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Japan’s Liquid secures funding round to advance biometric payment solutions

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.28

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Liquid, a Japanese startup developing payment solutions leveraging a unique biometric authentication technology, announced on 25 December that it has fundraised from Itochu (TSE:8001), Information Services International-Dentsu (ISID, TSE: 4812), Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and The University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC). Financial details of the investment have not been disclosed. Prior to the latest funding, Liquid received government grants of about 42 million yen ($350,000) in 2014 and about 50 million yen ($416,000) in 2015 based on the qualification to the I-Challenge innovation initiative program by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, followed by receiving an undisclosed sum of investment from UTEC. In addition, the company disclosed that their shareholders include Japan’s major telco conglomerate NTT Group and Internet service giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while they have not disclosed when these companies joined as shareholders. Liquid was born out of the third incubation batch by Docomo Ventures. The company has developed a biometric payment system called Liquid Pay, which uses fingerprints to authenticate users. Traditionally, the fingerprint authentication used the 1:1 verification method that took time to identify the input fingerprint from a large number of registered fingerprint patterns. But this…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Liquid, a Japanese startup developing payment solutions leveraging a unique biometric authentication technology, announced on 25 December that it has fundraised from Itochu (TSE:8001), Information Services International-Dentsu (ISID, TSE: 4812), Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and The University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC). Financial details of the investment have not been disclosed.

Prior to the latest funding, Liquid received government grants of about 42 million yen ($350,000) in 2014 and about 50 million yen ($416,000) in 2015 based on the qualification to the I-Challenge innovation initiative program by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, followed by receiving an undisclosed sum of investment from UTEC. In addition, the company disclosed that their shareholders include Japan’s major telco conglomerate NTT Group and Internet service giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while they have not disclosed when these companies joined as shareholders.

Liquid was born out of the third incubation batch by Docomo Ventures. The company has developed a biometric payment system called Liquid Pay, which uses fingerprints to authenticate users. Traditionally, the fingerprint authentication used the 1:1 verification method that took time to identify the input fingerprint from a large number of registered fingerprint patterns. But this company has employed a 1:N identification method using deep learning algorithms. With this method, it only takes a few seconds to identify the input fingerprint. Once users are enrolled in this system, they can purchase with their fingerprints, allowing them to go out without cash or credit cards. By registering the fingerprints from two fingers, the risk of misidentifying the fingerprint is reduced to 1 in one hundred million.

This system is used at Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Nagasaki, Japan, where visitors can pay at restaurants and make purchases at souvenir shops without having to bring their wallet, giving them a sense of freedom. It has also been implemented at a hotel in Sri Lanka where hotel guests enroll their biometric information at check-in. After that, they can then unlock the key and make purchases at partnered stores using just their fingerprints. Based on the Liquid Pay technology, the company rolled out a trial of a community currency system in Hokkaido in association with ISID, aiming to offer foreign visitors a more convenient payment option at travel destinations.

Based on the partnership with new shareholders on this funding, Liquid plans to focus on developing services for an increasing number of inbound visitors to Japan toward the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, expanding to the medical and public sectors, as well as regional service expansion to the Southeast Asian market. Having a dazzling selection of companies with expertise in global expansion, system development, finance, and payments infrastructure as shareholders, the partnership will give a boost to an expanding Liquid Pay and other applications based on the company’s biometric authentication technology.

Liquid won the Sony Select award at Docomo Venture’s 3rd batch Demo Day, followed by winning the Microsoft award at Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2015 earlier this month.

Edited by Kurt Hanson

tech-in-asia-jakarta-2015-tokyo-chapter-liquid — Liquid delivers a pitch at Tech in Asia Tour 2015: Road to Jakarta at Tokyo.

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Orange Fab Asia unveils graduating startups from Fall 2015 season at Demo Day in Tokyo

Orange Fab

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.26

See the original story in Japanese. Orange Fab Asia, an incubation program for the East Asian region hosted by French telecom major Orange, held a Demo Day event for the latest batch in Tokyo earlier this month. While originally this incubation program had been focusing on Asia including Japan, Korea and Taiwan, La French Tech, a business invitation program by the French government for European startups to Tokyo has joined the Demo Day from this time, in affiliation with French governmental business support initiative Business France. Therefore, 29 teams including 8 French startups made pitches and opened booth exhibitions in this event. See also: Startups enter the fray with arrival of fall exhibition season in Japan Although unfortunately we cannot cover all of them in this article, some outstanding startups are introduced below. BankGuard (Japan) The total damage from illegal money transfers using online banking systems around the world is said to amount at $2 billion per year. Super Matrix developed by Tokyo-based BankGuard is a safer and more inexpensive banking solution than the one-time password or conventional table of random numbers, which is distinguished by not utilizing characters or numbers but pictograms. Sealing non-disclosure agreements with Shizuoka Bank, Yokohama…

See the original story in Japanese.

Orange Fab Asia, an incubation program for the East Asian region hosted by French telecom major Orange, held a Demo Day event for the latest batch in Tokyo earlier this month.

While originally this incubation program had been focusing on Asia including Japan, Korea and Taiwan, La French Tech, a business invitation program by the French government for European startups to Tokyo has joined the Demo Day from this time, in affiliation with French governmental business support initiative Business France. Therefore, 29 teams including 8 French startups made pitches and opened booth exhibitions in this event.

See also:

Startups enter the fray with arrival of fall exhibition season in Japan

Although unfortunately we cannot cover all of them in this article, some outstanding startups are introduced below.

BankGuard (Japan)

The total damage from illegal money transfers using online banking systems around the world is said to amount at $2 billion per year. Super Matrix developed by Tokyo-based BankGuard is a safer and more inexpensive banking solution than the one-time password or conventional table of random numbers, which is distinguished by not utilizing characters or numbers but pictograms. Sealing non-disclosure agreements with Shizuoka Bank, Yokohama Bank and SBI Sumishin Net Bank, currently it has international patents pending. In addition to Super Matrix, the team has developed a cryptocurrency solution called Super Money utilizing the Bitcoin technology.

Geo-Line (Korea)

Korea-based Geo-Line offers a battery charge solution for electric vehicles called Plug & Pay. In general, the greatest concern for electric vehicle users may be the securing of battery charge measures away from home. The number or the location of charging stations are still limited due to the higher costs for installation and maintenance. Plug & Pay allows users to charge batteries from conventional electric outlets by attaching the devices to them, and moreover, notifies the amount of charged energy to the power company via an implemented mobile SIM. Therefore, if users utilize electric outlets in public facilities or a stranger’s home upon charging, they will be charged for the electric fees themselves, and that will not lead to accusations of power theft.

Mist Technologies (Japan)

Mist Technologies, which previously developed a predominant video distribution system using WebRTC named MistCDN, has launched its second product called Mist Inline Player. When one is to watch embedded videos on web pages with mobile browsers, not only browsers but video players will be started generally. Mist Inline Player provides video playable environment on browsers just by adding a single JavaScript code onto websites with HTML5. By synchronizing acceleration sensors in smartphones, it can also play videos interactively based on users’ motion. It is seen being utilized in video advertisement, on-demand video services and video services offering a panorama view.

See also:

Pamily (Korea)

Dogs are an emotionally weak animal and become easily depressed. If owners neglect to play with their dog or take it for a walk, the dog gets stressed and that causes self-injury in the worst case. Pamily is a golfball-sized dog toy which can move automatically by remote control upon operation with a mobile app. It is waterproof and wireless charging-enabled in addition to being capable of emitting light, sound and vibration according to the operation through the app. The team aims to strengthen sales activities through cooperation with petfood mnufacturers, pet insurance providers or telcos.

Ripple (Korea)

Korea-based Ripple has developed an in-ear microphone device for smartphones called RippleBuds, allowing communication with clear voices even under a noisy environment. Implementing both an earphone and a microphone inside, it picks up voices using bone conduction to prevent distraction due to noises around the user. Absence of noise-canceling tips, which are typically applied to such kind of products, has lowered its manufacturing costs and energy consumption. The team plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in January 2016, and expects the adoption in sports, military and police application.

StradVision (Korea)

StradVision is an object recognition solution which is an essential technology for self-driving cars, enabling recognition of other cars, pedestrians and even characters in traffic signs. The noteworthy function is its character recognition, which is capable of recognizing characters and even its context on notice boards or traffic signs written not only in English but also in Chinese. Although the recognition of Japanese was not exhibited this time, the availability of Chinese will facilitate the support for Japanese shortly. It is expected to be applied to the development of safer self-driving cars by linking with a car navigation system, GPS (global positioning systems), or ITS (intelligent transport systems).

Thinktank (Taiwan)

Taiwan-based Thinktank, which introduced a platform for measurement of audience feedback at events in real-time called Clappio at IdeasShow in Taipei in August, this time introduced a new service called Exit. People in subway stations are easily lost because they cannot use map apps sufficiently due to the weak GPS signals from satellites. This mobile app allows users to find appropriate exits quickly at subway stations. Currently it supports information for 179 subway stations in Taipei and Bangkok. Since the total number of daily passengers at these stations accounts for 6.84 million, utilization of the app will save a great deal of time if one gets lost.

Tobila Systems (Japan)

Nagoya-based Tobila Systems has developed an incoming call control solution called Tobilaphone in order to reject crank calls or fund-transfer frauds, serving land-line phones, smartphones and other phones. Based on the whitelists/blacklists shared among users, unauthorized phone numbers listed for each user, and lists made by the Metropolitan police or an independent survey by Tobila Systems itself, it blocks incoming calls from dubious callers. The concept of this product appears similar to Taiwan’s Whoscall (acquired by Line) or Korea’s Moya Calling.

VitaNet (Japan)

VitaNet is an encryption solution for communication technologies in IoT such as BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and Bluetooth. These wireless technologies broadcast recognition IDs for devices upon handshaking to connect with each other. So, if malicious users obtain these information, it might be used for illegal hacking. By applying VitaNet technologies, recognition IDs are masked and an encryption layer is added in communication so that it will bring more highly secured communication between IoT devices while minimizing the possibility of being hacked.

WhyNotTech (Taiwan)

WhyNotTech has developed a wearable ring device for voice recognition linked to a smartphone called ARING Pro. Conventional voice recognition solutions for smartphones including Google Voice Search and Siri are only available in specific app environments. ARING Pro realizes much smarter app operation without the character input, by selecting or starting up mobile apps manually and by inputting or indicating by the ring device. The team failed on a recent crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter but are planning sales of the product on Amazon. They are thinking to integrate the product with e-commerce sites like Amazon so that users can more quickly find a product to buy, as well as integrating with headphones connectable to the Internet in the future.

Coinciding with holding this Demo Day event, Open Fab Asia started receiving applications for the next batch, Spring 2016 season. If interested in business development not only in Asia but also in the European market including France, you are encouraged to check out their website to apply.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

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Japan’s Secual, smart home security startup, ties up with major vacation rentals agencies

Secual

Junya Mori 2015.12.25

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Secual, the Japanese startup developing smart home security solutions under the same name, announced today that it has fundraised about 60 million yen (about $500,000) from two vacation rental agencies / apartment rental companies in Japan: Adventure and Ambition. In addition to the funds, Secual has tied up with these two companies for a potential business synergy such as utilization of smart locks, home security cameras and other smart home products. Secual has successfully raised more than six times its initial goal of 1 million yen ($8,300) on the Makuake crowdfunding site this year. The company recently started receiving pre-orders for their products on AppBank Store, the e-commerce outlet of a leading iPhone/iPad service review website in Japan. They are also running a Secual giveaway campaign for users of Ietty, a Japanese apartment hunting platform. In our previous interview, the company asserted that they would expand their approach to the areas where they can find potential chemistry with users. Using the latest funds, they are expected to strengthen human resources for sales and development. Secual is now trying to start shipment of their first product from February next year. Translated by Masaru Ikeda…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Secual, the Japanese startup developing smart home security solutions under the same name, announced today that it has fundraised about 60 million yen (about $500,000) from two vacation rental agencies / apartment rental companies in Japan: Adventure and Ambition. In addition to the funds, Secual has tied up with these two companies for a potential business synergy such as utilization of smart locks, home security cameras and other smart home products.

Secual has successfully raised more than six times its initial goal of 1 million yen ($8,300) on the Makuake crowdfunding site this year. The company recently started receiving pre-orders for their products on AppBank Store, the e-commerce outlet of a leading iPhone/iPad service review website in Japan. They are also running a Secual giveaway campaign for users of Ietty, a Japanese apartment hunting platform.

In our previous interview, the company asserted that they would expand their approach to the areas where they can find potential chemistry with users. Using the latest funds, they are expected to strengthen human resources for sales and development.
Secual is now trying to start shipment of their first product from February next year.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Dentsu Ventures invests in health tracking lab-in-a-box developer Cue

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.25

See the original story in Japanese. Dentsu Ventures, the corporate venture capital of Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TSE:4324), announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in San Diego-based Cue, the startup developing a health tracking device under the same name. Financial details have not been disclosed. For Dentsu Ventures, this is the fifth investment in a startup followed by Jibo (communication robot), Agolo (curated content generation), Nextbit (cloud-based smartphone), Sensai (bigdata analasys), and others. See also: Japan’s Dentsu Ventures invests in NYC-based automated content creation startup Agolo Japan’s Dentsu Ventures invests in SF-based cloud-first phone developer Nextbit Cue has developed a health tracking platform consisting of a lab-in-a-box device, five kinds of cartridges, and sampling sticks. By sampling saliva, blood, or mucous and using a cartridge intended for the symptom you want to know, the device can easily track inflammation, influenza, testosterone, and fertility. After completing an analysis, which typically requires several minutes, the device then sends the analyzed results to a mobile app so that you can check the status on your smartphone. When the platform was launched, Cue initially sold it via pre-orders on their website so that an investigational device exemption was applied and no…

See the original story in Japanese.

Dentsu Ventures, the corporate venture capital of Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TSE:4324), announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in San Diego-based Cue, the startup developing a health tracking device under the same name. Financial details have not been disclosed. For Dentsu Ventures, this is the fifth investment in a startup followed by Jibo (communication robot), Agolo (curated content generation), Nextbit (cloud-based smartphone), Sensai (bigdata analasys), and others.

See also:

Cue has developed a health tracking platform consisting of a lab-in-a-box device, five kinds of cartridges, and sampling sticks. By sampling saliva, blood, or mucous and using a cartridge intended for the symptom you want to know, the device can easily track inflammation, influenza, testosterone, and fertility. After completing an analysis, which typically requires several minutes, the device then sends the analyzed results to a mobile app so that you can check the status on your smartphone.

When the platform was launched, Cue initially sold it via pre-orders on their website so that an investigational device exemption was applied and no FDA approval was needed. However, the company says it will shortly launch full-scale sales upon approval from governmental health authorities in each country. They aim to start sales in Europe and Hong Kong in early 2016, in the US in 2016, and in Japan in 2017. Inspectable symptoms will be expanded to about 20 kinds from the current five.

Cue has said it may integrate their platform with Apple HealthKit. However, there is the possibility that they will also integrate with other healthcare platforms by tech giants, such as Samsung Digital Health and Google Fit.

Cue fundraised $1 million in a seed round, followed by securing $7.5 million in a series A round led by Sherpa Ventures with participation from life science-focused fund Immortalana. Immortalna also invested in Cue in an angel funding round.

Edited by Kurt Hanson

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Japan’s From Scratch raises $8M to enhance integrated digital marketing platform

Takeshi Hirano 2015.12.24

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based From Scratch, the company behind an integrated digital marketing platform called B->Dash, recently announced that it has fundraised 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) from Global Brain, Dentsu Digital Holdings, and Nippon Venture Capital. Details such as a payment date and stock shares were not disclosed. This follows their first funding of about 300 million yen ($2.4 million) from Draper Nexus Venture Partners and Itochu Technology Ventures in May. The company will enhance their workforce to promote the development of big data and artificial intelligence, while developing markets and enhancing service features for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses). From Scratch CEO Yasuhiro Abe says the active marketing automation market encouraged this funding. He also addresses that their marketing platform B->Dash is used by more than 100 companies. Abe explains: At the time we fundraised this May, we were planning our next funding next year. However, the business in this field is booming, and most of all, we have been growing more than we had expected. In these surroundings, the only question we have is “who is going to dominate this field?” you see. This is why we decided to take early action. A…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based From Scratch, the company behind an integrated digital marketing platform called B->Dash, recently announced that it has fundraised 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) from Global Brain, Dentsu Digital Holdings, and Nippon Venture Capital. Details such as a payment date and stock shares were not disclosed.

This follows their first funding of about 300 million yen ($2.4 million) from Draper Nexus Venture Partners and Itochu Technology Ventures in May. The company will enhance their workforce to promote the development of big data and artificial intelligence, while developing markets and enhancing service features for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses).

From Scratch CEO Yasuhiro Abe says the active marketing automation market encouraged this funding. He also addresses that their marketing platform B->Dash is used by more than 100 companies.

Abe explains:

At the time we fundraised this May, we were planning our next funding next year. However, the business in this field is booming, and most of all, we have been growing more than we had expected. In these surroundings, the only question we have is “who is going to dominate this field?” you see. This is why we decided to take early action.

A previous interview revealed that this service is not budget-pleasing by any means. Their clients are supposed to be able to invest 3 to 5 million yen (about $2.5 to $4.1 million) monthly on the digital marketing budget, and a monthly cost starts from half a million yen ($4,100) with the extra cost charged depending on pageviews (12-month contract).

From the fact that more than 100 companies decided to use this service only within a year after its launch despite of its high cost, it can be assumed that their services match the market needs perfectly. A quick math shows that the company sold more than 600 million yen (about $4.9 million) a year. Marketo and Hubspot from abroad are often considered as the competitors.

Abe continued:

We explain to our clients that we are offering a system in which the business operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Clients can choose between hiring a person who handles that operation and utilizing a tool which handles that operation.

While the company is growing steadily, the more the company provides quality consulting support services, the more the company needs bigger operating capacity. The company is now looking at big data and artificial intelligence as solutions for this issue.

Simply put, from big data, they are trying to identify support patterns which their consultants are currently dealing with, and to use that as a system so that consulting services can be conducted by the system.

Abe claims that the “marketing automation” market is not that large, and thus their further success depends on how they can automate the system to enter the small business field.

Translated by Moto Tsujino via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

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Berlin’s indoor farming startup InFarm wins Innovation Weekend Grand Finale in Tokyo

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.23

See the original story in Japanese. Innovation Weekend is a periodical pitch competition event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Preliminary sessions were held in New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Osaka this year. The top two finishers of each session were invited to pitch at the final Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2015 event in Tokyo on December 11th. Here are the products and the market potential of award-winning startups. 1st place winner: InFarm (Berlin, Germany) Berlin-based InFarm has developed a production technology for growing vegetables indoors. By renovating a warehouse situated inside the city of Berlin, the company supplies urban communities with locally-grown fresh vegetables. Since vegetables are all organic, they are 40 times more nutritious than other commercialized vegetables. As the company strongly believes that everyone should be able to consume organic vegetables, it has released a small gardening kit called Microgarden last year. It is made of plastic for users to easily grow their own vegetables at home. In the same year, the company ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, successfully exceeded its initial goal and raised 27,000 euros. Users can start growing their own vegetables immediately with seeds that come with the kit. All…

See the original story in Japanese.

Innovation Weekend is a periodical pitch competition event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Preliminary sessions were held in New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Osaka this year. The top two finishers of each session were invited to pitch at the final Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2015 event in Tokyo on December 11th.

Here are the products and the market potential of award-winning startups.

1st place winner: InFarm (Berlin, Germany)

Berlin-based InFarm has developed a production technology for growing vegetables indoors. By renovating a warehouse situated inside the city of Berlin, the company supplies urban communities with locally-grown fresh vegetables. Since vegetables are all organic, they are 40 times more nutritious than other commercialized vegetables.

As the company strongly believes that everyone should be able to consume organic vegetables, it has released a small gardening kit called Microgarden last year. It is made of plastic for users to easily grow their own vegetables at home. In the same year, the company ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, successfully exceeded its initial goal and raised 27,000 euros. Users can start growing their own vegetables immediately with seeds that come with the kit. All they need to do is to place the kit by a window. In addition, a plastic sheet of the kit can be recycled after usage.

2nd place winner: Agolo (New York, USA)

New York-based Agolo (formerly known as Ninoh) has developed a curated content publishing platform under the same name. Using natural language processing and a big data analysis engine, the platform automatically sorts out and reedits a large amount of unstructured data, such as reports, articles, social network posts, news updates and images. It allows media site owners to change the method of digesting information as well as to automate the article generation process. In addition, it allows them to handle real-time content-based marketing and contextual advertising.

The company secured an undisclosed sum in a seed round from Dentsu Ventures, a corporate venture capital of Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TSE:4324) in August this year.

2nd place winner: Nomiku (San Francisco, USA)

San Francisco-based Nomiku has invented sous-vide immersion circulators designed for home cooking. Sous-vide cooking is a method of slowly cooking vacuum-sealed food in controlled and low-temperature water, enabling food to be cooked properly without overcooking. Nomiku’s immersion circulators are connected to Wi-Fi to facilitate programming the water temperature based on the temperature recommended by chefs. Furthermore, users can control the temperature remotely via Internet so that they can safely leave home while cooking.

This startup was born out of Shenzhen-based hardware accelerator HAX (formally HAXLR8R) in 2012.

Reference:

The Best Maker Business Story I’ve Ever Heard… (Markezine)

Microsoft Award winner: Liquid (Tokyo, Japan)

Tokyo-based Liquid has developed a new biometric payment system. Traditionally, the fingerprint authentication used 1:1 verification method that took time to identify the input fingerprint from a large number of registered fingerprint patterns. But this company has employed a 1:N identification method using deep learning algorithms. With this method, it only takes a few seconds to identify the input fingerprint. Once users are enrolled in this system, they can purchase with their fingerprints, allowing them to go out without any cash or credit card. By registering the fingerprints from two fingers, the risk of misidentifying the fingerprint is reduced to 1 in one hundred million.

This system is actually used at Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Nagasaki, Japan, where visitors can pay at restaurants and purchase at souvenir shops without their wallet, giving them a sense of freedom. It is also implemented at a hotel in Sri Lanka where hotel guests enroll their biometric information at check-in. After that, they can then unlock the key and purchase at partnered stores only with their fingerprints. This startup was born out of the third incubation batch by Docomo Ventures.

Japan Air Lines Award winner: Quatre (Osaka, Japan)

Quatre has built a cross-border e-commerce platform called Pukka. The company observed that many foreign tourists favor Japanese cosmetic products for their high quality. Prior to starting Quatre, the company’s founder Takayuki Yokomachi was a hairstylist. Subsequently he was working at @cosme, a Japanese leading cosmetic products portal. Pukka is now specializing in selling Japanese beauty and cosmetic products to mainland China.

iwgf-2015-pukka_screenshot — The Pukka website (in Chinese)

Translated by Mariko Kobayashi via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

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Swingdo, to-do management app from Japan, automates prioritization of what to do

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.22

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based BHI has been offering solutions focused on protecting users from information overload, represented by Swingmail. Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox and reply-only app that aggregates messages from multiple social network accounts which helps reduce information overload and clutter. BHI has also developed Swingbook, a prioritizing contact list seamlessly integrated into the Swingmail app, as well as Swingcal, a minimalistic calendar app that focuses on the agenda one has with someone up to a week in the future. But both functions of these apps have been incorporated into the Swingmail app. See also: Japan’s BHI launches mobile apps that prevent info overload in messaging Swingmail: A new app from Japan to better manage email and social messages The company introduced a new app called Swingdo on Friday, aiming to help users streamline their task management like managing todos and appointments on calendar, or check e-mails that they forget to reply to by telling them what to do next automatically. Based on a user’s input and its history, this app determines the priority of every task and inserts appointments scheduled on the Swingcal or scheduler app within these tasks when necessary. Generally speaking, “stock-type” information…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based BHI has been offering solutions focused on protecting users from information overload, represented by Swingmail. Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox and reply-only app that aggregates messages from multiple social network accounts which helps reduce information overload and clutter.

BHI has also developed Swingbook, a prioritizing contact list seamlessly integrated into the Swingmail app, as well as Swingcal, a minimalistic calendar app that focuses on the agenda one has with someone up to a week in the future. But both functions of these apps have been incorporated into the Swingmail app.

See also:

The company introduced a new app called Swingdo on Friday, aiming to help users streamline their task management like managing todos and appointments on calendar, or check e-mails that they forget to reply to by telling them what to do next automatically. Based on a user’s input and its history, this app determines the priority of every task and inserts appointments scheduled on the Swingcal or scheduler app within these tasks when necessary.

Generally speaking, “stock-type” information management tool like Trello would be helpful to manage todos from the point of view seeing which task is completed or not. To communicate with one’s counterpart or business partner, Slack and other “flow-type” messaging tools like chat and e-mail apps are convenient. In addition, a calendar tool would be convenient for managing planned tasks or the history of these in a time sequence.

That said, one will probably need three different types of tools at least in managing tasks the three aspects of time sequence, completeness/incompleteness and contacts. However, we merely see these three solutions synchronizing updates of tasks with each others (For instance, Trello will never add task updates automatically based on interactions on Slack.)

Swingdo aims to manage tasks in one app by integrating these three items. In the app, the priority of each task will be automatically determined according to the due date and estimated amount of work that a user inputs. Regarding tasks based on received e-mails and scheduled appointments in a calendar app, their work amounts are set as 15 minutes by default but users can change this manually. Following the priority that the Swingdo app presents, all the users have to do is to complete such tasks accordingly.

BHI CEO Yasuhiro Himukashi explained:

When using our app, one will no longer experience the pain of thinking what to do next. Regardless of the pros and cons in our team, we decided to make the app that automatically determines the priority of each task and can’t be manually adjusted. Otherwise, users would be likely to put off tedious tasks for later and tend to forget to do them.

This latest Swingdo app is version 1.0 and still remains technically dubious. However, the company wants to keep updating it as their development advances thus they want to incorporate natural language processing and machine learning into the app so that it will better understand the context when adding tasks based on e-mails and calendar updates.

Possible integration with self-driving vehicles

Himukashi says, it will be possible to integrate the Swingdo app with self-driving vehicles in the future when many people are using it on a daily basis.

When one goes out, one’s self-driving vehicle would be able to assume where to do if knowing one’s appointment. So if one has saved a task in the Swingdo app, one can trust the driving to the vehicle even without telling where to go.

If one’s tasks are totally managed in the Swingdo app, it may automatically hail a ride-sharing car by interacting with the Uber app when one needs to go somewhere for an appointment. The company claims that Swingmail is intended to review what one has done while Swingdo is to look at what will happen to someone.

Leveraging the location data as well as task updates registered in the Swingdo app, it may be possible for the platform to predict what one wants to do next by leveraging artificial intelligence.

He added:

From the big data perspective, this can be applied to predicting traffic jams in the future.

Coinciding with the launch of the Swingdo app, BHI has upgraded the Swingmail app to version 7.0 while adding new functions like curating e-mails and highlighting critical messages. It plans to integrate with messaging platforms of mobile carriers around the world to give users a better experience.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Culture Convenience Club introduces 10 finalists from second incubation batch

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.21

See the original story in Japanese. Earlier this month, Culture Convenience Club (CCC for short, TSE:4756), the Japanese company well known for its CD/video rental and bookstore chain called Tsutaya, held the final public screening event for the second batch of its startup incubation program called T-Venture Program, in cooperation with IMJ Investment Partners or CCC’s investment arm. See also: Japan’s Culture Convenience Club selects 7 finalists for its first incubation program In this review, ten teams which had cleared the second round of judging gave their pitch as finalists. After being examined for four criteria including value creation, potential growth and branding by judges, eventually four startups were selected as award winners. Unlike typical incubation programs, this review considers possibilities of synergies or collaboration plans with CCC as important points upon examination. The judges for the screening event were: Muneaki Masuda, Representative Director and CEO, Culture Convenience Club Atsuki Ishida, Director & CIO, Culture Convenience Club Kazuhiko Kitamura, Vice President, CCC Marketing Kazuo Nakanishi, CEO, T-Media Holdings Yuji Horiguchi, CEO, IMJ Investment Partners Takeshi Yoshimura, President and CEO, Digital Hollywood Lin Kobayashi, Founder and Chair of the Board of International School of Asia, Karuizawa Norihiko Sasaki, Chief Editor, NewsPicks Taizo…

See the original story in Japanese.

Earlier this month, Culture Convenience Club (CCC for short, TSE:4756), the Japanese company well known for its CD/video rental and bookstore chain called Tsutaya, held the final public screening event for the second batch of its startup incubation program called T-Venture Program, in cooperation with IMJ Investment Partners or CCC’s investment arm.

See also:

Japan’s Culture Convenience Club selects 7 finalists for its first incubation program

In this review, ten teams which had cleared the second round of judging gave their pitch as finalists. After being examined for four criteria including value creation, potential growth and branding by judges, eventually four startups were selected as award winners.

Unlike typical incubation programs, this review considers possibilities of synergies or collaboration plans with CCC as important points upon examination.

The judges for the screening event were:

Muneaki Masuda, Representative Director and CEO, Culture Convenience Club
Atsuki Ishida, Director & CIO, Culture Convenience Club
Kazuhiko Kitamura, Vice President, CCC Marketing
Kazuo Nakanishi, CEO, T-Media Holdings
Yuji Horiguchi, CEO, IMJ Investment Partners
Takeshi Yoshimura, President and CEO, Digital Hollywood
Lin Kobayashi, Founder and Chair of the Board of International School of Asia, Karuizawa
Norihiko Sasaki, Chief Editor, NewsPicks
Taizo Son, Founder and CEO, Mistletoe

Top Award Winner: Street Academy

Supplemental prizes: T-Point worth 300,000 yen [1], air-cleaning machine and humidifier from luxury home appliance brand Cado.

Street Academy is a skills marketplace enabling anyone to be an instructor. Focusing on connecting instructors and students, it provides off-line learning opportunities. Conventionally, there were no evaluation websites of skills mastery in Japan’s skills learning industry like Tabelog (a Japanese restaurant review portal) in the restaurant industry. Therefore, founder Takashi Fujimoto implemented word-of-mouth functions among students regarding how instructors are good at teaching on the website. In this manner, the team aims to provide an environment for casual learning in town.

Since its launch back in August 2012, Street Academy has acquired 3,500 instructors registered and 100 genres of service content consisting of 4,000 lectures, such as an accounting lecture by an accountant in a café, or a back-flip lesson for gymnastics amateurs. 25% of the total services are conducted in local areas other than Tokyo.

Tying up with Tsutaya Bookstore Tenjin in Fukuoka coincidentally, Street Academy recently held a public lecture event also aimed at sales promotion of the textbook which was written by a lecturer based on teaching activities at Street Academy. Through cooperation with CCC, online reservations at Street Academy website and trial lectures held at Tsutaya stores might attract new customers to shopping complexes of CCC.

See also:

Outstanding Startups Award winner: GeneQuest

Supplemental prize: T-Point worth 100,000 yen [1].

GeneQuest is a startup focusing on gene analysis, established by researchers at the University of Tokyo and others in 2013. Sending back one’s saliva collected by the sampling kit which was sent from the lab after the order, one can receive evaluation with 300 items regarding congenital onset risks of diseases or constitutions based on the results of gene analysis.

As for possibilities of cooperation with CCC, the team emphasized that more effective marketing would be achieved by adding genetic health data to purchase information of the customers if acquired 550,000 users for GeneQuest would account for 1% of the total number of T-Point members [1]. Moving forward, the company plans to build a genetic information database on top of the service with an expectation that pharmaceutical companies leverage it for their R&D activities.

Although the probability of business opportunities is still unknown, GeneQuest seems to have the advantages in terms of analysis of disease onset trends based on the genetic information of Asian or the yellow race including Japanese in contrast to Western companies which are specialized in analysis of Westerners, for patterns of genetic information differ depending on race.

See also:

Outstanding Startups Award winner: Factelier

Supplemental prize: T-Point worth 100,000 yen [1].

Kumamoto-based Lifestyle Accent spent three years constructing an apparel e-commerce platform called Factelier, offering inexpensive but high-quality fashion items by affiliating with 480 sewing factories all over Japan including ones are engaged in outsourced manufacturing of notable fashion brands overseas. Connecting factories and consumers directly in the supply chain, it cuts the wholesale and retail costs. That enables Factelier to sell products under the own brand name, and also bring more orders to factories.

Mineaki Saito, former CEO of Hermès Japon, had joined the team as its advisor. Factelier has been accessed from 130 countries since the start of the service to overseas customers two months before. In the future, the company aims at receiving an order for uniforms of the Japan national team in 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

See also:

Skipping the middleman: Japanese startup goes to the source for high-quality shirts

Tsutaya Award Winner: Anikore

Anikore is an anime evaluation website having 13 monthly page views and 2.3 million unique users on a monthly basis. It has already gained 1.35 million review posts for anime since its launch five years ago.

Although having reached most domestic anime freaks, the team is conscious of not being recognized by overseas freaks or anime fans who dare not follow anime information on the Internet.

Through utilization of 35,000 ranking patterns made by Anikore users, special features of rental video according to various ranking at Tsutaya stores can be planned. While overseas development will be propelled gradually upon confirming reaction from fans in each country, launch of an English version first was requested by Judge Son.

The followings are the startups which unfortunately missed prizes but conducted excellent presentation as finalists.

ClubFm

ClubFm (pronounced ‘club f-minor’) is a rental platform for pictures or contemporary arts owned by major galleries in Japan for 4,800 yen (about $40) a month. Focusing on new demand development such as houses or offices having little opportunities to be decorated with pictures before, it also offers a function on the website to simulate room decoration with pictures or foliage plants collectively. As of September 2015, it dealt with 1,200 pictures in partnership with 70% of domestic major galleries, aiming at a 90% share.
The company plans to propose a lifestyle surrounded by arts to T-Site visitors or T-Point members through cooperation with CCC [1] [2].

Voice Marche

Voice Marche is a telephone counseling platform staffed by female counselors, exclusively for female users. Users may access experienced counselors to talk about subjects they cannot even discuss with close people for 55 minutes at 12,000 yen (about $100).

All of current 368 registered counselors have passed the interview by the company. Thus, its high degree of the user satisfaction can be assumed from 1,543 experience stories posted on the website.

The team suggested that the Voice Marche app can be preinstalled in smartphones of TONE mobile, CCC’s mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), through the partnership. Also it may be available for health management or caring for the elderly by tying up with the Furusuma mobile company and the municipalities.

Eichiii

Eichiii is a rental platform dealing with 800 meeting spaces on demand in Tokyo. Most of the listed spaces on the website are like dining bars which open in the evening, or co-working spaces with idle time. The owners can additionally receive benefits by utilizing dead time.

Enhancing the linkage by being published on the website of T-Site, Eichiii aims to collect customers via T-Site through holding events or seminars at meeting spaces listed on Eichiii [2]. Besides, it looks for ways to utilize T-Point or coupons [1].

Wellnote

Wellnote is a social network platform focusing on limited use within families, allowing records sharing of daily life or of growth even between grandchildren and grandparents. While it has been distributing various content such as recipes for baby food or daily life information through cooperation with kid-raising support company Akachan Honpo or educational content publisher Gakken, the team emphasized that cooperation with CCC would enable offering movie recommendations for families, picturebooks for grandchildren or events for kids.

Recently, Wellnote tied up with a Japanese TV morning show ZIP! and planned an educational program for teaching dance to kids. Also it has started to formulate a creative educational program conducted year-round supported by pedagogy expert Dr. Manabu Sato, Emeritus Professor of the University of Tokyo.

Sensy

Sensy is a personal artificial intelligence (AI) app for fashion and outfit coordination. As implied by ‘personal,’ the app can be customized according to each user’s taste or demand. Incidentally, it had been selected as the first case handled by IBM Watson in Japan.

Currently, 12,000 brands participate in Sensy; for example, Isetan Mitsukoshi (TSE:3099) , one of Japanese major department stores, adopted Sensy as a service app for dealing with visiting customers. Visitors can receive proposal of fashion items suiting them by calling each personal AI profile with e-mail. Moreover, by calling AI profiles of Isetan Mitsukoshi’s top buyers, users can learn their sense of coordination via the app.

The team said it wanted to develop a point card implementing the personal AI profile to leverage cooperation with CCC.

See also:

Japanese startup invents fashion coordination app based on artificial intelligence

Pratechs

Generally, medical information including medical chart belongs to doctors, and is rarely exposed to patients. Pratechs proposes a healthcare environment that allows users to keep their own daily vital data and to get necessary supports by releasing the data to a third party. The service mainly consists of a personal app for users called Healthplayer, measuring stations and a console for business operators.

Specifically, it can be applied in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at pharmacies. In addition, a possible approach with cooperation with CCC includes a system to motivate users to continue recording their vital data by giving T-Point or coupons exchangeable for merchandises to users who visit the pharmacies [1]. Also it may be available for the health management or caring the elderly through tying up with the Furusuma mobile company and the municipalities.

See also:

New Japanese app helps you collect and organize your personal health data

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

Operated by CCC, T-Point is a customer loyalty and rewards program available at Tsutaya bookstore chain and other affiliate online/offline retailers. ↩
Operated by CCC, T-Site is a brand given to online/offline shopping complexes, aiming to propose new lifestyle, fashion and creative items as well as selling books. ↩

news

From Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto: 14 startups pitch at Launch Pad competition

Takeshi Hirano 2015.12.19

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2015 Fall in Kyoto, Japan. See the original story in Japanese. Infinity Venture Partners, a Tokyo-based global investment fund, organized its semi-annual startup showcasing event in Kyoto earlier this month, where 14 startups exhibited their products to investors and entrepreneurs. Hokkaido-based Agri Info Design won the top prize with their mobile app solution called AgriBus-Navi. Here’s a quick rundown of the top five winners and finalists. 1st prize winner: AgriBus-NAVI (by Agri Info Design) AgriBus-NAVI is a mobile app for installation on farm machinery like tractors, crop harvesters, and self-propelled sprayers for checkrow planting. One of the utmost difficulties in farmwork is confirmation as to agrochemical spraying having been performed properly because rough chemical spraying causes fertilizers to be wasted. This mobile app replaces conventional GPS-based systems that have been used to solve such issues. 2nd prize winner: Nutte (by State of Mind) Nutte is a crowdsourced platform of seamstresses, receiving orders for all manufacturing processes for creation of clothing, from design to sewing. Differentiating from similar Japanese services like Sitateru, Nutte allows users to order their originally designed clothing or items using an image sketch. See also: Sitateru:…

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2015 Fall in Kyoto, Japan.

See the original story in Japanese.

Infinity Venture Partners, a Tokyo-based global investment fund, organized its semi-annual startup showcasing event in Kyoto earlier this month, where 14 startups exhibited their products to investors and entrepreneurs. Hokkaido-based Agri Info Design won the top prize with their mobile app solution called AgriBus-Navi.

Here’s a quick rundown of the top five winners and finalists.

1st prize winner: AgriBus-NAVI (by Agri Info Design)

AgriBus-NAVI is a mobile app for installation on farm machinery like tractors, crop harvesters, and self-propelled sprayers for checkrow planting.

One of the utmost difficulties in farmwork is confirmation as to agrochemical spraying having been performed properly because rough chemical spraying causes fertilizers to be wasted. This mobile app replaces conventional GPS-based systems that have been used to solve such issues.

2nd prize winner: Nutte (by State of Mind)

Nutte is a crowdsourced platform of seamstresses, receiving orders for all manufacturing processes for creation of clothing, from design to sewing. Differentiating from similar Japanese services like Sitateru, Nutte allows users to order their originally designed clothing or items using an image sketch.

See also:

Sitateru: Japan’s matchmaking platform for independent fashion brands and garment factories

3rd prize winner: CloudSign (by Bengo4.com)

ivs-2015-fall-kyoto-launchpad-bengo4.com-cloudsign — Bengo4.com Taichiro Motoe

Bengo4.com, the company behind Japan’s foremost legal portal under the same name, was listed on the TSE Mothers Market in December 2014. The company recently launched an online contract signing platform called CloudSign.

Using the CloudSign platform, a sender of a contract is requested to upload an agreement form in PDF format designating which part of the form should be filled by a recipient. Then the recipient will receive an e-mail containing a unique URL to browse the form. As the recipient signs the form with a digital signature, the finalized version of the form will be shared on both sides by each other via the platform.

See also:

Japanese legal portal Bengo4.com raises $208,000 from Kakaku.com

4th prize winner: Anyca (by Anyca)

Anyca is a car-sharing platform for individuals. When a user books a car registered on the platform, the owner of the car will be requested to approve the use. Upon the approval, both parties can arrange a delivery place of the car each other. The user will be requested to return the car to the owner after the use. Allowing users to apply for a car insurance by the day, the service is aimed to secure both easiness and safety. The service is a provided by a group company of DeNA (TSE:2432), a Japanese leading mobile gaming company.

5th prize winner: Repro (by Repro)

Repro is a startup behind a mobile app analysis and marketing tool, having won pitch competitions at startup events like our Mixer Tokyo and B Dash Camp.
In addition to quantitative analysis, this tool provides mobile developers with qualitative analysis visualizing user behaviors on screen by using movies. It also allows the developers to send push notifications or in-app messages to their users.

Adopted by and implemented into 1,025 apps from 17 countries worldwide, paying mobile developers comprise 5.6% in the entire user base of the analysis platform. The company fundraised 1 million yen (about $820,000) from DG Incubation and other companies in April.

See also:

Japan’s mobile analytics company Repro secures $835,000 from DG Incubation, others

Below are the startups selected as finalists.

Wizpra NPS (by Wizpra)

Founded in March 2013, Wizpra has been providing a user experience management platform called Wizpra NPS and an employee experience management (EEM) platform called Wizpra Card. Wizpra NPS has been adopted by more than 1,000 retailers in Japan including fitness gyms in the six months since launch.

The company fundraised a total of 230 million yen (about $1.9 million) from Gree Ventures, Mobile Internet Capital, SMBC Venture Capital and Mizuho Capital in January.

See also:

Japan’s customer experience management platform Wizpra raises $2 million

LiveConnect (by Z-Works)

Z-Works has developed a home gateway device, a cloud platform and mobile app leveraging sensors corresponding to the Z-wave standard, a wireless communication specification for home automation. Amongst their products, LiveConnect is an IoT (Internet of Things) service for home security.

Aiming to support care for the elderly, for instance, their smart lock solution allows caregivers to lock a room using a mobile app and a motion sensor by detecting the sign of wandering behaviors of their charges.

Medicine Delivery (by Minacolor)

Minacolor has been offering advice on medicines and treatments by pharmacists online. The company started an on-demand medicine delivery service in November of 2013.

Using the service, a pharmacist from the company will choose an appropriate medicine according to one’s symptom and their deliverer will bring it to the door of one’s home within the shortest delivery time of 30 minutes after receiving the order. The service is currently available in the central district of Tokyo, or the southern part of the area surrounded by Yamanote Loop Line.

Users will need to place an order using a mobile app so that it will record their order history upon considering multiple drug intake or future ordering convenience. The company takes about 5,000 yen (or about $41) on average from each order with an average profitability of 10%, aiming to crowdsource jobs to 80,000 qualified pharmacists who want to work at home.

Popcorn (by Coubic)

Coubic is a startup known for a freemium scheduling and appointment booking solution under the same name. The company provides a mobile app offering special deals on last-minute bookings for beauty and massage salons, called Popcorn. Available only for booking up to 15 minutes prior to receiving, the app adopts advance payment to reduce the risk of cancellation for salon owners. These salon owners can use the Coubic platform to better manage customers.

See also:

Japan’s Coubic launches last-minute beauty salon booking app Popcorn

Spectee (by Spectee)

Spectee shows users critical incidents and events happening now in an easier manner by curating updates from social media and sorts them based on geotags or keywords contained in every tweet or message post. About 60 locations across Japan are set in the app where users can see what is happening in real time in every location.

See also:

Spectee: Japanese app delivers local news faster than newspapers and TV

Fitty (by Scala International)

Fitty is a mobile app that helps women find the proper fit for lingerie pieces. By entering several selections like bra size or body shape into the app, it will suggest users the best-fit selection of bras. In order to enable presentation of best suggestions to users, the company has been collecting up-to-date product profiles from fashion retailers and manufacturers to incorporate them into the app.

As an extension of the recommendation result, the app will give users a link so that they can purchase bra items online. The company is considering launch of a business which provides statistical data of bra wearers to lingerie manufacturers.

Partee (by g&h)

Partee is a mobile app that allows users to create a T-shirt or smartphone cases using their favorite pictures. Users can also create it using pictures uploaded by not only them but also their friends. When one’s picture is used by other users, some revenue will be shared with the owner of the picture.

Monomy (by Fun Up)

Monomy is an iOS app that offers an online marketplace for creatives, allowing people to make accessories they like with ease using smartphones. The platform was launched in August by Fun Up, the Tokyo-based company which has been running several online services since 2011.

The difference between trendy marketplaces for handmade goods and Monomy is that users only need to design the accessories they want. What happens is that Monomy takes care of the whole process from receiving orders through production in their own workshop. They can take large orders such as orders for 1,000 items and make them all in their workshop, with the accessories being made by experienced craftspeople by hand.

See also:

Monomy: Japanese mobile app that lets you create accessories of your own design

LaFabric (by LifeStyle Design)

LaFabric is a made-to-order fashion e-commerce site. Since its launch back in February of 2014, starting with custom-made business suits and shirts, they have expanded to jeans and other casual fashion items to cover people’s needs.

LifeStyle Design, the company behind the service, fundraised about 100 million yen (or about $830,000) from Nissay Capital in May.

Translated by Moto Tsujino via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

news

Whomor, Japan’s crowdsourced comic studio, raises $1.6M from Digital Garage

Masaru Ikeda 2015.12.16

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Whomor, the Japanese company offering a crowdsourcing platform focused on illustrations and 3D computer graphics, unveiled today that it has fundraised 200 million yen (about $1.6 million) from DG Incubation and DK Gate. DG Incubation is the investment arm of Japanese internet giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while DK Gate is a joint venture company of Digital Garage and Kodansha, a Japanese leading publishing company. Since its launch back in January of 2011, Whomor has established a crowdsourcing platform for comics and storyboards, enabling mass-produced high quality content by optimized job dilution in the production process from jotting down ideas, to drawing and finishing sketches. At Rising Expo 2015, a startup showcase event hosted by CyberAgent Ventures in August, Whomor CEO Mikiya Shibatsuji claimed in his pitch that the company has acquired 3,000 crowdsourced creators on the platform, while 70% of them are coming from Japan and the remaining 30% workforce from outside Japan. In addition to receiving outsourced comic productions, they have been developing original comic series based on their intellectual property as well as monetizing new comic media. Producing native advertising content using comics, the company started publishing these ads in the…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Whomor, the Japanese company offering a crowdsourcing platform focused on illustrations and 3D computer graphics, unveiled today that it has fundraised 200 million yen (about $1.6 million) from DG Incubation and DK Gate. DG Incubation is the investment arm of Japanese internet giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while DK Gate is a joint venture company of Digital Garage and Kodansha, a Japanese leading publishing company.

rising-expo-2015-whomor-1 — Whomor CEO Mikiya Shibatsuji delivers his pitch at Rising Expo 2015.

Since its launch back in January of 2011, Whomor has established a crowdsourcing platform for comics and storyboards, enabling mass-produced high quality content by optimized job dilution in the production process from jotting down ideas, to drawing and finishing sketches. At Rising Expo 2015, a startup showcase event hosted by CyberAgent Ventures in August, Whomor CEO Mikiya Shibatsuji claimed in his pitch that the company has acquired 3,000 crowdsourced creators on the platform, while 70% of them are coming from Japan and the remaining 30% workforce from outside Japan.

In addition to receiving outsourced comic productions, they have been developing original comic series based on their intellectual property as well as monetizing new comic media. Producing native advertising content using comics, the company started publishing these ads in the game media section of Yahoo Japan this year. They also claimed they’ve enhanced partnerships with media websites introducing apps, intellectual property owners in the gaming industry in Japan and rest of the world, and comic-focused media websites in China and Korea.

Whomore has been massively collaborating with other comic publishing platforms through efforts like securing partnership with DeNA Mangabox and Manga Gift as well as acquiring Androbook from Voyage Group (TSE:3688). In addition to receiving outsourced comic productions, they have been developing original comic series based on their intellectual properties as well as monetizing new comic media. Producing native advertising content using comics, the company started publishing these ads in the game media section of Yahoo Japan’s portal this year. They also claimed they have enhanced partnerships with media websites introducing apps, intellectual property owners in the gaming industry in Japan and rest of the world, and comic-focused media websites in China and South Korea.

In partnership with Kodansha Advanced Media, DK Gate is dealing with digital distribution and global expansion of Japanese books and comic publications. Through the partnership with DK Gate upon latest funding, Whomor is expected to accelerate the global expansion efforts of their original content.

whomor-comics-sample — Examples of Whomor’s original comics

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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1st place winner: InFarm (Berlin, Germany)

2nd place winner: Agolo (New York, USA)

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Top Award Winner: Street Academy

Outstanding Startups Award winner: GeneQuest

Outstanding Startups Award winner: Factelier

Tsutaya Award Winner: Anikore

ClubFm

Voice Marche

Eichiii

Wellnote

Sensy

Pratechs

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1st prize winner: AgriBus-NAVI (by Agri Info Design)

2nd prize winner: Nutte (by State of Mind)

3rd prize winner: CloudSign (by Bengo4.com)

4th prize winner: Anyca (by Anyca)

5th prize winner: Repro (by Repro)

Wizpra NPS (by Wizpra)

LiveConnect (by Z-Works)

Medicine Delivery (by Minacolor)

Popcorn (by Coubic)

Spectee (by Spectee)

Fitty (by Scala International)

Partee (by g&h)

Monomy (by Fun Up)

LaFabric (by LifeStyle Design)

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