THE BRIDGE

translation

Japan’s nail art photo app Nailbook secures $840,000 series A round funding

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This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based Spika, a startup behind nail art photo app Nailbook, announced today that it has fundraised 100 million yen ($840,000) from B Dash Ventures and Gree Ventures. The round brings the team’s total funding to 150 million yen ($1.26 million), after a 50 million yen seed round funded from Incubate Fund and Soraseed Startups in January 2014 [1]. The company also announced last week that the Nailbook app has recently marked the 1 million download milestone without any paid promotion, which took about four years since its launch in April 2011. See also: Japanese nail art photo app lands key partnership to expand into China Nailbook helps women in Japan and beyond find nail design inspiration In the app, you can follow other users you like, or favorite nail design photos for future reference. You can also upload recent nail designs of your own. Some professional nail artists even do this to promote their work. Spika CEO Isao Koda gave us a comment upon this funding: Since our app is not yet monetized, we have been focused on user acquisition without paid promotion. So the growth of our user…

nailbook_featuredimage

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Spika, a startup behind nail art photo app Nailbook, announced today that it has fundraised 100 million yen ($840,000) from B Dash Ventures and Gree Ventures. The round brings the team’s total funding to 150 million yen ($1.26 million), after a 50 million yen seed round funded from Incubate Fund and Soraseed Startups in January 2014 [1].

The company also announced last week that the Nailbook app has recently marked the 1 million download milestone without any paid promotion, which took about four years since its launch in April 2011.

See also:

In the app, you can follow other users you like, or favorite nail design photos for future reference. You can also upload recent nail designs of your own. Some professional nail artists even do this to promote their work.

Spika CEO Isao Koda gave us a comment upon this funding:

Since our app is not yet monetized, we have been focused on user acquisition without paid promotion. So the growth of our user base has mostly relied on word-of-mouth.

Followed by achieving the major download milestone, the company is looking to acquire more official user accounts of nail art salons. They have 1,300 official accounts from these salons, aiming to have more accounts leveraging a free-of-charge membership unlike other competing services. Spika plans to soon launch a new app that will allow users to book an appointment for treatment at a nail salon, which will obviously be integrated with the Nailbook app.

While 40% of new downloads comes from outside Japan thanks to the app having English and Chinese interfaces, the retention rate of these users is not yet so high. So if the company confirms that the booking app can be successfully monetizable by driving potential customer traffic to nail art salons, they think that they will make genuine efforts to expand the Nailbook app globally.

Spika will use the funds to hire engineers and designers who are interested in developing services for female users.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson


  1. In April 2014, Spika was spun off from Yumemi which had been initially operating Nailbook. 

Japan’s Coupe helps beauticians find hairdressing models online

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See the original story in Japanese. Coupe is a web-based platform that helps beauticians find hairdressing models. Officially launched last Thursday, the platform has acquired over 130 models and dealt with more than 1,200 requests from beauty salons for models since its beta launch a while ago. Coupe announced today that it has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from CyberAgent Ventures. We recently spoke to Coupe co-founders and soon-to-graduate university students Megumi Takemura and Aiko Watanabe. Beautician provides inspiration Takemura came up with the idea for Coupe when her close friend started work at a famous beauty salon in Omotesando, a fashionable district in Tokyo. Typical trainee beauticians work everyday without a day off, but what is harder for them is finding hairdressing models. Regardless of the weather, these budding beauticians must stand out on the street to recruit passersby to be a hairdressing model. As a university student Takemura knows that many students want to be a hairdressing model. Seeing the difficult situation her friend was in, she hit on the idea for Coupe to help beauticians easily connect with potential hairdressing models. Unlike models who receive treatment for free in return for giving trainee beauticians the chance…

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L to R: Coupe co-founder Megumi Takemura and Aiko Watanabe

See the original story in Japanese.

Coupe is a web-based platform that helps beauticians find hairdressing models. Officially launched last Thursday, the platform has acquired over 130 models and dealt with more than 1,200 requests from beauty salons for models since its beta launch a while ago.

Coupe announced today that it has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from CyberAgent Ventures. We recently spoke to Coupe co-founders and soon-to-graduate university students Megumi Takemura and Aiko Watanabe.

Beautician provides inspiration

Takemura came up with the idea for Coupe when her close friend started work at a famous beauty salon in Omotesando, a fashionable district in Tokyo. Typical trainee beauticians work everyday without a day off, but what is harder for them is finding hairdressing models. Regardless of the weather, these budding beauticians must stand out on the street to recruit passersby to be a hairdressing model.

As a university student Takemura knows that many students want to be a hairdressing model. Seeing the difficult situation her friend was in, she hit on the idea for Coupe to help beauticians easily connect with potential hairdressing models.

Unlike models who receive treatment for free in return for giving trainee beauticians the chance to practice their haircutting and styling techniques, Coupe offers hairdressing models whose pictures will be used for a beauty salon’s menu, fashion magazine, or other publications. To ensure quality, a strict screening process means that only one out of ten applicants becomes a hairdressing model after receiving document-based and camera test-based qualifications.

Watanabe explained:

Many young women want to become a hairdressing model for beauty salons, which is now even more popular than fashion models for magazines. We sometimes recruit them but now receive many applications from aspiring hairdressing models.

Business model

coupe_screenshot

Beauticians can benefit from Coupe, but will not be charged whether or not they find a good model using the platform. While the Coupe team had explored charging a fee to beauticians or beauty salons, they subsequently understood it was not substantial through a series of interviews.

So they set up a new business scheme called Coupe for Business as a primary monetization stream, where big companies like Recruit and DeNA pay to hire registered models for their business. Example includes Recruit starring Coupe’s models in the former’s web service called Preno as well as Uber using these models in their ads.

For companies that do not usually use models for business, they are not familiar with how to discuss with a model agency or typical pricing to hire a model. However, Coupe’s pricing is clear so that companies are required to pay 5,000 yen as a commission for the platform and an hourly-basis wage when hiring a model. The hourly wage price for models is different from person to person. While some models get paid 5,000 yen per hour, others are satisfied with these opportunities regardless of a lack of a wage.

Choosing an entrepreneur’s way

Coupe founders and CyberAgent Ventures team
Coupe founders and CyberAgent Ventures team

Takemura had been worked as an intern at Logbar, the Japanese startup behind wearable device Ring. When she hesitated to start a business, Logbar CEO Takuro Yoshida encouraged her to try:

You never know about society or companies, but that’s your strongest weapon for now. You will not be able to launch anything by yourself once you get used to being employed.

She started exploring funding opportunities last November to secure funding before she graduates from university this spring. Invested funds were recently remitted to their bank account, and they are ready to focus on expanding their business. But before reaching that point, Takemura had a tough time raising the money. Her knowledge of entrepreneurship or investment only came from what she read in books, so everything that has happened in this process has been new to her.

Takemura explained:

Through my funding effort, I came to thoroughly understand how the system of investment works. I think what I learned from the recent several-month experience was much more than I could have learned in four years at university.

Watanabe is in charge of managing models for the Coupe platform. While running a startup, she got to know how important it is to manage herself both physically and mentally.

Takemura continued:

I have failed in many things and have been disappointed because I’ve never experience so much. However, I can find my advantage in myself, so I’m becoming more optimistic.

The Team

The Coupe team consists of three interns, three former beauticians, and one engineer, aged 18 to 23. They are hiring more engineers who are interested in solving problems in the beauty salon industry. Most team members are young women, so they have the ability to develop the service by understanding the perspective of hairdressing models.

Takemura explained:

I think that men cannot develop something like Coupe. Because we are in the same generation with our users, we can understand their desires to have a cute makeup and a photo shoot. That’s why we can keep thinking about how to make them look great.

Watanabe added:

Aspiring hairdressing models had no chance other than being recruited on the street by beauticians before the Coupe platform was introduced. Instead of a registration site for models, we want to make the platform as a predigested brand for everyone. That’s why we sometime organize meet-ups for users
to get them well connected with each other.

Marketing expansion

If models can manage themselves using the Coupe platform, more companies will be able to hire models without using model agencies. Hence, the Coupe team plans to strengthen acquiring companies using the platform, aiming to receive new registrations from over 20 models and 100 orders that send hairdressing models to companies every month.

While it is hard for hairdressing models to make a living, the team looks to have more users who can make a living with orders from the Coupe platform. They work out of Takemura’s home, but they plant to rent an office in Omotesando, where models can come together and meet.

Takemura concluded:

We want to tell more people that entrepreneurship is an option. I don’t think I am not an entrepreneur. I got here by simply choosing the best way. Even if I fail in the path I choose, I will definitely gain great experience in the effort. Everyone has a different best choice, but I want to tell people there is a way by launching a business.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson
Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy

Finland’s startup conference Slush announces its first Asian edition in Tokyo

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See the original story in Japanese. Team Slush, the organizer team behind Finland’s annual tech startup conference Slush, announced today that it will hold its first Asian edition in Tokyo on April 24th, called Slush Asia. See also: CAPTCHA startup Capy wins Tokyo pitch event, moves on to Slush 2014 in Helsinki The organizing team for the Tokyo event is led by Antti Sonninen, former Rovio Entertainment Japan GM and now Beatrobo COO, and will invite prominent people in the tech industry as guest speakers, including Supecell CEO Ilkka Paananen, Rovio’s Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka, Mistletoe CEO Taizo Son, and DeNA founder Tomoko Namba. The Bridge is proud to serve the Tokyo event as a media sponsor, so please stay tuned for more updates. Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Gungho Entertainment Chairman Taizo Son and Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen speak at Slush 2014, Helsinki, FInland.

See the original story in Japanese.

Team Slush, the organizer team behind Finland’s annual tech startup conference Slush, announced today that it will hold its first Asian edition in Tokyo on April 24th, called Slush Asia.

See also:

The organizing team for the Tokyo event is led by Antti Sonninen, former Rovio Entertainment Japan GM and now Beatrobo COO, and will invite prominent people in the tech industry as guest speakers, including Supecell CEO Ilkka Paananen, Rovio’s Mighty Eagle Peter Vesterbacka, Mistletoe CEO Taizo Son, and DeNA founder Tomoko Namba.

The Bridge is proud to serve the Tokyo event as a media sponsor, so please stay tuned for more updates.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s crowdsourced animation production platform Crevo raises $840,000

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This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based PurpleCow, the startup behind crowdsourced animation production platform Crevo and crowdsourced logo design platform DesignClue, announced today that it has fundraised 100 million yen ($840,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and B Dash Ventures. The company also announced it will rebrand its company name to Crevo Inc. See also: Meet the Japanese company looking to change online video by crowdsourcing animation Japan’s Designclue wants to build Asia’s largest logo crowdsourcing market Crevo allows users to choose a creator from the portfolio page and then order various video work, such as promotion videos for an app, or a YouTube ad with custom scenario and characters. In addition to matching clients and creators, Crevo is actively involved with the production process until the end of the project. Since its launch in March 2014, the crowdsourced animation production platform has acquired over 250 corporate users and transacted orders worth over 100 million yen ($840,000) to date. The company will use the funds to strengthen system development and marketing. Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by Kurt Hanson

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PurpleCow (to be rebranded as Crevo) CEO Kensuke Shibata

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based PurpleCow, the startup behind crowdsourced animation production platform Crevo and crowdsourced logo design platform DesignClue, announced today that it has fundraised 100 million yen ($840,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and B Dash Ventures. The company also announced it will rebrand its company name to Crevo Inc.

See also:

Crevo allows users to choose a creator from the portfolio page and then order various video work, such as promotion videos for an app, or a YouTube ad with custom scenario and characters. In addition to matching clients and creators, Crevo is actively involved with the production process until the end of the project.

Since its launch in March 2014, the crowdsourced animation production platform has acquired over 250 corporate users and transacted orders worth over 100 million yen ($840,000) to date. The company will use the funds to strengthen system development and marketing.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson

Japan’s WOVN.io unveils premium plans, offers multilingual support for enterprise websites

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Minimal Technologies launched a website translating service called WOVN.io in August. It instantly turns a website into a multilingual environment only by adding a single Javascript code to the website source. Since its launch, the service has been adopted to 4,000 website and created 120,000 translated webpages. While about 100 pages were translated each day in September, it has since grown to 600 to 700 pages a day. See also: From Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto: 13 startups pitch at Launch Pad competition Wovn.io recently added premium plans, which allows website owners to customize embedded WOVN.io widgets and translate more than five translated pages of their website. The premium edition provides three different plans according to the number of pages requiring translation: Startup, Business, and Enterprise. The Startup type is available for a monthly charge of $19, providing translation for up to 100 pages of a website. When an original page containing a WOVN JavaScript code is updated, WOVN.io will automatically detect that and create an updated translation for website visitors. While the Startup plan limits a translated language selection to one language, upper range plans like Business and Enterprise can create webpages…

wovn_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Minimal Technologies launched a website translating service called WOVN.io in August. It instantly turns a website into a multilingual environment only by adding a single Javascript code to the website source. Since its launch, the service has been adopted to 4,000 website and created 120,000 translated webpages. While about 100 pages were translated each day in September, it has since grown to 600 to 700 pages a day.

See also:

Wovn.io recently added premium plans, which allows website owners to customize embedded WOVN.io widgets and translate more than five translated pages of their website. The premium edition provides three different plans according to the number of pages requiring translation: Startup, Business, and Enterprise.

The Startup type is available for a monthly charge of $19, providing translation for up to 100 pages of a website. When an original page containing a WOVN JavaScript code is updated, WOVN.io will automatically detect that and create an updated translation for website visitors. While the Startup plan limits a translated language selection to one language, upper range plans like Business and Enterprise can create webpages in more than three languages using machine translation.

The price of the Enterprise plan is available upon request. In addition to aforementioned features, Minimal Technologies plans to add new features such as web server customization and A/B testing.

When I previously wrote about WOVN.io, several readers asked about how SEO (search engine optimization) performance for WOVN-installed websites is considered. The company has confirmed that translated pages are appropriately indexed by the Google search engine in their internal test, and will publish a library this spring so that website owners can place critical SEO measures on the translated pages of their website.

In addition to founder/CEO Takaharu Hayashi and co-founder Jeff Sandford, Minimal Technologies recently added a French engineer and a Taiwanese sales representative to the team. In view of which languages are in high demand for translating website pages using WOVN.io, Chinese is ranked top followed by Korean and Spanish. They plan to focus on developing and marketing an enterprise version for Japanese companies.

wovn-team
L to R: CEO Takaharu Hayashi, co-founder Jeff Sandford

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by Masaru Ikeda and Kurt Hanson

Japan’s Fringe81 secures $3.5M, strengthening ad server solutions for mobile media sites

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Tokyo-based ad tech startup Fringe81 announced on Friday that it has fundraised 420 million yen (about $3.53 million) from iStyle Capital, NTT Docomo Ventures, Gree, Dentsu Digital Holdings, and TBS Innovation Partners [1]. The company will use the funds to strengthen human resources for further  development of ad server solutions for mobile media sites. Fringe81 was launched in 2005 under the former name of RSS Kokokusha (literally meaning RSS ad agency) where they had been focused on advertising in RSS feeds. Rebranded to Fringe81 in 2010, the company has added several new ad tech solutions including Digitalice, a cloud-based ad server platform that allows advertisers and media companies to analyze ad performance as well as user behavior and how these users crawl the websites after viewing ads. Coinciding with the funding, Fringe81 announced that Kazuhiro Obara, former executive director at Rakuten and former senior manager at Google Japan, has joined the management board in order to accelerate business development. Via TechCrunch Japan Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy iStyle Capital is the investment arm of iStyle, the company behind Japan’s leading cosmetics review portal @Cosme. TBS Innovation Partners is the investment arm of Tokyo-based private broadcaster Tokyo Broadcasting System, or TBS for short.  ↩

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Fringe81 CEO Yuzuru Tanaka speaks at Movida School in 2013. Photo by Shintaro Eguchi

Tokyo-based ad tech startup Fringe81 announced on Friday that it has fundraised 420 million yen (about $3.53 million) from iStyle Capital, NTT Docomo Ventures, Gree, Dentsu Digital Holdings, and TBS Innovation Partners [1]. The company will use the funds to strengthen human resources for further  development of ad server solutions for mobile media sites.

Fringe81 was launched in 2005 under the former name of RSS Kokokusha (literally meaning RSS ad agency) where they had been focused on advertising in RSS feeds. Rebranded to Fringe81 in 2010, the company has added several new ad tech solutions including Digitalice, a cloud-based ad server platform that allows advertisers and media companies to analyze ad performance as well as user behavior and how these users crawl the websites after viewing ads.

Coinciding with the funding, Fringe81 announced that Kazuhiro Obara, former executive director at Rakuten and former senior manager at Google Japan, has joined the management board in order to accelerate business development.

Via TechCrunch Japan

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy


  1. iStyle Capital is the investment arm of iStyle, the company behind Japan’s leading cosmetics review portal @Cosme. TBS Innovation Partners is the investment arm of Tokyo-based private broadcaster Tokyo Broadcasting System, or TBS for short. 

Japan’s Mixi acquires fashion commerce startup Muse&Co for $14.8 million

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese internet company Mixi (TSE:2121) announced today that it will acquire membership-based fashion commerce company Muse&Co for 1.762 billion yen ($14.8 million). This means that Muse&Co will take a major step forward in as early as three years since its launch back in February of 2012. See also: Japanese fashion commerce site Muse&Co passes $1M in monthly sales Japanese fashion startup Muse & Co raises $3.4 million Muse&Co has successfully brought the flash sales method to the mobile commerce space, seeing a monthly revenue ranging from several hundred thousand US dollars in as soon as a year since launch. Mixi said in a statement that this acquisition will contribute to their smart device businesses in terms of sharing expertise for service operations. This is because about 80% of user traffic for the fashion commerce service comes from smartphone users. Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

mixi-museandco_logos

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese internet company Mixi (TSE:2121) announced today that it will acquire membership-based fashion commerce company Muse&Co for 1.762 billion yen ($14.8 million). This means that Muse&Co will take a major step forward in as early as three years since its launch back in February of 2012.

See also:

Muse&Co has successfully brought the flash sales method to the mobile commerce space, seeing a monthly revenue ranging from several hundred thousand US dollars in as soon as a year since launch.

Mixi said in a statement that this acquisition will contribute to their smart device businesses in terms of sharing expertise for service operations. This is because about 80% of user traffic for the fashion commerce service comes from smartphone users.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Nulab enhances flagship diagram sharing product, sets up shop in NYC

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See the original story in Japanese. Fukuoka-based Nulab has developed web-based collaborative tool for use with remote workers. On Wednesday, the company released Cacoo for Business, the cloud-based enterprise version of their flagship diagram drawing and sharing tool Cacoo. According to Nulab, Cacoo has acquired 1.5 million users, many using it for business. See also: Changing gears: How Japan’s Nulab pulled off the slow pivot With Cacoo for Business, users can separate private diagrams from organizational diagrams, which are managed by the organization’s administrators. Organizational diagrams can only be shared among the organization, preventing any accidental leakage of important diagrams. Other security and sharing settings include the options to “publish the diagram with URL” option and to give other users permission to view, but not edit, the diagrams. Cacoo for Business provides several additional premium options, such as features allowing users to export their diagrams in PDF or PowerPoint format. Nulab offers a free 30-day trial for the premium option upon the launch of the enterprise edition. Nulab CEO Masanori Hashimoto told The Bridge how Cacoo has been successfully penetrated since its beta launch back in November 2009: Cacoo’s use cases include creating wireframes, sitemaps, network charts, architecture diagrams, as…

cacoo-for-business_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Fukuoka-based Nulab has developed web-based collaborative tool for use with remote workers. On Wednesday, the company released Cacoo for Business, the cloud-based enterprise version of their flagship diagram drawing and sharing tool Cacoo. According to Nulab, Cacoo has acquired 1.5 million users, many using it for business.

See also:

With Cacoo for Business, users can separate private diagrams from organizational diagrams, which are managed by the organization’s administrators. Organizational diagrams can only be shared among the organization, preventing any accidental leakage of important diagrams. Other security and sharing settings include the options to “publish the diagram with URL” option and to give other users permission to view, but not edit, the diagrams.

Cacoo for Business provides several additional premium options, such as features allowing users to export their diagrams in PDF or PowerPoint format. Nulab offers a free 30-day trial for the premium option upon the launch of the enterprise edition.

cacoo_business

Nulab CEO Masanori Hashimoto told The Bridge how Cacoo has been successfully penetrated since its beta launch back in November 2009:

Cacoo’s use cases include creating wireframes, sitemaps, network charts, architecture diagrams, as well as reviewing user interfaces, creating design order documents, and many other purposes.

Before launching Cacoo for Business, Nulab had been providing the on-premise version of Cacoo for notable Japanese internet companies like DeNA, DMM, and Cookpad, where the company understand how much these users want to secure their assets and resources.

Hashimoto continued:

For example, we have received feedback for more efficient user management, more flexibility for user permissions, how to take over diagrams created by a retired employee to a new designer. We have made these possible in the brand new cloud edition (Cacoo for Business) to better serve our users.

Nulab will keep providing individual user plans as they have been in the past. In view of offering multiple service plans like individual use, business use, or freemium option, our readers may think that Cacoo has a business model similar to DropBox and Evernote.

Hashimoto added:

Going forward, we will add more features aiming to reach corporate users. Specifically speaking, these efforts include strengthening security policy setting such as two-factor authentication as well as integration with other third-party tools and services.

Global expansion

86% of Cacoo users are from outside Japan. US users account for 15% of the user base, and Japanese users take an almost equal share. Considering this, Nulab established a local subsidiary in New York City last October to strengthen marketing in the US.

Hashimoto elaborated:

Our user base in Japan and the US is almost the same size. In the number of paying users by country, Japan is ranked tops, followed by the US, which is far higher than other markets. So we see that many people are using our service in business in the US as well as Japan. That’s why we set up an office in New York for more intimate communication with users. Now we have two local employees there to develop community engagement.

Nulab has been making increased efforts in user engagement in the global market, including holding their recent meet-up in Taiwan last month where local users are rapidly increasing. The company plans to bring the brand new enterprise edition to global companies and other high-profile organizations.

nulab-global

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson

Japan’s fabless printing startup Raksul fundraises $33.7 million

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This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Raksul, a Tokyo-based startup providing online printing services, announced today that it has raised 4 billion yen ($33.7 million) from Opt, Global Brain, WiL (World Innovation Lab), Itochu Technology Ventures, Anri, Dentsu Digital Holdings, GMO Venture Partners, Link and Motivation, Gree Ventures, and Global Catalyst Partners. This follows their previous funding round in February 2014, raising 1.45 billion yen ($14.3 million) from WiL (World Innovation Lab), Global Brain, Itochu Technology Ventures, Plus (an office stationary company), GMO Venture Partners, and Mixi. Founded in 2009, Raksul is a fabless company that provides printing services in partnership with more than 1,600 printing facilities across Japan (as of November 2013). Users can place printing orders at affordable rates because the company takes advantage of downtime at participating printers to complete those orders. Raksul will use the funds to provide additional support for partnering printing companies, including helping these companies buy paper or printing materials at affordable rates for leveraging volume discounts by gathering demand. In addition, the company is looking to launch the service in other markets beyond Japan. While they are a 100-person team in Japan and Vietnam, they are planning…

raksul-team
Raksul management team

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Raksul, a Tokyo-based startup providing online printing services, announced today that it has raised 4 billion yen ($33.7 million) from Opt, Global Brain, WiL (World Innovation Lab), Itochu Technology Ventures, Anri, Dentsu Digital Holdings, GMO Venture Partners, Link and Motivation, Gree Ventures, and Global Catalyst Partners.

This follows their previous funding round in February 2014, raising 1.45 billion yen ($14.3 million) from WiL (World Innovation Lab), Global Brain, Itochu Technology Ventures, Plus (an office stationary company), GMO Venture Partners, and Mixi.

Founded in 2009, Raksul is a fabless company that provides printing services in partnership with more than 1,600 printing facilities across Japan (as of November 2013). Users can place printing orders at affordable rates because the company takes advantage of downtime at participating printers to complete those orders.

Raksul will use the funds to provide additional support for partnering printing companies, including helping these companies buy paper or printing materials at affordable rates for leveraging volume discounts by gathering demand.

In addition, the company is looking to launch the service in other markets beyond Japan. While they are a 100-person team in Japan and Vietnam, they are planning to double its operational force by the end of this year to achieve the 1 million user goal.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson
Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Grooves sets up HR tech R&D unit, aiming to bring data analytics to recruitment business

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Grooves provides an online outplacement platform as well as recruiting consultation services. The company recently announced that it has established an R&D unit called Grooves HR Tech Lab, to study and develop technologies bringing artificial intelligence and big data analytics to the recruitment industry. Dr. Kenji Hirata, who has been involved in HR-XML (Human Resources eXtensible Markup Language) and standardizing the competence model for human resources development, was appointed as principal for the new research unit. Grooves has been providing Forkwell Jobs, a platform allowing engineers to find new jobs, in addition to CrowdAgent, as channels for connecting general job seekers with recruitment agencies. Founder and CEO Yukihiro Ikemi told us what they found upon operating these services: If our career advisor helps job seekers, about 60% of these applicants can receive an offer to hire. However, if they rely only on the online platform, the possibility is not more than 10% regardless of how well the matching process is carried out. So the question came up, what makes the difference between having and not having professional support? We have thoroughly monitored how our top consultants communicate with job seekers. Dr. Hirata could  visualize an ideal format by analyzing a number of interview cases. If we can carry put this procedure systematically,…

grooves-ikemi-hirata
L to R: Grooves CEO Yukihiro Ikemi, Grooves HR Tech Lab’s principal Dr. Kenji Hirata.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Grooves provides an online outplacement platform as well as recruiting consultation services. The company recently announced that it has established an R&D unit called Grooves HR Tech Lab, to study and develop technologies bringing artificial intelligence and big data analytics to the recruitment industry. Dr. Kenji Hirata, who has been involved in HR-XML (Human Resources eXtensible Markup Language) and standardizing the competence model for human resources development, was appointed as principal for the new research unit.

Grooves has been providing Forkwell Jobs, a platform allowing engineers to find new jobs, in addition to CrowdAgent, as channels for connecting general job seekers with recruitment agencies. Founder and CEO Yukihiro Ikemi told us what they found upon operating these services:

If our career advisor helps job seekers, about 60% of these applicants can receive an offer to hire. However, if they rely only on the online platform, the possibility is not more than 10% regardless of how well the matching process is carried out. So the question came up, what makes the difference between having and not having professional support?

We have thoroughly monitored how our top consultants communicate with job seekers. Dr. Hirata could  visualize an ideal format by analyzing a number of interview cases. If we can carry put this procedure systematically, I believe that it will result in something like an artificial intelligence-based engine.

For input and output interfaces for the engine, we can adopt IBM Watson or Softbank Pepper respectively. A core part can be developed by leveraging technologies from Google or other internet companies.  So what we must do is to focus on developing an engine that match people and jobs.

There’s a theory called Planned Happenstance in career formation, positing  that we don’t always need to plan a career but need to plan to act on happenstance. It is the view that you create opportunities by acting on your curiosity and chance events.

Nevertheless, there has been no attempt to systematize Planned Happenstance and serendipity in the Japanese recruitment industry thus far. Leading recruitment companies typically determine what jobs to introduce based on conditional matching of job descriptions and required skills.

“The environment shapes a person” is my favorite saying, meaning that given a proper  environment, people can outperform expected performance levels even if they are new to a field. Given that most cases of startup businesses usually explore unexplored areas, an effort to find a person who has experience in a certain field does not make any sense.

Ikemi added:

The Japanese human resources market didn’t employ HR-XML in the early 2000s, despite it being the industry’s global standard at that time. Because of this, no uniform standard is now uses in Japan and the formats of their job description  differ by company, which is an anomaly in the global market.

By having Dr. Hirata on our team, we want to standardize human resources data formats to further study big data and artificial intelligence technologies, aiming to develop new metrics for more accurate matchmaking and provide more efficient hiring solutions.

Looking forward, Grooves stated that it will invite other academic authorities from this sector to accelerate activities of the new R&D unit.

Artificial intelligence has grown enough to outperform humans in certain cases, such as in games of shogi or chess, as well as  quizzes and riddles. Some day in the future, artificial intelligence may come to provide relevant advise upon important occasions like career changes, better than that of a flesh-and-blood human consultant?

I’m sure I am not the person looking at this story who can imagine a humanoid robot like Pepper advising job seekers at public job placement offices throughout Japan.

Translated by Sumi Yo via Mother First
Edited by Masaru Ikeda and “Tex” Pomeroy