, Doreming Asia is a startup spun off from Kizuna Japan which has been developing HR (human resource) system which supports attendance management and payroll for 20 years. No capital relations exist between them, so Doreming Asia can be called a pure startup. The advantage of Doreming Asia is its solution based on knowledge which Kizuna Japan has cultivated for the past two decades.
According to CEO Kuwabara, when he showcased the product at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015, people from accounting firms in the US were simply astounded by the real-time payroll system according to task or man-hours. Since it is common in the United States to outsource payrolling, the function linkable to accounting and banking system was highly evaluated.
Knowledge Communication finds values in absorbing and retaining the latest technologies, then availing them to customers. As technologies are commoditizing very quickly, the firm makes returns to users through fast API developments and provision. To maintain technological levels and employee motivation, its technology team three years ago started a tech blog called ‘Knowledge-Com AWS recipe’ wherein the team investigates, arranges and distributes information about technologies on a sustained basis.
Head of Japan R&D, Alpaca db. Inc Kitayama, highlights Alpaca’s advantages:
Especially in the service field we are dealing with, performance results are recognized in figures. The competition in our field is just like ‘who is the first one to climb Mt. Everest (as top player in the field),’ so basic skills are strongly mandated.
Co-founder / CTO Harada is a professional as to Pivotal and a major contributor to PostgreSQL. In addition, Greenplum CTO Luke Lonergan, who is also known as a ‘speedster’ in the database field, works as an advisor for Alpaca. Thanks to luck and connections such brilliant talents came to be brought together.
He is convinced of success in a straightforward manner with these members. By being the top players, sometimes talents who had formerly worked at other startups contact when making a comeback and seeking their next job. From such a viewpoint, staying at the leading edge of technology is important when hiring excellent human resources.
How expanding globally?
Zaisan.net is seeking Chinese analysts upon looking toward the Chinese market. Also it plans to establish a joint venture with an overseas fintech company in any country within this year. The targeted countries including the US, UK and possibly France, Germany, Australia and China.
Doreming Asia explains the reason for headquartering in the US; its investment amount into intellectual property rights is quite larger, and there are many payment settlement companies. Also as mentioned above, it makes active use of its UK base because of businesses related to refugees and the preferential tax system, in addition to the four megabanks positioned closer to startups.
Knowledge Communication has located its development base at Japan’s western city of Kumamoto now, but is considering overseas development in the future. Already performing business by connecting Kumamoto and Tokyo closely, one day the firm may come to hire international engineers and realize a workstyle not influenced by location.
Alpaca emphasizes that it aims to grow in harmony with the world while using Japan’s advantages. Although it was natural to set headquarters in Silicon Valley due to the premised global competition, the reason for not leaving Tokyo office is accessibility to Japanese financial institutions with a huge market and the capture of excellent engineers.
We often hear an expression that ‘global’ is a general term for aggregation of locals. Various conditions differ by countries and places: market environment around clients and users for service, existence of investors for fundraising and hiring conditions of engineers for development. When building up a global startup, it is vital to gather knowledge of the global startups scenes.
We hope that our gathering much information using The Bridge will help support startups, imaging an international future upon threshing out global strategies.
See the original story in Japanese. Updated on Nov. 8, 2019: Wassha told The Bridge that they positioned the funding up to the date when this article was published as an series A extension round instead of a series A round. Some words were modified accordingly. The percentage of households owning a landline phone once used to be considered the measure of industrialization for that country. Some decades ago, the ownership rate of the landline phone in China was much lower than that in Japan. However, as mobile devices were developed and smartphones appeared around the world, the ownership rate of smartphones in Chinese urban areas has exceeded 100% (it comes to more than one smartphone per person), which is twice as much as in Japan. In several years from now, tourists to China probably would not need credit cards nor to exchange currencies at the airport, but would be able to settle all bills using mobile devices while traveling. This example indicates that countries with well-developed infrastructures are apt to be influenced by old infrastructures when some new system has appeared, but it is rather quicker for undeveloped areas to adopt to the new system. Although Japan looked better…
Updated on Nov. 8, 2019: Wassha told The Bridge that they positioned the funding up to the date when this article was published as an series A extension round instead of a series A round. Some words were modified accordingly.
The percentage of households owning a landline phone once used to be considered the measure of industrialization for that country. Some decades ago, the ownership rate of the landline phone in China was much lower than that in Japan. However, as mobile devices were developed and smartphones appeared around the world, the ownership rate of smartphones in Chinese urban areas has exceeded 100% (it comes to more than one smartphone per person), which is twice as much as in Japan. In several years from now, tourists to China probably would not need credit cards nor to exchange currencies at the airport, but would be able to settle all bills using mobile devices while traveling.
This example indicates that countries with well-developed infrastructures are apt to be influenced by old infrastructures when some new system has appeared, but it is rather quicker for undeveloped areas to adopt to the new system. Although Japan looked better in information infrastructure than China, the appearance of the mobile system which does not need telephone lines to be set up has changed the order in both countries.
And now, a revolution is about to break out in the electric power industry. The disruption is being wrought by Japanese startup Digital Grid.
Increasing demand for power in Africa
Image credit: Digital Grid
The world’s population marked 7.3 billion as of 2016, and 1.2 billion people among them are living without electricity, whether they like it or not. Among 900 million people living in Africa, 6.3 million people cannot even access electric power. This is due to poor cost-effectiveness of power grid development resulting from the low population density. On the other hand, the ownership rate of mobile phones of 50% across the entire African continent is unexpectedly high; almost every adult male owns a mobile phone, though the ownership ratio may differ according to local area. They go to shops located a few kilometers away from their own home that avail power equipment, where the mobile phones can be recharged almost everyday. Such scenes may be unimaginable in advanced countries where power is available with a touch of a button, but that is many Africans’ everyday life.
As for illumination at night in such areas, kerosene lamps are mostly used. Since these lamps oftentimes generate soot from low-quality fuel, leading to respiratory illnesses, thus ranking in as a global social problem. According to World Bank’s survey, it is estimated that women or children living in these area inhale kerosene lamp soot indoors equaling smoke from as much as 40 cigarettes daily. In addition, there are many people who suffer from serious burns due to overturned lamps.
Digital Grid aims to solve these social problems through its service Wassha, which networks small-sized kiosks (or should they be referred to as jacks-of-all-trade) found in all African villages.
Digital Grid CEO Satoshi Akita and marketing staff of Wassha in Tanzania
Digital Grid installs solar panels or battery units in the kiosks, and provides 30 LED lanterns, radios or tablets for rental. The kiosk owners rent these out as home electrical appliances to villagers and charges them for charging power at the kiosks. The owners settle the electricity bills from smartphones and energize charging boxes for the appliances, even collecting from each kiosk through use of mobiles. The kiosk’s income is 16% of electricity sales, and average monthly income per kiosk is about 20,000 yen (about $188).
L to R: CEO Satoshi Akita, CFO Atsuhi Shito
CEO of Digital Grid Satoshi Akita explains Wassha:
If we opened retail outlets ourselves, management would be difficult because we don’t know who the trustworthy customers are. However, such matters will not occur by joining hands with existing kiosks in villages because they know each others well. Also, retailer network expansion can take place much faster.
Digital Grid has already expanded the service to 650 kiosks in Tanzania during the first half of this year. It plans to increase the number of user kiosks to 1,700 within the year, to reach one million end-users. It has participated in the Spring 2016 Season batch of Orange Fab Asia, and intends to develop service in west Africa including Senegal through support from Orange, the carrier providing telephony or mobile settlement service in such African countries.
Extension of powered area coverage as a virtual ‘surface’ can be realized without placing lines like those of the power grid, but rather through networking of kiosks with solar panels posited as ‘dots.’
No regulation for power business in Africa
Image credit: Digital Grid
Digital Grid had originally spun off from a research effort on ‘power network innovation (digital grid)’ by Prof. Rikiya Abe of the University of Tokyo. The concept of a digital grid is similar to the process in which the voice communication method using telephones has changed from landline to the mobile network or VoIP (Voice over IP), for example. As deregulation of electric power has commenced in Japan, ordinary households can now purchase electricity from any electric power utility, just by setting up smart meters.
Beyond the deregulation of electricity can be found the Smart Grid and beyond that, the digital grid. Over the digital grid, a device called the digital grid router – which is just like the router for packet switching in data communication – is used, providing for intelligent routing between power suppliers and consumers.
Demonstration tests will be needed before the digital grid is realized, but there are many constraining conditions upon the testing of new technologies in advanced countries, where a stable power supply is mandated. So it is that Wassha had found its way to Africa, burdened with poor power supply. Although today’s Wassha contains little of the original digital grid concept, we cannot rule out the possibility that the disruption in the mobile communication field may parallel that in the power supply field when Wassha plays comes to play a central role on the African continent, as mentioned in the introduction.
Wassha not only supplies power but changes lifestyles
Image credit: Digital Grid
Since its launch back in 2013, Digital Grid has fundraised a total of 900 million yen (about $8.6 million) 800 million yen (about $7.6 million) from The University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC), Development Bank of Japan, Innovative Venture Fund (jointly operated by NEC group and SMBC group) and J-Power, and has already closed its series B round series A extension round. With recommendation by UTEC, the team is going to participate in Stanford University’s accelerator program StartX as the first startup from Japan.
In addition to the power supply business, Digital Grid is thinking to develop various other businesses, such as remote healthcare, telemedicine, test marketing, financing, remote education or cold supply chain at kiosk shops by leveraging its network. It will showcase its service at Viva Technology Startup Connect being held from June 30 to July 2 in Paris, so please check it out if you are interested.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. Over the past couple weeks in this space, I’ve recapped some of the history of the region and reconsidered the wisdom of attempts to reproduce the Silicon Valley model elsewhere. I submit that trying to imitate Silicon Valley is futile. However, Japan’s government and business community can derive inspiration from the factors that rendered Silicon Valley a success. Regions finding the most success in creating clusters of innovation have been those that do it on their own terms and play to their own unique strengths, where the government facilitates an environment that doesn’t penalize failure and then gets out of the way. New York City comes to mind as one prominent example. A local innovator there whom I had the pleasure of meeting a while ago pointed out that it was only once New York…
This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here.
Stanford University Memorial Arch CC BY 2.0: via Flickr by Robbie Shade
I submit that trying to imitate Silicon Valley is futile. However, Japan’s government and business community can derive inspiration from the factors that rendered Silicon Valley a success. Regions finding the most success in creating clusters of innovation have been those that do it on their own terms and play to their own unique strengths, where the government facilitates an environment that doesn’t penalize failure and then gets out of the way. New York City comes to mind as one prominent example. A local innovator there whom I had the pleasure of meeting a while ago pointed out that it was only once New York ditched its Silicon Alley moniker that the city’s tech entrepreneurial ecosystem really began to take off.
So how can Japan derive inspiration from the Silicon Valley model?
This is a tough question for two reasons. First, nobody can identify with certainty all of the factors made Silicon Valley such a success. There exists a certain degree of chance and cognitive dissonance rendering attempts to copy Silicon Valley impossible.
Secondly, one key ingredient to SV’s success – its excessive proportion of people with crazy ambition – cannot be so easily exported. According to an analysis of LinkedIn profiles, residents of Silicon Valley dream bigger than the rest of the world. People who include the keywords “change the world” in their LinkedIn profiles are far more common in the San Francisco Bay Area than anywhere else (source: Venture Capital Dispatch).
Perhaps a better question would be: which ingredients of Silicon Valley’s secret sauce might be transferable here?
Two prominent factors come to mind which might be relevant for Japan to carefully consider: i) proximity, and ii) immigration.
Proximity
By proximity, I mean the proximity of educational institutions, businesses, and the design community. Proximity of this diverse group is important because when talented people of multi-disciplinary expertise come together, the odds increase exponentially for serendipitous encounters that spawn innovation. Subsequent to the traitorous eight’s creation of Fairchild Semiconductor, two of the most familiar names (Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore) went on to found Intel right down the street. Not far away in Menlo Park, a third founding father by the name of Eugene Kleiner teamed up with a veteran from HP in nearby Palo Alto, Tom Perkins, to give birth to one of the world’s most renowned venture capital funds.
A more recent example and arguably one of the most successful entrepreneurial endeavors in history, Google’s ascendancy stemmed from the chance encounter at Palo Alto’s Stanford University of Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The proximity of institutions like Stanford and UC Berkeley facilitated the recruitment of high-caliber engineers and managers as the company grew, including for example, Stanford graduate Marissa Mayer, who conceived the Google home page’s elegantly simplistic design.
The design element cannot be underestimated either, especially in innovation today. Thanks to the proliferation of open source code bases, cloud infrastructures, open standards like html etc., creating a new high-tech offering is remarkably accessible. The innovation of a product or service lies not in the complexity of the underlying technology, but rather in its user experience. Design, or its more evolved form as creative intelligence, forms the heart of user experience, and Silicon Valley has always been rife with artists, designers, and creative conceivers.
Immigration
Immigration is a less obvious but equally important ingredient. Brad Templeton, Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote an excellent piece in Forbes magazine, The Real Secret Behind Silicon Valley’s Success, in which he recounts his epiphany during a high-end conference for PC and internet executives in the late 90s. A speaker wanted to make a point about immigration to the room, which was full of founders and top executives from high-tech companies, instructing, “If you were born outside the United States, please stand up.” And more than half of those in the room stood up.
Researchers from Duke University concluded in a report that immigrant-founded companies created over 450,000 jobs in 2005, and that 52% of startup founders in the U.S. were immigrants. Most of these people gave up a life somewhere else to come to Silicon Valley in order to live the entrepreneurial dream.
There is something in an immigrant’s DNA that lends itself to entrepreneurship. Perhaps it’s an absence of fear of new adventures, an ability to operate on the fringe of society, unconstrained by social norms and conventional thinking, the sink-or-swim pressure of starting over, or some combination of all of these factors plus others.
So what are the lessons for Japan?
I submit that one lesson is to establish a smarter policy on immigration that doesn’t hamper the retention of talented entrepreneurial individuals, regardless of their familial attachments to the archipelago. The recent Startup Visa system is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, and I applaud the government for it. I think the challenge will be to find the right balance between preventing abuse while granting the entrepreneur residency for a period commensurate with the time horizon needed to build a business.
Another is to think carefully about the gravitational importance of proximity. Sometimes I get the impression that the various hubs of innovation in Tokyo, for example, are driven less by organic creativity than by real estate developers (e.g. Shin Marunouchi driven by Mitsubishi; Roppongi/Akasaka by Mori; Shibuya by Tokyu). Japan’s first-rate transportation infrastructure shortens distances, but let’s not underestimate the importance those chance encounters play in triggering creativity.
I marvel at the calibre of entrepreneurs I continue to meet in Japan’s burgeoning startup ecosystem, and I’m excited to begin investing here.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo- / Singapore-based Quoine, the startup offering a bitcoin exchange and other cryptocurrency-related services, announced today that it has secured a total of $16 million in a series B round. Following a series A round when the company raised $2 million from several angel investors back in December of 2014, this round was led by Japanese investment company Jafco (TSE:8595) with participation from an unnamed VC firm and several unnamed businesses. Since this round is not closed yet, the company said that it may additionally raise up to $4 million from potential business partners. The latest funding was obviously swayed by the perspective that the demand for bitcoin will grow exponentially upon Japanese parliament’s recent enactment of a bill for regulating cryptocurrency exchanges. While Mario Gomez-Lozada, who had been formerly served as CEO since the launch of Quoine, later became CTO to focus on system development, and the company named co-founder Kariya Kayamori as a new CEO earlier this year. Prior to launching Quoine, Kayamori had been involved in developing businesses at Japanese leading companies like Softbank and Mitsubishi Corporation. In addition, the company has changed its structure between their Singaporean and Japanese business…
Tokyo- / Singapore-based Quoine, the startup offering a bitcoin exchange and other cryptocurrency-related services, announced today that it has secured a total of $16 million in a series B round. Following a series A round when the company raised $2 million from several angel investors back in December of 2014, this round was led by Japanese investment company Jafco (TSE:8595) with participation from an unnamed VC firm and several unnamed businesses. Since this round is not closed yet, the company said that it may additionally raise up to $4 million from potential business partners.
Quoine CEO Kariya Kayamori
The latest funding was obviously swayed by the perspective that the demand for bitcoin will grow exponentially upon Japanese parliament’s recent enactment of a bill for regulating cryptocurrency exchanges. While Mario Gomez-Lozada, who had been formerly served as CEO since the launch of Quoine, later became CTO to focus on system development, and the company named co-founder Kariya Kayamori as a new CEO earlier this year. Prior to launching Quoine, Kayamori had been involved in developing businesses at Japanese leading companies like Softbank and Mitsubishi Corporation. In addition, the company has changed its structure between their Singaporean and Japanese business entities where the Japanese company has now become the parent of its subsidiary in Singapore while the Singaporean entity used to be the parent to the Japanese one.
According to cryptocurrency portal Coinhills’ real-time ranking of global bitcoin exchanges in volume of transactions, Quoine is ranked in 7th place following Chinese six exchanges in a craze of speculation. This list obviously indicates Quoine being Japan’s largest bitcoin exchange followed by BtcBox and bitFlyer as well as one of the world’s leading bitcoin exchanges. Given that the annual amount of foreign-exchange(FX) trading in Japan has reached about $50 trillion, Kayamori predicts about 10% of these transactions being replaced by cryptocurrencies in the future. Quoine transacts bitcoins worth of $50 million a day, but he thinks it will be able to expand up to 100 times that of today.
The world’s top 10 bitcoin exchanges (as of 11am, June 20, 2016) Image credit: Coinhills
But here the question of how and why did Quoine become ranked high in the transaction amount despite the fact that the company is not so famous among bitcoin exchanges in Japan may come to mind. The answer is their B2B2C(business-to-business-to-commerce)-focused business model where Quoine is offering backend engines for several other acting and upcoming bitcoin exchanges.
In Japan, many Internet service providers and online portal sites are offering online brokerage services for stock and FX tradings. However, due to cost efficiency as well as the need to secure the robustness and stability a typical financial platforms requires, many of them adopted systems from other online securities companies and such. Similar circumstances will be likely to happen in the bitcoin exchange industry as well, so Quoine wants to win these needs. Citing Kayamori’s words,
It’s an exchange of cryptocurrency exchanges, let’s say, we want to be somewhat like the cryptocurrency version of Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Quoine established a bitcoin exchange in Indonesia in October of 2014 in partnership with that country’s largest payments processor Indomog, while also expanding into other Asian markets. Their future focus is on Japan and Asia as well. The company claims that they want to be Asia’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by partnering with local cryptocurrency exchanges and other service providers holding many of the potential cryptocurrency users in the region.
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. At the International Tokyo Toy Show 2016 held earlier in June, major exhibitors such as Bandai subsidiary Megahouse and Takara Tomy were pushing Virtual Reality (VR)-related products among a variety of toys they’re offering… beyond all the other items ranging from educational wares to stationery supplies being pushed. But in terms of startups, if only focusing on company type, Delaware-incorporated InfoLens attracted attention with a VR(in InfoLens‘ case, the 360-degree “StealthVR“)-centered booth as well as a banner highlighting the fact that it is Japan’s largest importer of the Minecraft Official Licensed Products. Launching operations from 2014 in Silicon Valley and Tokyo, this startup has now become a top distributor (by amount) of Smartphone-based VR headsets in the Japanese market. It was founded by Hiro Yasukawa, ex-VP of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and global lead of PlayStation Official Licensed Products who reported to the group CEO. As InfoLens CEO, Yasukawa has gathered a strong team of developers while leveraging his experience for networking in California based on his SCE VP role and also as Head of Technology Alliances organizing global alliance…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
At the International Tokyo Toy Show 2016 held earlier in June, major exhibitors such as Bandai subsidiary Megahouse and Takara Tomy were pushing Virtual Reality (VR)-related products among a variety of toys they’re offering… beyond all the other items ranging from educational wares to stationery supplies being pushed.
But in terms of startups, if only focusing on company type, Delaware-incorporated InfoLens attracted attention with a VR(in InfoLens‘ case, the 360-degree “StealthVR“)-centered booth as well as a banner highlighting the fact that it is Japan’s largest importer of the Minecraft Official Licensed Products.
Photo by “Tex” Pomeroy
Launching operations from 2014 in Silicon Valley and Tokyo, this startup has now become a top distributor (by amount) of Smartphone-based VR headsets in the Japanese market. It was founded by Hiro Yasukawa, ex-VP of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and global lead of PlayStation Official Licensed Products who reported to the group CEO.
As InfoLens CEO, Yasukawa has gathered a strong team of developers while leveraging his experience for networking in California based on his SCE VP role and also as Head of Technology Alliances organizing global alliance deals with Silicon Valley powerhouses like Google, Facebook and Twitter, not to mention San Diego’s Qualcomm, regarding PlayStation 2, 3, Vita and 4.
The year 2016 portends an expansion – led by Tokyo – as to VR utilization. The harbinger was the renewal in spring of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (aka Miraikan) permanent exhibits, which was accompanied by the limited-time Game On exhibit featuring VR head-mounted displays. In addition, Japanese mobilephone carriers have been busy marketing Samsung’s GalaxyVR products.
Photo by “Tex” Pomeroy
As an aside, it is notable that announcements in succession of VR-mounted surgical and manipulation systems (e.g., from Tokyo Medical & Dental University, NHK, etc.) which made use of Japan devices, including those provided by the Sony group, have been taking place over the past year. Indeed, VRtech and telepresence combined promise a healthcare not to mention a safety revolution in the near future.
Looking ahead to later this month, there will be the Content Tokyo show, followed after summer by Makuhari Messe playing host to the Tokyo Game Show in September, showcasing more VR apps. It will be interesting to see what further activities related to this technology the Redwood City firm, which handles unrelated Jazwares kid toys importation too, can unveil for users in Japan henceforth.
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
