From left to right: Shinichiro Hori (YJ Capital), Batara Eto (East Ventures), Takashi Tsuchiya (Managing Director, Circle-in), Takanori Sato (CEO, Circle-in), Yohei Sawayama (500 Startups Japan), James Riney (500 Startups Japan)
Tokyo-based Circle-in, developing the total support tool for international logistics works named Shippio, announced on Monday that it has fundraised an undisclosed amount in a seed round from 500 Startups Japan, YJ Capital, and East Ventures. This fundraising succeeds the one conducted through the Code Republic accelerator program jointly run by YJ Capital and East Ventures.
Circle-in was founded in June of 2016 by Takanori Sato (CEO) and Takashi Tsuchiya (managing director), both of whom formerly worked at the Chinese base of Mitsui & Co. Subsequently, the firm participated in the 1st batch of the Code Republic accelerator program and presented PortHub, its international distribution optimization tool, as a web-based logistics optimization platform for SMEs (small and mid-sized enterprises) at the Demo Day. Since the teaser website of PortHub is currently closed, it is surmised that the service has been re-branded into Shippio at this time.
Shippio is a cloud-based platform for freight forwarders, export-import operators, trading companies and distribution department of enterprises, enabling simplication of complicated and time-consuming procedures such as communication via email / phone calls, document exchanges via FAX, spreadsheet-based trade management, in addition to helping improve business efficiency drastically and visualize forwarding processes and payments. Its official launch is scheduled in mid-June this year.
Regarding this business field, San Francisco-based Flexport is leading the industry, having funraised a total of $94 million through its series A and B rounds from Founders Fund along with other investors. At last year’s TechSauce Summit pitch competition which was the first large startup conference in Thailand, GizTix providing a logistics marketplace for international distribution won the top prize. In addition, Spain-based cloud-based logistics management platform Shipwise won the Bronze Prize of the pitch competition in HackOsaka held last year, so this field is apparently one of the verticals garnering a lot of attention.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based medical ISV (independent service vendor) ShareMedical announced on Thursday their partnership with Fast Doctor, a company that provides night time in-home doctors visits, to begin offering a smart house call service in central Tokyo and its adjacent Chiba prefecture. ShareMedical is developing an mobile app geared for patients who wish to use this service, and plans to make it available from August. ShareMedical was founded in September of 2014 by Yoshimasa Mine. Prior to it he was involved in launching Japanese hospital search portal QLife before. The company has released mobile apps such as a messaging tool called MediLine and a medical term-optimized IME (input method editor) called Ikotoba. The MediLine app supports efficient and safe communication among physicians of medical institutions focused on house calls, as electronic medical record systems and portable medical examination machines are spreading owing to the development of various technologies including communication. It is easy to use via a smartphone, so perhaps describing it as the “Medical Version of Line” is most understandable. For regular workers it is most common to take a day off from work to be examined by a doctor at a hospital. When it…
From left: Fast Doctor CEO Ryo Kikuchi, ShareMedical CEO Yoshimasa Mine Image credit: ShareMedical
Tokyo-based medical ISV (independent service vendor) ShareMedical announced on Thursday their partnership with Fast Doctor, a company that provides night time in-home doctors visits, to begin offering a smart house call service in central Tokyo and its adjacent Chiba prefecture. ShareMedical is developing an mobile app geared for patients who wish to use this service, and plans to make it available from August.
ShareMedical was founded in September of 2014 by Yoshimasa Mine. Prior to it he was involved in launching Japanese hospital search portal QLife before. The company has released mobile apps such as a messaging tool called MediLine and a medical term-optimized IME (input method editor) called Ikotoba. The MediLine app supports efficient and safe communication among physicians of medical institutions focused on house calls, as electronic medical record systems and portable medical examination machines are spreading owing to the development of various technologies including communication. It is easy to use via a smartphone, so perhaps describing it as the “Medical Version of Line” is most understandable.
For regular workers it is most common to take a day off from work to be examined by a doctor at a hospital. When it is impossible to take time off, people seek medical institutions that offer nighttime treatment or rely on hospitals that have an emergency outpatient clinic; but, it is important to keep in mind the limited number of human resources in medical care when visiting the emergency room for issues that are not urgent. The accounting departments of hospitals are often closed at night, and it is sometimes necessary to pay extra cash in advance with the return to be settled at a later date; and, if there is no medical institution open in your neighborhood, it would be also difficult to secure transportation.
ShareMedical is aiming to begin, in a sense, the “Medical Version of Uber”. Users can register their credit card and health insurance information in advance on the app and request a doctor to visit when necessary. A driver takes the doctor on the house call so if first aid is necessary, the patient can communicate with the doctor until their arrival.
In this partnership, Fast Doctor will provide a network of house call doctors while ShareMedical will be responsible for providing a user experience that attracts prospective patients. According to the law, doctors are permitted to visit areas within a 16-kilometer radius from where the hospital is located; and to start with, ShareMedical’s service area will be a part of the central Tokyo and its adjacent Chiba prefecture centering on the offices of Fast Doctor. In the future, they are planning to increase the medical institutions and related facilities participating in this network, and to expand both ShareMedical and Fast Doctor’s services nationwide.
ShareMedical plans to undertake the reception processes of calculating the payments for medical services, as well as keeping track of medical fees and expenses, in addition to taking the medical clerical work off the hands of doctors. Due to the limitations of the law, it is not possible to put the data or processing related to the reception in the cloud, making it necessary to set up a server containing medical information at the medical institution. In the future, ShareMedical has plans to set up a BPO (business process outsourcing) center with qualified medical coding specialists and make it possible to respond by remote login. In fact, medical institutions and related facilities that participate in the above-mentioned network would not each have to have qualified individuals for medical affairs, so (even if they have medical equipment) they are not medical institutions with installed facilities, thus the birth of the “freelance house call specialists”.
This new business opportunity is convenient for doctors working in public hospitals and trainees that do not necessarily have a large income. In the daytime, they can work their day job at the university hospital or clinic, and at night they can adopt an on-call work style, so their degree of freedom is higher than doctors who work the night shift. A subsequent income is another merit. Because they are limiting the provision of services to only night visits, the risk of competing with the traditional medical institutions and practitioners in the market has also been minimized. This also eliminates the concern of being labeled a “threat” by the medical association and other stakeholders.
The mobile app under development Image credit: ShareMedical
A glance at companies in the field of smart house call services in the US includes Stat in Philadelphia, Heal in Los Angeles, and Pager in New York. At last month’s World Health Day, Uber announced UberHEALTH which allows users to conduct a diabetes examination and thyroid function test during a house call.
ShareMedical raised funds in December of 2015 from Slogan Coent (amount undisclosed), and in November of 2016 raised 50 million yen (about $440K US) from leading medical and nursing HR matching company Tsme.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based Bonx, the Japanese startup developing a wearable walkie-talkie device under the same name, unveiled today its fundraising of 200 million yen (about $1.76 million) from Adways (TSE:2489), Keio Innovation Initiative and Japanese hearing aid manufacturer Rion (TSE:6823) as well as several unnamed individual investors. With the latest funding, the company has raised a total of 5 million yen (about $4.4 million) to date. They will use the funds to set up a US subsidiary for North American expansion while exploring technological synergies with the investors participating this time around. Bonx launched a crowdfunding campaign for its first market-ready product back in October of 2015, and subsequently unveiled the second generation called Bonx Grip in December of 2016. The new version sees many improvements in supporting usage environment such as water resistance and wearing comfort. Given that a recent increased coverage of 3G/4G connectivity in ski resorts or snowy landscapes around the globe, CEO Takahiro Miyasaka expects that more foreign outdoor go-ers will start using the Bonx device to communicate with each others during their leisure and sporting activities. Given the recent increased coverage of 3G/4G connectivity in ski resorts or snowy landscapes around the globe, CEO Takahiro Miyasaka expects…
Tokyo-based Bonx, the Japanese startup developing a wearable walkie-talkie device under the same name, unveiled today its fundraising of 200 million yen (about $1.76 million) from Adways (TSE:2489), Keio Innovation Initiative and Japanese hearing aid manufacturer Rion (TSE:6823) as well as several unnamed individual investors.
With the latest funding, the company has raised a total of 5 million yen (about $4.4 million) to date. They will use the funds to set up a US subsidiary for North American expansion while exploring technological synergies with the investors participating this time around.
Bonx launched a crowdfunding campaign for its first market-ready product back in October of 2015, and subsequently unveiled the second generation called Bonx Grip in December of 2016. The new version sees many improvements in supporting usage environment such as water resistance and wearing comfort.
Given that a recent increased coverage of 3G/4G connectivity in ski resorts or snowy landscapes around the globe, CEO Takahiro Miyasaka expects that more foreign outdoor go-ers will start using the Bonx device to communicate with each others during their leisure and sporting activities.
Given the recent increased coverage of 3G/4G connectivity in ski resorts or snowy landscapes around the globe, CEO Takahiro Miyasaka expects that more foreign outdoor go-ers will start using the Bonx device to communicate with each others during their leisure and sporting activities.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Spectee, the Japanese startup behind the artificial intelligence(AI)-powered platform offering news materials based on social media analytics, revealed on Monday that they have filed for two patents applications for automated creation of straight news stories to the Japan Patent Office (JPO). Upon being granted the patents by JPO, the technologies related to the high precisioning / processing of image recognition and natural language analysis using deep learning, and collection of equivalents to the so-called Five Ws from an average of 4-5 social media posts make it possible to automatically generate straight news stories of about 300 characters. When incidents occur in urban areas and more than 10 posts are likely to be gathered in relation to it they can complete a sufficiently accurate article. See also: Japan’s social news aggregator for press Spectee announces Asian, US expansion In the field of AI-powered news writing, in 2016 the Associated Press started using Automated Insights’ WordSmith to create news articles on sports scores and made headlines. In Japan, Nagoya’s The Mid-Japan Economist, in collaboration with Datasection and Bit A, posted article created by AI; additionally, the Nikkei online edition worked together with the Institute of…
Tokyo-based Spectee, the Japanese startup behind the artificial intelligence(AI)-powered platform offering news materials based on social media analytics, revealed on Monday that they have filed for two patents applications for automated creation of straight news stories to the Japan Patent Office (JPO).
Upon being granted the patents by JPO, the technologies related to the high precisioning / processing of image recognition and natural language analysis using deep learning, and collection of equivalents to the so-called Five Ws from an average of 4-5 social media posts make it possible to automatically generate straight news stories of about 300 characters. When incidents occur in urban areas and more than 10 posts are likely to be gathered in relation to it they can complete a sufficiently accurate article.
In the field of AI-powered news writing, in 2016 the Associated Press started using Automated Insights’ WordSmith to create news articles on sports scores and
made headlines. In Japan, Nagoya’s The Mid-Japan Economist, in collaboration with Datasection and Bit A, posted article created by AI; additionally, the Nikkei online edition worked together with the Institute of Language Understanding and Professor Yutaka Matsuo of the University of Tokyo to begin a Financial Summary service written by news bots. Even among Japanese startups, teams have been emerging to tackle the theme of automatically creating articles using AI.
Spectee was founded in February of 2014 (previously Euclid Lab), and it graduated in October 2015 from the 11th batch of Open Network Lab’s incubation program. In July of 2016, they raised an undisclosed sum of funds in a series A round from Fuji Startup Ventures and a Japanese surveillance camera company, as well as Mizuho Capital. The Spectee platform, which obtains the rights to content collected from social media and provides it as news material to the mass media and companies, has been adopted by about 100 media companies and publishers across Japan.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. A manufacturing startup from Nice, France and an Italian “diving computer” maker showcasing their products at an annual show targeting the diving market in Asia. Held at the Sunshine 60 Building in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward (from whence the current Tokyo Metropolitan Gov. Yuriko Koike hails), many overseas companies albeit mostly those involved in services such as resort operations took part in this event. The French firm Visit Seabed which at the last show announced its diver stability device last year (improved this year in terms of size and design) unveiled at the 2017 its new product – a world first – called Seabed Buggy which assists those divers exploring the shallower seabeds in a safer and stressless manner. Even those who may not have much stamina can now use this underwater vehicle to move about freely. According to the company, it took a few years to perfect this powered “board” since several designs were tried out and many patents required to realize those were filed. The final version enables divers to “scoot” near the seabed thanks to facilitated operations. As…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
A manufacturing startup from Nice, France and an Italian “diving computer” maker showcasing their products at an annual show targeting the diving market in Asia. Held at the Sunshine 60 Building in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward (from whence the current Tokyo Metropolitan Gov. Yuriko Koike hails), many overseas companies albeit mostly those involved in services such as resort operations took part in this event.
Visit Seabed CEO Frederic Castellanet on the left Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
The French firm Visit Seabed which at the last show announced its diver stability device last year (improved this year in terms of size and design) unveiled at the 2017 its new product – a world first – called Seabed Buggy which assists those divers exploring the shallower seabeds in a safer and stressless manner. Even those who may not have much stamina can now use this underwater vehicle to move about freely.
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
According to the company, it took a few years to perfect this powered “board” since several designs were tried out and many patents required to realize those were filed. The final version enables divers to “scoot” near the seabed thanks to facilitated operations. As an aside, it is understood that there are more activities in the offing for French Polynesia, being one of the potential Visit Seabed user space, as the local government is pushing for more resort developments.
Image credit: Ratio Computers
This year, the Italian company Ratio Computers were also conspicuous at the diving confab. The computer in this case is not the ones used to access the Internet but those used by divers to ensure that they have a handle on their underwater activities related to the amount of gas left in the tank (which needs to take into account the time required upon surfacing since a sudden rise would result in the bends and other ailments), depth and other vital information. (Speaking of Italy, it has of late been a hotbed of startup activities.)
It is thought that with the further spread of interest in underwater leisure as well as business such as aquatic environment use like water use (one novel project is outlined by “waterpolitan.com” although currently its focus does not cover the oceanic environment yet), Japan and Asia promises to become a fertile ground [sic!] for expanded use of diving equipment and devices.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo VR Startups, the startup incubator focusing on VR (Virtual Reality) that is organized by Japanese mobile game developer Gumi (TSE:3903) of Japan, held last month a Demo Day for its 2nd batch in Tokyo. It became a big event with nine participant teams; four teams from the incubation 2nd batch, four teams from the Korean startup incubator Seoul VR Startups which has special ties with Tokyo VR Startups, and a team from The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) in which Gumi is also invested. In this article, I introduce in particular the four Japanese startup teams. See also: The Bridge’s guide to VR hotspots in Tokyo (2017 new year edition) Cover Tokyo-based Cover, which recently made a pitch regarding a VR game “Ping Pong League” at Tech Lab Paak 7th batch Demo Day, appeared this time with another product under the same name of Cover. It is the VR distribution platform enabling users to remake (“cover”) songs or dances attained with a combination of live distribution and animation. With this platform, users with head-mounted display can perform as getting into animation characters in the virtual space. Speaking of VR games, “Summer Lesson”…
Tokyo VR Startups, the startup incubator focusing on VR (Virtual Reality) that is organized by Japanese mobile game developer Gumi (TSE:3903) of Japan, held last month a Demo Day for its 2nd batch in Tokyo. It became a big event with nine participant teams; four teams from the incubation 2nd batch, four teams from the Korean startup incubator Seoul VR Startups which has special ties with Tokyo VR Startups, and a team from The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) in which Gumi is also invested.
In this article, I introduce in particular the four Japanese startup teams.
Tokyo-based Cover, which recently made a pitch regarding a VR game “Ping Pong League” at Tech Lab Paak 7th batch Demo Day, appeared this time with another product under the same name of Cover. It is the VR distribution platform enabling users to remake (“cover”) songs or dances attained with a combination of live distribution and animation. With this platform, users with head-mounted display can perform as getting into animation characters in the virtual space.
Speaking of VR games, “Summer Lesson” launched by Bandai Namco has been well received in Japan. In China, YY Music is focusing on live streaming services. The Cover team expects its business model in line with the subscriptions system from audiences as with Showroom provided by Japan’s DeNA, so that distributed videos are available to browse on PC or smartphone in addition to head-mounted display.
In the future, the team aims to add various functions, such as editing hair style or costume of animation characters, setting 360-degree video or photos photographed by users as the background image, or sharing captured images in the game streaming or the white boards.
In the days of the pager/beeper, people communicated using numbers, symbols and texts. As devices have evolved from the feature phone to the smartphone, communication methods have changed into a richer style, says Shunichi Takeshita who is CEO of Gatari and the first representative of the VR user society UT-virtual at the University of Tokyo. Gatari strives to create communication methods and devices in the MR (Mixed Reality) era, and aims to realize it in the VR world in advance.
Gatari images that send voice messages in actual spaces will become common by replacing today’s conventional text typing as a communication method in the VR, the AR (Augmented Reality) and the MR era. As a first step during this incubation term, the team completed technology development such as text input by voice recognition, translated output into the conversation partner’s language and keyword auto-extractor in conversation. In the future, the team aims to develop a view-sharing function with a communication partner.
HoloEyes
HoloEyes aims to make an information revolution in the medical field using VR. Its technology will be helpful for the medical world by sharing information of human bodies in 3DVR form. The medical VR database will be constructed through collection of CT scan data and forming 3D human body models, then accumulating these.
If a search on the terms “male, 60s, prostate cancer” is made, 3D images of matched cases will be output. Doctors can utilize them for diagnosis references of similar cases or training upon surgical operations. The team expects a business model providing VR viewers for hospitals and selling collected data after obtaining patients’ consent to medical colleges or pharmaceutical companies.
JollyGood
JollyGood was founded by Kensuke Joji, who had originally worked in the TV broadcaster industry and been involved in producing events such as Wearable Tech Expo held in Tokyo, and last year launched the VR solution named GuruVR Media Pro for the television program production industry. By 2019, simultaneous broadcasting in terrestrial network / Internet by television stations will be commenced in Japan and Joji expects that television will become a device to experience, not just to watch. On the other hand, there was no system to easily introduce VR content into television programs and that triggered him to develop this solution.
The business model of GuruVR Media Pro consists of the initial cost including installation and installation lecture charges and the running cost corresponding to quantities of content as well as downloads of CMS (Content Management System) which is required for VR content distribution. The team explains that VR content can be easily linked up with lands or spaces, and is compatible with local television stations. Viewers can handily try the content provided by television stations they are familiar with, and it will be differentiated by enabling them to have a “pseudo- experience” of various locations where common citizens are forbidden to enter.
In addition, JollyGood has been developing AI (Artificial Intelligence) services to determine automatically what is the image displayed in VR space. This February, the firm agreed to a business tie-up with UK-based Boris FX which develops Mocha, the post-production tool for VR content that prevents VR sickness. Collaborating Boris FX with a network of million VR engineers and the AI services developed by JollyGood, they plan to announce a launch of new services at the world’s biggest convention for visionary technologies, the NAB Show, held in Las Vegas on April 25th.
Incidentally, JollyGood had fundraised one million yen (about $900,000) from Gumi in August of 2016.
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
At Slush Tokyo 2017 held in Tokyo last month, Gumi announced that it will commence Nordic VR Startups through a joint venture with Nordic Film, while Gumi has currently been providing VR startup incubation through Tokyo VR Startups and Seoul VR Startups.
Denmark-based Nordic Film is running a business focused on movie production, movie theater management and PlayStation distribution in Northern Europe. Nordic VR Startups provides 100,000 euro at most to startups from the Northern European region and encourages prototyping of VR products, as well as providing technical assistance and business support.
Prior to this, Gumi had also announced a cooperation with the Belgium-based VR developer community EUVR this January. Tokyo VR Startups started accepting applications for its incubation program 3rd batch, and the application deadline is May 14th.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
