Tokyo-based Money Forward, Japan’s leading SaaS (software as a service) accounting startup, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 29 September with plans to offer 1,617,700 shares for public subscription and to sell up to 382,300 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 931,000 shares. SMBC Nikko Securities will lead the underwriting.
Led by the company’s CEO Yosuke Tsuji (19.95%), its major shareholders include Jafco (TSE:8595, 14.90%), board member Chihiro Asano (9.47%), CISO Takashi Ichikawa (6.60%), Monex Ventures (4.78%), Credit Saison (TSE:8253, 4.11%), and the company board member Toshio Taki (3.36%).
Yosuke Tsuji, founder / CEO of Money Forward Image credit: Takeshi Hirano
According to the consolidated statement as of November 2016, they posted a revenue of 1.54 billion yen (about 14 million) with an ordinary loss of 882.6 million yen ($8 million) and a net loss of 890 million yen ($8.1 million).
Money Forward was founded in May of 2012 under its previous name of Money Book. Since December of 2012, the company has been providing online personal accounting for individuals called Money Forward, allowing them to easily manage their daily expenses by integrating their bank passbook and credit purchase history with information obtained from their web bank and credit accounts. The service is also available for desktop, as well as iOS and Android platforms.
See the original story in Japanese. In Bangkok, Thailand, there is a community made up of Japanese serial entrepreneurs. While being enthusiastic about their own startups management, they are also devoted to intermediary activities between startup communities in Japan and Thailand. Kazuki Kamiya moved to Thailand in November of 2013, and established a Skype-based Thai language school in May of 2014. Later, he engaged in managing crowdsourced translation / interpretation and business portal website, and now has newly started an on-demand real business. Bangkok-based Flare, Kamiya’s newest startup, officially launched a car advertising service under the same name last week, which pairs drivers willing to wrap their car with companies looking for a unique way to advertise. The team provides the service within Thailand for the time being, and will consider expansion into other market in accordance with its business growth. The Flare users owning automobiles log onto the service via a mobile app available for iOS / Android, and selects a desired one from among campaigns offered by advertisers. After applying for the campaign through uploading photos of the auto and driver license, wrapper comes and wraps the auto in the ad. The GPS information of driving record while…
In Bangkok, Thailand, there is a community made up of Japanese serial entrepreneurs. While being enthusiastic about their own startups management, they are also devoted to intermediary activities between startup communities in Japan and Thailand. Kazuki Kamiya moved to Thailand in November of 2013, and established a Skype-based Thai language school in May of 2014. Later, he engaged in managing crowdsourced translation / interpretation and business portal website, and now has newly started an on-demand real business.
Kazuki Kamiya
Bangkok-based Flare, Kamiya’s newest startup, officially launched a car advertising service under the same name last week, which pairs drivers willing to wrap their car with companies looking for a unique way to advertise. The team provides the service within Thailand for the time being, and will consider expansion into other market in accordance with its business growth.
The Flare users owning automobiles log onto the service via a mobile app available for iOS / Android, and selects a desired one from among campaigns offered by advertisers. After applying for the campaign through uploading photos of the auto and driver license, wrapper comes and wraps the auto in the ad. The GPS information of driving record while putting the ad will be sent to Flare via the app. Each campaign budget is set by advertisers in advance and when an auto with the ad drives on a busy main street on a weekend, the budget will be greatly spent. Conversely, the budget will be spent less in local areas having minimal traffic under Flare’s charge system. Advertisers can confirm the spending pace of the budget or the progress of the campaign via the dashboard.
From 15 years ago, BTS (Bangkok Skytrain) and subway lines were opened in Thailand. I often use public transportation in Bangkok and did not know that Bangkok is ranked as the world’s second worst traffic city as announced annually by the Dutch car navigation company TomTom. Of course, clean up traffic congestion is important but Kamiya took advantage of the situation and created Flare from the idea of “a service to reduce drivers’ stress” during the world’s second most jammed traffic. Since its pre-launch a month ago, more than 500 autos have signed up with Flare.
Auto with campaign wrappingAuto with campaign wrapping
Interestingly, Flare users can earn more than expected. An average Flare driver earns 3,000 to 5,000 Baht (about $90 to $150) in a month. The monthly per capita GDP of Thailand is about $490 and the drivers can earn 1/4 to 1/5 of the average monthly income. This amount is equivalent to the rent of a standard apartment house in Thailand even if spending a part of the income as auto maintenance costs. Without requiring additional labor, this service makes these citizens life comfortable.
Kamiya commented on Flare’s vision:
Some drivers of Grab or UberX are using our app too. We will launch Flare available for tuk-tuk and bike taxi in addition to private cars!
Dashboard image for advertiser
In the world, there are some similar services: San Francisco-based Wrapify conducts business in 10 cities in the U.S., while Carvertise based in Wilmington, Delaware and Sti-car based in Jakarta, Indonesia carry on such activities. There are currently no competition in Thailand, but car-sharing service majors such as Grab or Uber may enter this field for the purpose of providing an additional income source to user drivers in the future. It is worth keeping an eye on how Flare will acquire the market as a pioneer.
Flare had fundraised from some of the Japanese angel investors in its angel round but it must not be a too distant future for it to undertake additional fundraising with a view of the market growth because it is common for startups in Thailand to expand their service into other Asian countries due to the small size of domestic market. Currently, the ad wrapping is offered only to autos driving in Thailand and the team will invite advertisers from Japanese companies conducting business in Thailand as well.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Sapeet, the Japanese fashion-tech startup spun of from the University of Tokyo, recently announced the launch of an online virtual try-on service for online shoppers called 3D Sapeet EC tool. This service has been introduced on the VAYoreLA basketball clothing e-commerce site. Unlike typical virtual try-on services superimposing clothes images over wearer images, Sapeet EC tool prepares customer’s 3D avatar modelled after data on their body type and 3D clothes in actual size acquired from CAD data, and displays the try-on image created through physical simulation. With this method, customers can finely check the clothes’ size, length, or silhouette online – hardly imaginable from image compositions. The service also supports various dressing styles such as tuck-in of shirts, as well as expression of wearing pressures (tightness) which he /she will feel while actually wearing it. In addition, the firm aims to support specific posing / motion or custom-made clothing in the future. Try-on on cloud This system was developed by Sapeet CEO Eiji Tsukiyama. He applied his knowledge about hydrodynamics that he learned through studies in the University of Tokyo into fashion. Some readers may have seen the behavior of Tsunami expressed by…
Operaing screen of the 3D virtual try-on Image credit: Sapeet
Tokyo-based Sapeet, the Japanese fashion-tech startup spun of from the University of Tokyo, recently announced the launch of an online virtual try-on service for online shoppers called 3D Sapeet EC tool. This service has been introduced on the VAYoreLA basketball clothing e-commerce site.
Unlike typical virtual try-on services superimposing clothes images over wearer images, Sapeet EC tool prepares customer’s 3D avatar modelled after data on their body type and 3D clothes in actual size acquired from CAD data, and displays the try-on image created through physical simulation.
With this method, customers can finely check the clothes’ size, length, or silhouette online – hardly imaginable from image compositions. The service also supports various dressing styles such as tuck-in of shirts, as well as expression of wearing pressures (tightness) which he /she will feel while actually wearing it. In addition, the firm aims to support specific posing / motion or custom-made clothing in the future.
Try-on on cloud
Eiji Tsukiyama, CEO of Sapeet
This system was developed by Sapeet CEO Eiji Tsukiyama. He applied his knowledge about hydrodynamics that he learned through studies in the University of Tokyo into fashion. Some readers may have seen the behavior of Tsunami expressed by hydrodynamic images in news programs, for example.
Tsukiyama had been involved in research of clothing simulation, then he hit on the idea of more real online try-on and decided to take on this product. This field is placed in so-called 3DCG tech, led by top players such as Disney, CAD software developer Autodesk, or graphic chip manufacturer Nvidia having the cutting-edge technologies and information.
However, some of readers familiar with internet may not regard it as something new. In Second Life provided by Linden Lab, users were able to create their own online avatars whose outfits can easily be changed. Similar metaverse products had appeared one after another. In addition, MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games also realized the same concepts with them.
So, what is the potentiality for Sapeet?
Remember that Second Life users had to download the viewer prior to playing. The graphic processing capacity was necessary for local PC capable of detailed 3DCG rendering. In contrast, all services of Sapeet are provided via general web browser and the processing almost completes within cloud.
According to Tsukiyama, this system succeeded in reduction of the processing amount by focusing on the try-on situation, rather than applying 3DCG processing which are used in movies or games directly to cloud.
Wearing pressure condition; tight parts are colored in red Image credit: Sapeet
In short, this try-on service works in multi-device environment including smartphone, unrestricted by the browsing device or environment.
Therefore, Sapeet’s technology may become one of the essential ones needed in the forthcoming online life. Unfortunately, the author is not familiar with this field well and cannot compare it with other services / technologies, but found it being operated easily even in smartphone in demo use.
Tsukiyama told us that the in-between communication environment influences on the operation more significantly rather than the try-on processing, but it appears a very interesting service for me as one of the people who dreamed a virtual life in metaverse.
Co-authored by Takeshi Hirano and Sekiko Suzuki Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Ambient Intelligence Technology, a Japanese startup developing and manufacturing underwater drones, announced on Monday that it has fundraised 190 million yen (about $1.7 million) in the latest round. This round was led by Beyond Next Ventures with participation from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Venture Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, and Freebit Investment. Using the funds, the company intends to accelerate the spread of business-use drones for maintaining and managing underwater infrastructure, aiming to start drone rentals by November in addition to drone sales by next spring. The company was launched back in 2014 by CEO Shohei Ito and Chairman Yasushi Nakauchi. Ito graduated from College of Engineering Systems, University of Tsukuba, while Nakauchi is a professor majoring in human-robot interface and intelligent environments at the University of Tsukuba. They are focused on developing and manufacturing underwater drones, especially the high demand types that can dive down to a depth of 300 meters, or 980 feet. Since even a typical diving professional can go down to a depth of about 40 meters (130 feet) only, a hard-to-operate and expensive Remotely Operated Vehicle is used to check out much lower depths. While momentum is building to set better…
Ambient Intelligence Technology, a Japanese startup developing and manufacturing underwater drones, announced on Monday that it has fundraised 190 million yen (about $1.7 million) in the latest round. This round was led by Beyond Next Ventures with participation from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Venture Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, and Freebit Investment. Using the funds, the company intends to accelerate the spread of business-use drones for maintaining and managing underwater infrastructure, aiming to start drone rentals by November in addition to drone sales by next spring.
The company was launched back in 2014 by CEO Shohei Ito and Chairman Yasushi Nakauchi. Ito graduated from College of Engineering Systems, University of Tsukuba, while Nakauchi is a professor majoring in human-robot interface and intelligent environments at the University of Tsukuba. They are focused on developing and manufacturing underwater drones, especially the high demand types that can dive down to a depth of 300 meters, or 980 feet. Since even a typical diving professional can go down to a depth of about 40 meters (130 feet) only, a hard-to-operate and expensive Remotely Operated Vehicle is used to check out much lower depths. While momentum is building to set better maintenance and management procedures for improved service life of dams and ports, the company is looking to introduce underwater drones into this market.
Spider, an underwater drone product to be released from the company next spring, has eight thrusters and can be connected to the mother ship through use of a single tether cable. Operated via game pad, the drone can dive to a depth of 300 meters and has a maximum battery capacity of about four hours. This drone has as its biggest feature a software which enables computer vision-based position holding and automated depth/attitude control for the drone body. By utilizing such features, the drone allows users to easily monitor and research water environments even if faced with strong currents.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Silicon Valley-based Awakens, the startup run by Japanese founders developing services and research platforms leveraging full genome data, announced today that it has secured a seed funding round. This round was led by 500 Startups Japan with participation from M3 (TSE:2413), Japanese Organization for Medical Device Development, in addition to several angel investors focused on life science-centric businesses. M3 runs Japan’s largest portal site for healthcare professionals. Angel investors participating in this round include Tomihisa Kamada (inventor of the Japanese feature phone web browser ‘i-mode‘), Tsunegoro Nishino (CEO of healthcare service company MRSO), and Hiroaki Kitano (CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories). The amount of the funding has not been not disclosed. Awakens will use the funds to accelerate the development of Genome Link, the company’s software for developing integrated services on genome, with aiming to partner with more companies in Japan and the rest of the world. Awakens was established in January of 2017 by three prominent scientists: CEO Tomohiro Takano who previously launched a genome-based personal medicare business called G-TAC at his previous company M3, COO Yuta Matsuda who was involved in launching the MyCode genome business at Japanese Internet giant DeNA…
Silicon Valley-based Awakens, the startup run by Japanese founders developing services and research platforms leveraging full genome data, announced today that it has secured a seed funding round. This round was led by 500 Startups Japan with participation from M3 (TSE:2413), Japanese Organization for Medical Device Development, in addition to several angel investors focused on life science-centric businesses.
M3 runs Japan’s largest portal site for healthcare professionals. Angel investors participating in this round include Tomihisa Kamada (inventor of the Japanese feature phone web browser ‘i-mode‘), Tsunegoro Nishino (CEO of healthcare service company MRSO), and Hiroaki Kitano (CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories).
The amount of the funding has not been not disclosed. Awakens will use the funds to accelerate the development of Genome Link, the company’s software for developing integrated services on genome, with aiming to partner with more companies in Japan and the rest of the world.
The Awakens management team: L to R – CTO Kensuke Numakura, CEO Tomohiro Takano, COO Yuta Matsuda
Awakens was established in January of 2017 by three prominent scientists: CEO Tomohiro Takano who previously launched a genome-based personal medicare business called G-TAC at his previous company M3, COO Yuta Matsuda who was involved in launching the MyCode genome business at Japanese Internet giant DeNA (TSE:2432), and CTO Kensuke Numakura who is familiar with Genome Infomatics and previously worked at P5, a joint venture of Sony and M3.
Based out of genome startup-focused Illumina Accelerator in San Francisco, the team is dedicated to developing the Genomic Explorer genome data management platform for individuals as well as the Genome Link API (application programming interface) for genome service developers.
Compared to Japan, the US in fact has a larger market yet in the genome and related preventive medicine industry. Bidding on investment and business opportunities in this space, the Awakens team is devoting ttself to business and technology developments at an incubation office in Mission Bay, San Francisco. With the funds, it seems that the team is hiring several people who can work in San Francisco or remotely. For details about their recent activities and hiring positions, check out their recent blog posts on Medium.
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. It was in 2015 that the city of Gotemba led by young Mayor Yohei Wakabayashi availed climbers scaling Mt. Fuji from the Shizuoka side with sturdy lavatory structures able to double as emergency shelters in the event of natural disasters (now, the sheds could be equipped with alarm-sensors to turn them into better sanctuaries…). But since April this year there has been a major push in Gotemba to harness technology emanating from a Japanese startup ー albeit via major telecommunications carrier KDDI, which has just announced the buyout of said startup. Soracom, established in 2014 by former Amazon Web Services (AWS) evangelist Ken Tamagawa, has been offering Internet of Things (IoT) service over circuits leased from the giant NTT group ー formerly the Japanese phone monopoly. The startup last year decided to help KDDI, which has a mobile telephony service called au, build its own IoT network. It is upon this technology that Mt. Fuji entryway Gotemba decided to collaborate in realizing a system to keep track of climbers using the pathway leading up to the mountaintop. Beginning on August…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
It was in 2015 that the city of Gotemba led by young Mayor Yohei Wakabayashi availed climbers scaling Mt. Fuji from the Shizuoka side with sturdy lavatory structures able to double as emergency shelters in the event of natural disasters (now, the sheds could be equipped with alarm-sensors to turn them into better sanctuaries…). But since April this year there has been a major push in Gotemba to harness technology emanating from a Japanese startup ー albeit via major telecommunications carrier KDDI, which has just announced the buyout of said startup.
Soracom, established in 2014 by former Amazon Web Services (AWS) evangelist Ken Tamagawa, has been offering Internet of Things (IoT) service over circuits leased from the giant NTT group ー formerly the Japanese phone monopoly. The startup last year decided to help KDDI, which has a mobile telephony service called au, build its own IoT network. It is upon this technology that Mt. Fuji entryway Gotemba decided to collaborate in realizing a system to keep track of climbers using the pathway leading up to the mountaintop.
Screenshot of the website
Beginning on August 10, 2017 (a day before the newly-instituted Japanese Mountain Day holiday) an IoT-based tracking experiment is being conducted. IoT sensors have been placed along the hiking route, enabling a more accurate count by the municipal authorities as to those trekking up the Mt. Fuji pathway… search & rescue helicopters in particular being faced with hazards when flying near Japan’s highest mountain.
With technical support from KDDI’s research institute, a Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network being run on the KDDI LoRa PoC Kit ー underpinned by Soracom tech prowess utilized to develop said kitー will be tried out until the end of this mountain-climbing season.
It is said KDDI had been eyeing a sizable corporate buyout within the information-communication sector after being beat to the punch by SoftBank in the attempt to acquire mobile carrier eAccess some years ago. Interestingly, KDDI until recently has been working with another startup Colopl, which is strong in games but in past few years have pushed drone use, aiming to utilize IoT and VR/AR for promotion of rural communities in Japan. Furthermore, KDDI has been working with another startup, Fukuoka-based SkyDisc, regarding tropical fruit cultivation as well. It remains to be seen how startups will handle their relations with KDDI.
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
The Bridge
