See the original story in Japanese. Osaka-based Chatwork, a Japanese startup that operates a cloud-based chat tool for business under the same name, announced today that it has fundraised 300 million yen ($2.5 million) from GMO Venture Partners. The funds will be used to hire engineers to strengthen system development, promotional efforts for user acquisitions, and partnering with other companies. Chatwork will greatly expand business in Asia, leveraging GMO Venture Partners’ massive links with startup ecosystems and payment networks in the region. Headquartered in Osaka, Chatwork has regional offices in Tokyo and Silicon Valley. The company is a 35-person team, but will grow to over 100 people within a few years. Chatwork plans to release the tool’s version 4.0 in this year, rolling out a fully-renewed interface of the mobile app, strengthening task management and video conference functions, developing a desktop app, and officially launching an application programming interface (API). Since its launch in 2000, Chatwork has been bootstrapping the business in positive balance. With the funding, the company will focus on strengthening its business structure and product development. The company is today preparing for an IPO. Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by Kurt Hanson and “Tex” Pomeroy
From the left: GMO Venture Partners’ founding partner Ryu Muramatsu, Chatwork CEO Toshiyuki Yamamoto
Osaka-based Chatwork, a Japanese startup that operates a cloud-based chat tool for business under the same name, announced today that it has fundraised 300 million yen ($2.5 million) from GMO Venture Partners. The funds will be used to hire engineers to strengthen system development, promotional efforts for user acquisitions, and partnering with other companies.
Chatwork will greatly expand business in Asia, leveraging GMO Venture Partners’ massive links with startup ecosystems and payment networks in the region. Headquartered in Osaka, Chatwork has regional offices in Tokyo and Silicon Valley. The company is a 35-person team, but will grow to over 100 people within a few years.
Chatwork plans to release the tool’s version 4.0 in this year, rolling out a fully-renewed interface of the mobile app, strengthening task management and video conference functions, developing a desktop app, and officially launching an application programming interface (API).
Since its launch in 2000, Chatwork has been bootstrapping the business in positive balance. With the funding, the company will focus on strengthening its business structure and product development. The company is today preparing for an IPO.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson and “Tex” Pomeroy
Raksul, a Tokyo-based startup providing online printing services, announced today that it has raised 1.45 billion yen (approximately $14.3 million) from WiL (World Innovation Lab), Global Brain, Itochu Technology Ventures, Plus (an office stationary company), GMO Venture Partners, and Mixi. Raksul is a fabless company that provides printing services in partnership with more than 1,600 printing facilities across Japan (as of November of 2013). Users can place printing orders at affordable rates because the company takes advantage of downtime at participating printers to complete those orders. According to Nikkei Business, Raksul will use the funds raised this time to prepare for global service operations, and to launch a new service that allows merchants to distribute their flyers via newspapers to consumers for affordable rates. By making the most of the internet and removing middleman costs, their flyer distribution service gives local merchants a better chance to promote their services for less than 10% of the price usually seen in this sector. Raksul was founded in 2009 and raised a total of 230 million yen ($2.4 million) during the last year from Nissay Capital, Yahoo Japan, and Anri.
Raksul is a fabless company that provides printing services in partnership with more than 1,600 printing facilities across Japan (as of November of 2013). Users can place printing orders at affordable rates because the company takes advantage of downtime at participating printers to complete those orders.
According to Nikkei Business, Raksul will use the funds raised this time to prepare for global service operations, and to launch a new service that allows merchants to distribute their flyers via newspapers to consumers for affordable rates. By making the most of the internet and removing middleman costs, their flyer distribution service gives local merchants a better chance to promote their services for less than 10% of the price usually seen in this sector.
Raksul was founded in 2009 and raised a total of 230 million yen ($2.4 million) during the last year from Nissay Capital, Yahoo Japan, and Anri.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese crowsourcing marketplace Lancers announced today that it has raised 300 million yen ($2.9 million) from Globis Capital Partners (GCP) and GMO Venture Partners (GMO-VP). Coinciding with this funding, GCP partner Shinichi Takamiya has joined Lancers’ the board of directors. Readers may recall that we previously wrote about Lancers back in April. Since the service launched in 2008, it has acquired about 140,000 members (crowdsourced workers) and has transactioned about 7 billion yen ($68.3 million). The amount of the transactions reached 3.5 billion yen ($34.2 million) in the previous fiscal year, which is same amount as its total dealings up to that point (i.e. from 2008 and 2011). The company recently moved its headquarters from Shibuya to Kamakura, just outside of Tokyo. Why now? Lancers’ CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi explained why they raised funds at this particular point: Our business is growing well, and we’re not suffering from cash flow issues. However, we made up our minds to fundraise so we can massively speed up our business at this time. […] Now we need to focus on standardizing the format of crowdsourcing projects. By enhancing its database of crowdsourcing workers, the startup is now exploring…
Japanese crowsourcing marketplace Lancers announced today that it has raised 300 million yen ($2.9 million) from Globis Capital Partners (GCP) and GMO Venture Partners (GMO-VP). Coinciding with this funding, GCP partner Shinichi Takamiya has joined Lancers’ the board of directors. Readers may recall that we previously wrote about Lancers back in April.
Since the service launched in 2008, it has acquired about 140,000 members (crowdsourced workers) and has transactioned about 7 billion yen ($68.3 million). The amount of the transactions reached 3.5 billion yen ($34.2 million) in the previous fiscal year, which is same amount as its total dealings up to that point (i.e. from 2008 and 2011).
The company recently moved its headquarters from Shibuya to Kamakura, just outside of Tokyo.
Why now?
Lancers’ CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi
Lancers’ CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi explained why they raised funds at this particular point:
Our business is growing well, and we’re not suffering from cash flow issues. However, we made up our minds to fundraise so we can massively speed up our business at this time. […] Now we need to focus on standardizing the format of crowdsourcing projects.
By enhancing its database of crowdsourcing workers, the startup is now exploring partnerships with other category-focused crowdsourcing services such as ADFlow (crowdsourcing banner ad design) or MugenUp (crowdsouring illustration or cartoon-drawing work).
Cultivating local workers in local markets
Regarding expanding their business in local markets, he explains:
In order to make our business grow further, I believe it’s also important to help freelancers grow. They aren’t our employees but we need to invest in cultivating these workforces. If you compare outsourcing tasks to overseas markets with doing so in local markets, there will be no significant gap in terms of cost. But there’s a big gap in the volume of the tasks between the two. We’d like to gather more users and partners by promoting the new freelance working style as well as our own platform.
The startup is planning to launch a new system in the future, where they will conduct interviews to find potential leaders among freelancers at many locations across the country. They will be approved as ‘qualified freelancers’ and lead projects with other workers located at various locations.
People typically see crowdsourcing as a sort of quick and dirty solution. To overcome this stigma, Akiyoshi plans to increase the amount of quality deals on the marketplace.
We actually get more offers from corporate users, [although] we’re haven’t intensified our sales efforts. Once a company uses our service, we’ve seen that its subsidiaries or group companies follow suit.
The company also plans to provide further support to workers, with health insurance or welfare services, and from a freelancer’s point of view that certainly helps make this sort of work become an attractive option.
Tokyo-based venture company Sansan announced on Tuesday that it has fundraised about 500 million yen (or about $5 million) from Nissay Capital and GMO Venture Partners. This follows the previous round in 2009, which raised 50 million yen from CyberAgent, Recruit Incubation Partners, and GMO Venture Partners. Sansan is known for providing the Eight app, a combined solution for business card scanning, data entry, and contact management. By linking your Eight account with your social media presences (like Facebook, Google Plus, Mixi), your contacts will be automatically imported and connected. Subsequently the business cards of those people will then appear on your Eight page. If don’t have enough contacts to connect but still have a large connection of business cards, you can ask the company to scan the business cards for free. Alternatively, you can scan the cards yourself with their smartphone app. (See our previous article for more information about how it works.) The entire service is provided completely free. In a CNET Japan report, the company’s CEO Chika Terada explained that they are not rushing to monetize it until they build a sufficient userbase, ideally something in the range of 10 million users. The startup expects to do business globally in the near…
Tokyo-based venture company Sansan announced on Tuesday that it has fundraised about 500 million yen (or about $5 million) from Nissay Capital and GMO Venture Partners. This follows the previous round in 2009, which raised 50 million yen from CyberAgent, Recruit Incubation Partners, and GMO Venture Partners.
Sansan is known for providing the Eight app, a combined solution for business card scanning, data entry, and contact management. By linking your Eight account with your social media presences (like Facebook, Google Plus, Mixi), your contacts will be automatically imported and connected. Subsequently the business cards of those people will then appear on your Eight page. If don’t have enough contacts to connect but still have a large connection of business cards, you can ask the company to scan the business cards for free. Alternatively, you can scan the cards yourself with their smartphone app. (See our previous article for more information about how it works.)
Sansan CEO Chika Terada
The entire service is provided completely free. In a CNET Japan report, the company’s CEO Chika Terada explained that they are not rushing to monetize it until they build a sufficient userbase, ideally something in the range of 10 million users. The startup expects to do business globally in the near future, and they’ll be looking at building a global pool of crowdsourcing workers for card scanning and data entry, which will makes data entry possible regardless of language barriers.
With this new infusion of funds, they’re hoping to intensify further development of a better user experience, with a plan to introduce a new version of their smartphone app in May. Terada says it will be not only for scanning and managing business cards as before, but it will also be something that gives you an access to various information about your contacts, such as info to help you call or e-mail them, or the ability to view a map when you meet up with someone.
Other startups operating in this space are Maysee, as well as China-based Youlu.
Best Teacher, a Tokyo-based startup providing online language learning solutions, announced today it has raised 51.1 million yen (approximately $530,000) from GMO Venture Partners and SMBC Venture Capital. The startup began with seed investment from CyberAgent Ventures in January of 2012, and launched a C2C-based English-conversation learning service over Skype in May. As of last September, it has acquired 2,000 Japanese users who want to learn English, and 400 English teachers from 40 countries worldwide. The Japanese online language learning market is extremely competitive, including service providers like Rarejob and Englishtown. Best Teacher was a late-comer, and in order to overcome this disadvantage and differentiate from others, it has deployed a new feature which allows you to ask your teacher what kind of expressions you want to practice. The teacher will correct your phrases, arrange them in a more natural way, and coach your pronunciation over Skype. This method lets you concentrate on learning only the expressions you need. Best Teacher was founded by Toshimitsu Miyachi (who previously worked as a consultant and served as the CFO of a venture IT company) and ex-prep school teacher Masaki Goto. There is a pretty high demand for such English language services in…
Best Teacher, a Tokyo-based startup providing online language learning solutions, announced today it has raised 51.1 million yen (approximately $530,000) from GMO Venture Partners and SMBC Venture Capital. The startup began with seed investment from CyberAgent Ventures in January of 2012, and launched a C2C-based English-conversation learning service over Skype in May. As of last September, it has acquired 2,000 Japanese users who want to learn English, and 400 English teachers from 40 countries worldwide.
The Japanese online language learning market is extremely competitive, including service providers like Rarejob and Englishtown. Best Teacher was a late-comer, and in order to overcome this disadvantage and differentiate from others, it has deployed a new feature which allows you to ask your teacher what kind of expressions you want to practice. The teacher will correct your phrases, arrange them in a more natural way, and coach your pronunciation over Skype. This method lets you concentrate on learning only the expressions you need.
Best Teacher was founded by Toshimitsu Miyachi (who previously worked as a consultant and served as the CFO of a venture IT company) and ex-prep school teacher Masaki Goto. There is a pretty high demand for such English language services in Japan, with about 2 million people registering to take the well-known TOEIC test [1]. Startups are expected to account for about 1% of this population, and if all of them subscribed to the Best Teacher service, it could potentially generate revenue of $830,000 a month.
TOEIC stands for the Test of English for International Communication. ↩
See original story in Japanese Vasily, a Tokyo-based startup which runs online fashion coordination service iQON, announced today that it has fundraised a total of 300 million yen (approximately $3.2 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technologuy Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. This is the second round of funds following the previous series A funding of 140 million yen ($1.5 million) in May of 2011. The iQON service allows you to combine clothing and accessories online and share fashion coordination ideas with other users. Each item has a direct link to fashion e-commerce sites where you can purchase it, and the startup will generate revenue from partner sites using an affiliate model. More than 300,000 coordinated outfits have been registered since the service launched in April of 2010, and users are bookmarking their favorites more than a million times a month. The startup introduced its iOS app last February (and an Android app is now also available) which really took off. It even helped some of their partnering e-commerce sites make more than 20 million yen monthly sales through the affiliate traffic. The company focused on service development in the series A phase, but will be intensifying branding and marketing…
Vasily, a Tokyo-based startup which runs online fashion coordination service iQON, announced today that it has fundraised a total of 300 million yen (approximately $3.2 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technologuy Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. This is the second round of funds following the previous series A funding of 140 million yen ($1.5 million) in May of 2011.
The iQON service allows you to combine clothing and accessories online and share fashion coordination ideas with other users. Each item has a direct link to fashion e-commerce sites where you can purchase it, and the startup will generate revenue from partner sites using an affiliate model. More than 300,000 coordinated outfits have been registered since the service launched in April of 2010, and users are bookmarking their favorites more than a million times a month.
The startup introduced its iOS app last February (and an Android app is now also available) which really took off. It even helped some of their partnering e-commerce sites make more than 20 million yen monthly sales through the affiliate traffic. The company focused on service development in the series A phase, but will be intensifying branding and marketing efforts from now on.
When discussing fashion e-commerce sites in Japan, we can’t help but mention Zozotown (listed on the Tokyo Mothers exchange since 2007). The site is a partner for Vasily rather than a competitor because the two companies have different business models and won’t compete and/or conflict. Vasily’s CEO, Yuki Kanayama, says they will keep working closely with their good partner Zozotown in the future.
GMO Venture Partners 
Junya Mori
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
