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Enigmo launches platform to crowdsource translation of Japanese books

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.14

Enigmo (TSE:3665) is an internet company best known for operating Buyma, a marketplace selling selected fashions less likely to be available at retail stores. The company recently launched a new platform called Buyma Books, which lets publishers distribute books in different languages using crowdsourced translators. Authors or creators can upload books or publications to publish in other languages, and they will be translated by crowdsourced workers on the platform, and then distributed via an iOS reader app. They will start with translating Japanese books into English and Chinese, but more languages are planned for later. via Mobile & Apps

Enigmo (TSE:3665) is an internet company best known for operating Buyma, a marketplace selling selected fashions less likely to be available at retail stores. The company recently launched a new platform called Buyma Books, which lets publishers distribute books in different languages using crowdsourced translators.

Authors or creators can upload books or publications to publish in other languages, and they will be translated by crowdsourced workers on the platform, and then distributed via an iOS reader app. They will start with translating Japanese books into English and Chinese, but more languages are planned for later.

via Mobile & Apps

news

Japanese food app Teriyaki partners with Matcha, available in 6 languages for international visitors

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.14

Our readers may recall Teriyaki, the restaurant recommendation app launched by Japanese internet tycoon Takafumi Horie last year. The service has tied up with Matcha, a multilingual information portal for international visitors to Japan, and will start listing high-profile restaurants (selected by foodies) in Japanese [1], English, Korean, and Chinese (simplified and traditional). Matcha was launched back in February, and the company is expecting to surpass one million page views by the end of this month. Teriyaki recently received major investment from Japanese online learning platform developer Hitomedia. via ValuePress And also in grammatically simplified Japanese for non-native Japanese speakers. ↩

Our readers may recall Teriyaki, the restaurant recommendation app launched by Japanese internet tycoon Takafumi Horie last year. The service has tied up with Matcha, a multilingual information portal for international visitors to Japan, and will start listing high-profile restaurants (selected by foodies) in Japanese ^[1], English, Korean, and Chinese (simplified and traditional).

Matcha was launched back in February, and the company is expecting to surpass one million page views by the end of this month. Teriyaki recently received major investment from Japanese online learning platform developer Hitomedia.

via ValuePress

And also in grammatically simplified Japanese for non-native Japanese speakers. ↩

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How different countries motivate local entrepreneurs [NES 2014 panel]

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.10

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. Day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo included a panel about how governments in the Middle East and European regions motivate local entrepreneurs. Speakers included: David Heller, managing partner of Vertex Venture Capital Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio Entertainment Chris Wade, venture capital advisor of UK Trade and Investment Heller kicked off the panel describing how his company has evolved the local startup scene in Israel. Since its launch back in 1997, Vertex has invested in 108 companies, and over 30 went on to an exit. The most recent was Waze, a community-based, real-time traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google last year. He emphasized that one of the most interesting things about the Israeli startup ecosystem is the amount of VC investment per person is much higher than that of any other developed country. Marco then introduced himself by encouraging the audience to call Viber a Japanese company, since they were acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year. Despite the fact that they started business in…

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

Day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo included a panel about how governments in the Middle East and European regions motivate local entrepreneurs. Speakers included:

David Heller, managing partner of Vertex Venture Capital
Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber
Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio Entertainment
Chris Wade, venture capital advisor of UK Trade and Investment

Heller kicked off the panel describing how his company has evolved the local startup scene in Israel. Since its launch back in 1997, Vertex has invested in 108 companies, and over 30 went on to an exit. The most recent was Waze, a community-based, real-time traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google last year. He emphasized that one of the most interesting things about the Israeli startup ecosystem is the amount of VC investment per person is much higher than that of any other developed country.

Marco then introduced himself by encouraging the audience to call Viber a Japanese company, since they were acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year. Despite the fact that they started business in Belarus and then moved on to London, they have an especially large user base in South East Asia, especially in Myanmar and the Philippines. His advice for Japanese entrepreneurs? You need to encourage your employees to respect individualism and think out of box.

Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka explained that his company initially started out as a gaming company, but is now focused on three Es: entertainment, education, and entrepreneurship. As part of these efforts, they have been involved in organizing Finland’s largest tech conference Slush [1]. He encouraged Japanese entrepreneurs in the audience to create global success stories, pointing out that Tokyo alone has a larger population than all of Finland. He says startups have to stand out and differentiate from others, and that his company respects the diversity of employees. After launching an office here in Tokyo, they hope to be more Japanese than Japanese people, he says.

UKTI’s Chris Wade explained that his organization has been helping to grow the local startup community in East London by eliminating obstacles for entrepreneurs who are launching a company, providing them with the necessary mentorship. He says the UK government has also deployed several measures to accelerate entrepreneurship, including tax incentives for seed investments and issuing an entrepreneur visa to helps startups more easily hire talented people from outside the country.

He noted that every entrepreneur has to fail fast and keep trying. That’s the must-have mindset not only for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but for people all over the world who are keen to launch a business.

Update: We’re told the largest tech conference in Eurasia, in fact. ↩

news

How do you promote innovation within a company? [NES 2014 Panel]

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.10

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. The morning session on day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo opened with a panel on how companies can spur innovation, and it boasted an all-star panel of speakers: Matt Wilsey, entrepreneur and investor Akira Morikawa, CEO of Line Corporation Jerry Yang, Co-founder, AME Cloud Ventures Morikawa-san started off the panel with an introduction to Line (which we have covered extensively, a service that has now reached 400 million users. From his perspective, regardless of the scale of your organization, everyone can create a disruptive business. The problem is that every organization has nay-sayers when you come up with a new idea, and that is typically the biggest obstacle when trying to executing. Japanese people tend to follow a plan, and avoid changing it once it’s in place. So at his company, they make no detailed plan for the long term, and that helps their employees stay ready for unexpected changes based on user responses. He emphasized that it is not their management but rather their users who should decide if a new…

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

The morning session on day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo opened with a panel on how companies can spur innovation, and it boasted an all-star panel of speakers:

Matt Wilsey, entrepreneur and investor
Akira Morikawa, CEO of Line Corporation
Jerry Yang, Co-founder, AME Cloud Ventures

Morikawa-san started off the panel with an introduction to Line (which we have covered extensively, a service that has now reached 400 million users. From his perspective, regardless of the scale of your organization, everyone can create a disruptive business. The problem is that every organization has nay-sayers when you come up with a new idea, and that is typically the biggest obstacle when trying to executing.

morikawa-internal-innovation — Line CEO Akira Morikawa

Japanese people tend to follow a plan, and avoid changing it once it’s in place. So at his company, they make no detailed plan for the long term, and that helps their employees stay ready for unexpected changes based on user responses. He emphasized that it is not their management but rather their users who should decide if a new idea is good or bad.

Jerry Yang is best known as the founder of search giant Yahoo, but he’s currently working as an investor in Silicon Valley. His company, AME Cloud Ventures, has invested in over 50 startups, many of which are running data-driven businesses. He’s expecting huge potential in this sector since a big data methodology will enable any industry to rethink and rebuild things in our world. His strategy is based on an assumption/prediction about what will happen in the near future, and from there he decides what kind of startups to invest in.

In a response to the moderator’s [1] question about how to promote an entrepreneurial mindset at a company, Jerry explained there has to be a sense of urgency. Startups have obviously have it, but established companies also require it in order to make something new happen from the inside.

Matt noted that we can’t force anyone to be innovative. All we can do is create an environment that is friendly to innovation. Innovations typically happen in a place you’d never expect. And one of the biggest failures for companies when they have no time to create an environment or a culture that permits employees to try and fail.

The panel was moderated by Takeshi Natsuno, a professor at Keio University. ↩

news

Inside Tencent: What lies ahead for China’s internet giant?

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.10

See the original article written in Japanese Some might suppose that Chinese internet companies would have their headquarters in the capital Beijing. But they don’t. Alibaba is headquartered in Hangzhou, while the country’s top game company Shanda is in Shanghai. And Shenzhen in the south is the home of Tencent. I recently had an opportunity to visit Shenzhen to attend Infinity Venture Partners’ LP Summit 1, during which I had a chance to visit to Tencent. The company’s headquarters are located in the Science and Technology Park in the western part of the city, inside 37-story skyrise. Surprisingly, this gigantic building is a little small for Tencent, and they’re now building another 55-story, two-tower facility. That building (a model of which you can see below) is scheduled to open in 2016, and it will house 12,000 employees. The building is designed by NBBJ, also the designers of Amazon headquarters building in Seattle. On the second floor there is a big screen that displays real-time access to Tencent’s QQ instant messaging software (see below). I saw over 170 million users accessing the service, which was probably light considering that it was a weekday morning. Also on that floor was Ubox, a…

See the original article written in Japanese

Some might suppose that Chinese internet companies would have their headquarters in the capital Beijing. But they don’t. Alibaba is headquartered in Hangzhou, while the country’s top game company Shanda is in Shanghai. And Shenzhen in the south is the home of Tencent.

I recently had an opportunity to visit Shenzhen to attend Infinity Venture Partners’ LP Summit 1, during which I had a chance to visit to Tencent. The company’s headquarters are located in the Science and Technology Park in the western part of the city, inside 37-story skyrise. Surprisingly, this gigantic building is a little small for Tencent, and they’re now building another 55-story, two-tower facility. That building (a model of which you can see below) is scheduled to open in 2016, and it will house 12,000 employees. The building is designed by NBBJ, also the designers of Amazon headquarters building in Seattle.

On the second floor there is a big screen that displays real-time access to Tencent’s QQ instant messaging software (see below). I saw over 170 million users accessing the service, which was probably light considering that it was a weekday morning.

Also on that floor was Ubox, a vending machine where people can buy things by paying with their mobile, either using AliPay (by Weibo) or TenPay (by Tencent). Here in Japan, there are an increasing number of vending machines accepting electronic money. In China, it seems services like Weibo and QQ are helping drive that trend too.

Virtual credit cards

Early in March, Tencent and Alibaba announced virtual credit cards within their apps WeChat and AliPay Wallet (respectively). WeChat and AliPay Wallet can be used for some things like taxi service Didi Dache and at some retail stores as well. The companies were both very excited about the launch, hailing it is an innovation in the credit card industry. But soon after launch, government authorities made them shut down the service. Tencent has made efforts to the launch its service by tying up with major banks in China. The background of the authority’s decision is not clear, but some sources say certain banks and credit-card companies were threatened by the rapid increase of virtual credit cards and may have put pressure on government.

Regarding its future strategy, Tencent aims to make financial services more accessible to general consumers by expanding to platforms like WeChat and QQ. The financial services they mention include not only credit cards but also stock exchange and other financial products. In such a big country, cities that have branch offices of a bank or financial services are still limited. So it would be a natural development for mobile apps to fill the void.

Tencent aims to provide financial services for WeChat users in China (where it’s known as Weixin), and so far has no plan to expand that to its overseas users.

Mobile app distribution

There are many homegrown mobile app distribution services catering to the Chinese market. Tencent’s MyApp has a 12% in the share in this space, falling just short of the top three, behind Baidu (38%), Qihoo (28%), and Wandoujia (15%) (as of December 2013).

Tencent’s top priority in this field is to surpass the top three players, and Tencent Open Platform represents its core strategy for doing so. Monkey Hou (pictured below) is the vice president of the Tencent Open Platform, and he brought us up to speed on their current situation.

According to him, Tencent has opened incubation spaces in 10 cities across China with the aim to incubate mobile app startups and bring more appealing apps to their platform. As part of the incubation programs, Tencent offers various benefits such as discounted cloud service, funding, and mentoring. The benefits change depending on the number of downloads for a given app.

Tencent Open Platform, vice president Monkey Hou

In China there are over 10 mobile app distribution platforms. Some wonder why an internet giant like Tencent cannot catch up other players. But Hou explained to us that there is no player with a majority share and China’s market is still really big. He seemed confident they would soon break into the top three.

In February, Japan’ Mixi partnered with Tencent to bring its popular Monster Strike game to China. This is one example of Tencent’s efforts to gain recognition as an app distribution platform. Although it requires localization changes, the Japan’s popular mobile games have good chances to do well in China. I think more and more Chinese platforms will actively try to partner with Japanese game developers in the future.

You may remember my report on HAXLR8R, the Shenzhen accelerator specializing in hardware startups. ↩

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Japan’s Transcosmos takes 10% stake in Thai e-publication platform Ookbee

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.08

Japanese system integration company Transcosmos (TSE:9715) announced today that it will take a 10% stake in Thailand’s e-publication platform Ookbee [1]. By bringing its business experience and IT solutions to the table, Transcosmos plans to help the startup to expand its business beyond the e-publication to become a more comprehensive monetization platform. This includes launching an e-commerce business to make the most of their user base in South East Asia. Since its launch back in March of 2012, Ookbee has acquired 5.5 million users to date across the region, with the goal of reaching 10 million users by the end of this year. The startup signed a strategic partnership with their Indonesian counterpart Scoop in late 2012, securing $2 million in funding for a 25% percent stake from Intouch. via Venture Now Coinciding with the capital tie-up, it was also announced that a Transcosmos employee will join Ookbee’s management board. ↩

Japanese system integration company Transcosmos (TSE:9715) announced today that it will take a 10% stake in Thailand’s e-publication platform Ookbee [1].

By bringing its business experience and IT solutions to the table, Transcosmos plans to help the startup to expand its business beyond the e-publication to become a more comprehensive monetization platform. This includes launching an e-commerce business to make the most of their user base in South East Asia. Since its launch back in March of 2012, Ookbee has acquired 5.5 million users to date across the region, with the goal of reaching 10 million users by the end of this year.

The startup signed a strategic partnership with their Indonesian counterpart Scoop in late 2012, securing $2 million in funding for a 25% percent stake from Intouch.

via Venture Now

Coinciding with the capital tie-up, it was also announced that a Transcosmos employee will join Ookbee’s management board. ↩

news

Japanese crowdsourcing startup Lancers launches matchmaking platform for regional businesses

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.08

Tokyo-based Lancers operates one of Japan’s most popular crowdsourcing platforms. The company recently announced it has also launched a business matchmaking platform in closed beta, with the goal of connecting non-IT and regional business operators with potential clients. The new site is called Lancers Place, developed as a part of an effort to explore new business with Japanese telco KDDI. By leveraging crowdsourced online workers, Lancers has been helping clients fulfill their IT needs in areas like web design, brochure layouts, and mobile app coding. But the company has been planning to expand beyond IT. KDDI has had a program for small and medium-sized enterprises since 2010, helping members find appropriate business fulfillment services. By connecting their user bases each other, the two companies expect to create more business opportunities that span geographical locations and business sectors. Lancers aims to get about 100,000 regional businesses listed on the platform by the end of FY2014, and will work on member acquisition prior to launching the matchmaking function. Via CNET Japan

Tokyo-based Lancers operates one of Japan’s most popular crowdsourcing platforms. The company recently announced it has also launched a business matchmaking platform in closed beta, with the goal of connecting non-IT and regional business operators with potential clients. The new site is called Lancers Place, developed as a part of an effort to explore new business with Japanese telco KDDI.

By leveraging crowdsourced online workers, Lancers has been helping clients fulfill their IT needs in areas like web design, brochure layouts, and mobile app coding. But the company has been planning to expand beyond IT. KDDI has had a program for small and medium-sized enterprises since 2010, helping members find appropriate business fulfillment services. By connecting their user bases each other, the two companies expect to create more business opportunities that span geographical locations and business sectors.

Lancers aims to get about 100,000 regional businesses listed on the platform by the end of FY2014, and will work on member acquisition prior to launching the matchmaking function.

Via CNET Japan

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In Japan, a new content distribution platform for amateur authors

Piece of Cake

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.07

Some of our readers may recall when we told you about Tokyo-based company ‘Piece of Cake’ which provides an online content platform that eases consumer payment and publisher monetization. Inspired by US-based Medium, the company has unveiled another content platform today called ‘Note’. Unlike their previous offering which featured content by novelists or artists, this new platform is intended for amateur content producers, allowing them to publish bits of content such as short messages, pictures, illustrations, text, sounds, and movies. On the platform, you can interact with other users, ‘like’ your favorite works, or follow other user timelines. The platform will also recommend content you might be interested in. Creators can charge readers on an episodic basis, buy an entire series, or provide a teaser prior to purchase. The platform takes a 10% commission fee of your sales excluding a 5% payment handling charge. Via TechCrunch Japan

Some of our readers may recall when we told you about Tokyo-based company ‘Piece of Cake’ which provides an online content platform that eases consumer payment and publisher monetization. Inspired by US-based Medium, the company has unveiled another content platform today called ‘Note’.

Unlike their previous offering which featured content by novelists or artists, this new platform is intended for amateur content producers, allowing them to publish bits of content such as short messages, pictures, illustrations, text, sounds, and movies. On the platform, you can interact with other users, ‘like’ your favorite works, or follow other user timelines. The platform will also recommend content you might be interested in.

Creators can charge readers on an episodic basis, buy an entire series, or provide a teaser prior to purchase. The platform takes a 10% commission fee of your sales excluding a 5% payment handling charge.

Via TechCrunch Japan

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Korean growth hacking tool 5Rocks comes out of beta, planning global expansion

5Rocks
Korea

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.06

See the original version of this article, written in Japanese We have mentioned 5Rocks, a Korean-based growth hacking tool for mobile apps many times before. In August of 2013, the startup raised $2.3 million from Japanese venture capital Global Brain, and it expanded the business to Japan [1]. The product has been adopted by many game developers such as Gumi, Pokelabo, MyNet, Mutations Studio, KLab and NewsTech. The beta version has been operating for more than a half year now, but recently on April 2nd, the official version of 5Rocks was finally released, and is available in five languages, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, English, and Russian. The pricing for the Japanese market was announced as well. There is a charge of one yen (about $0.01) is charged for each monthly active user for an app. If you have less than 10,000 MAU, then it’s free. The maximum fee would be 300,000 yen ($3000), for any app that has more than 30,000 MAU. 5Rocks offers a SDK as well, which game developers can implement into their app to acquire and analyze users activity data. In this new official version, 5Rocks added some new features based on the feedback from their beta phase,…

See the original version of this article, written in Japanese

We have mentioned 5Rocks, a Korean-based growth hacking tool for mobile apps many times before. In August of 2013, the startup raised $2.3 million from Japanese venture capital Global Brain, and it expanded the business to Japan [1]. The product has been adopted by many game developers such as Gumi, Pokelabo, MyNet, Mutations Studio, KLab and NewsTech. The beta version has been operating for more than a half year now, but recently on April 2nd, the official version of 5Rocks was finally released, and is available in five languages, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, English, and Russian.

The pricing for the Japanese market was announced as well. There is a charge of one yen (about $0.01) is charged for each monthly active user for an app. If you have less than 10,000 MAU, then it’s free. The maximum fee would be 300,000 yen ($3000), for any app that has more than 30,000 MAU.

5Rocks offers a SDK as well, which game developers can implement into their app to acquire and analyze users activity data. In this new official version, 5Rocks added some new features based on the feedback from their beta phase, including the ability to chart correlation of user activity (who log-in regularly) and sales.

The chart indicates the variation of users, according to frequency of gameplay

A chart showing sales

The chart showing the number of the users playing a game in real time was particularly interesting (see below). I hear that some game developers even project this chart on a big screen in their office just to help motivate employees.

A growth hacking tool needs more than just data acquisition and the analysis. It needs to let game developers take action based on results. For that purpose, 5Rocks provide two added features: promotion and push-notification. Both functions target specific clusters of users based on certain attributes and lets game developers to send messages to those users’ smartphones by uploading images or text to 5Rocks’ dashboard. These features are adopted in the SDK, so members in charge of marketing can proceed with promotions or A/B tests without requiring support from engineers.

Promotion page: Select user attributes on the left. The image on the right is the ad for the promotion.

The promotion displayed in the app

According to Japan country manager, Yasuo Sato, 5Rocks has been adopted by about 80 game developers in Korea and Japan and about 200 apps. The company plans to expand to elsewhere in Asia, with the goal of being used by 3000 apps by the end of this year.

The competition in this field is quite fierce, with Kaizen’s planBCD just announcing that it has raised $5 million, and will expand to the US. There’s also Singapore-based Unicon which operates Fello, and CyberAgent subsidiary Sirok which operates Growth Push, Growth Replay, and Growth Point.

The startup began as an online reservation application, but has since evolved to different business. ↩

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Japanese accounting startup Crowd Cast introduces its expense reimbursement app on Android

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.06

Our readers may recall back in December when we mentioned that Japanese startup Crowd Cast was planning to release a mobile app for expenses, intended to help office workers save time in corporate expense reimbursements. Following the launch of its on iOS back in January, the company introduced an Android version last week. If an administrator at your company sets up a corporate account on the service, you and your colleagues can access it through the mobile app. The application also lets you attach photos of receipts for expenses paid, making it easier to submit proof of payment to administrators. There are three monthly fee options depending on the size of your company: $4 (390 yen) for up to three users, $7 (690 yen) for up to ten users, and $10 (980 yen) for up to 20 users. Interestingly they provide all features for free to non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs attending or doing business with a university or a business school. via TechCrunch Japan

Our readers may recall back in December when we mentioned that Japanese startup Crowd Cast was planning to release a mobile app for expenses, intended to help office workers save time in corporate expense reimbursements. Following the launch of its on iOS back in January, the company introduced an Android version last week.

If an administrator at your company sets up a corporate account on the service, you and your colleagues can access it through the mobile app. The application also lets you attach photos of receipts for expenses paid, making it easier to submit proof of payment to administrators.

There are three monthly fee options depending on the size of your company: $4 (390 yen) for up to three users, $7 (690 yen) for up to ten users, and $10 (980 yen) for up to 20 users. Interestingly they provide all features for free to non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs attending or doing business with a university or a business school.

via TechCrunch Japan

Masaru Ikeda

Articles

Enigmo launches platform to crowdsource translation of Japanese books

Japanese food app Teriyaki partners with Matcha, available in 6 languages for international visitors

How different countries motivate local entrepreneurs [NES 2014 panel]

How do you promote innovation within a company? [NES 2014 Panel]

Inside Tencent: What lies ahead for China’s internet giant?

Virtual credit cards

Mobile app distribution

Japan’s Transcosmos takes 10% stake in Thai e-publication platform Ookbee

Japanese crowdsourcing startup Lancers launches matchmaking platform for regional businesses

In Japan, a new content distribution platform for amateur authors

Korean growth hacking tool 5Rocks comes out of beta, planning global expansion

Japanese accounting startup Crowd Cast introduces its expense reimbursement app on Android

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