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IMJ Investment Partners gets rebranded to Spiral Ventures as independent VC firm

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See the original story in Japanese. IMJ Investment Partners (IMJ-IP), a Japanese startup-focused vc firm based in Singapore and Tokyo, last week announced that it changed the company name to Spiral Ventures. To be more precise, it becomes a group under the umbrella of the Singapore-based corporation Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd (IMJ-IP, the former name), consisting of Spiral Ventures Asia Ltd (newly organized) focusing on investment activities in Japan India / Southeast Asia and Spiral Ventures Japan LLP (IMJ-IP Japan, the former name) focusing on Japan / East Asia. Yuji Horiguchi, the former Managing Partner of IMJ-IP, is appointed to CEO of Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd / Spiral Ventures Asia Ltd. Tomokazu Okuno, the former Managing Partner of IMJ-IP Japan, is appointed to General Partner of Spiral Ventures Japan LLP as well. Along with that, the firm revealed that it succeeded in MBO (management buyout). Horiguchi and other shareholders purchased the majority of the shares from the major shareholder Culture Convenience Club (CCC). Spiral Ventures Japan LLP is organized by joint capital investment of Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd and Okuno. IMJ-IP originated in the company which Horiguchi founded in 2012 while being engaged in foreign investment works at IMJ. It…

Yuji Horiguchi (CEO and Managing Partner of Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd / Spiral Ventures Asia Ltd, right) and Tomokazu Okuno (General Partner of Spiral Ventures Japan LLP, left)

See the original story in Japanese.

IMJ Investment Partners (IMJ-IP), a Japanese startup-focused vc firm based in Singapore and Tokyo, last week announced that it changed the company name to Spiral Ventures. To be more precise, it becomes a group under the umbrella of the Singapore-based corporation Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd (IMJ-IP, the former name), consisting of Spiral Ventures Asia Ltd (newly organized) focusing on investment activities in Japan India / Southeast Asia and Spiral Ventures Japan LLP (IMJ-IP Japan, the former name) focusing on Japan / East Asia.

Yuji Horiguchi, the former Managing Partner of IMJ-IP, is appointed to CEO of Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd / Spiral Ventures Asia Ltd. Tomokazu Okuno, the former Managing Partner of IMJ-IP Japan, is appointed to General Partner of Spiral Ventures Japan LLP as well.

Capital relationship of Spiral Ventures group

Along with that, the firm revealed that it succeeded in MBO (management buyout). Horiguchi and other shareholders purchased the majority of the shares from the major shareholder Culture Convenience Club (CCC). Spiral Ventures Japan LLP is organized by joint capital investment of Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd and Okuno.

IMJ-IP originated in the company which Horiguchi founded in 2012 while being engaged in foreign investment works at IMJ. It was a purely independent VC (venture capital) having many LPs (limited partners), not a CVC (corporate venture capital) under IMJ as its name appears to indicate. In this situation, Accenture acquired a major stake in IMJ from CCC last April. Although there had been no direct capital ties between IMJ and IMJ-IP originally, IMJ-IP no longer need to call itself IMJ anymore.

One of the purposes for renaming itself this time is seemingly to clearly appeal to the current / potential LPs and the investment targets that it is a pure VC with high-level independence.

Under the new system, a new fund is about to be established. According to Horiguchi, Spiral Ventures Asia has been setting up a fund for Southeast Asia and India named Spiral Asia Global Fund, especially focusing on growth-stage startups in Southeast Asia (targeted early-stages under the old system) and early-stage startups in India.

Spiral Ventures is recognized for digging up promising startups in the Southeast Asia region from a long time ago. As an outstanding example, the portfolio startups highly recommended by Spiral Ventures, namely McClinica, PawnHero and Docquity, won the startup conference held in Osaka — HackOsaka — for three years in a row.

Horiguchi said:

Currently, the firm has one staffer in Jakarta and four in Singapore. In India, the firm utilizes the partnership with New Delhi-based Technology 9 Labs supporting the growth hack for startups. The investment target of Asia Global Fund covers a wide range of countries / regions, including seven ASEAN countries, India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

On the other hand, Spiral Ventures Japan continues the operation of IMJ-IP Japan Fund as in the past with a new name, Spiral Ventures Japan Fund. It has gathered more than 5 billion yen (about $45 million) for the 6 billion yen (about $54 million)-scale fundraising, and Okuno said that he aims to settle it down to a 70 billion yen (about $63 million)-scale fund. LPs of Japan Fund include Japanese major enterprises and the Japanese Organization for Small and Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation.

Okuno explains the view of Japan Fund:

As the integration with real business or the innovation of conventional business has been become a hot topic in Japan recently (rather than simple mobile techs), our investment target covers a lot of X-Tech startups. Since we had once assisted the open innovation of CCC or Tokyu (Tokyo-based private railway company), I think we have an advantage as to collaboration support between such real techs and startups.

However, that does not mean we will focus especially on open innovation. This is just a fund, so that we can deal with it if LPs have such needs.

Although the investment target of Japan Fund includes Korea and China, it is still limited to within Japan at this time due to the limitation in terms of human resources. Spiral Ventures Japan plans to increase the number of its staffers to seven, and Masao Hirano, who experienced the representative of McKinsey or Carlyle in Japan, joins the firm as Senior Advisor and Takashi Chiba, who is a Okuno’s junior since working at Deutsche Bank, also joins the firm as Principal.

Spiral Ventures Asia had invested in 39 startups while Spiral Ventures Japan had done so in 10 startups thus far, including the investment as IMJ-IP. With the establishment of the new fund and the improvement of business speed, we will likely see the name of Spiral Ventures more frequently in the news concerning fundraising.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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

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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…

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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:

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.

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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.

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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].

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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.

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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].

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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.

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See also:

Tsutaya Award Winner: Anikore

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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.

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

ClubFm

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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:

Pratechs

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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:

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


  1. Operated by CCC, T-Point is a customer loyalty and rewards program available at Tsutaya bookstore chain and other affiliate online/offline retailers.
  2. 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.

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

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See the original story in Japanese.Earlier this month, T-media Holdings, the internet business-focused intermediate stock holding company of Japan’s largest bookstore chain operator Culture Convenience Club (CCC for short, TSE:4756), held its final public screening event for the first batch of its startup incubation program called T-Venture Program, in cooperation with its subsidiaries IMJ and IMJ Investment Partners. CCC is the operator of Japan’s largest bookstore chain Tsutaya. See also: Japanese entertainment retail conglomerate launches startup incubation program This program attracted 110 teams from all over the country. 41 teams made it through the first selection by the judging committee and 12 of them  chosen as finalists after the second selection. CCC CEO Muneaki Masuda, serving the event as chief juror, noted that the judges have graded five factors such as value creation, potential, and branding to award 7 finalists out of the dozen. Masuda stressed that they paid close attention to each candidate as to integrity as a platform, proposal for lifestyles, natural aspects, and friendliness rather than a mere membership system. Awarded startups listed below will proceed to the second phase (Incubation 2) of the program, including an integration test with T-site, the versatile information portal site of CCC. Top Award Winner: Agrimedia Supplementary prizes: participating in the program’s…

t-venture-2015-public-review

See the original story in Japanese.
Earlier this month, T-media Holdings, the internet business-focused intermediate stock holding company of Japan’s largest bookstore chain operator Culture Convenience Club (CCC for short, TSE:4756), held its final public screening event for the first batch of its startup incubation program called T-Venture Program, in cooperation with its subsidiaries IMJ and IMJ Investment Partners. CCC is the operator of Japan’s largest bookstore chain Tsutaya.

See also:

This program attracted 110 teams from all over the country. 41 teams made it through the first selection by the judging committee and 12 of them  chosen as finalists after the second selection. CCC CEO Muneaki Masuda, serving the event as chief juror, noted that the judges have graded five factors such as value creation, potential, and branding to award 7 finalists out of the dozen.

Masuda stressed that they paid close attention to each candidate as to integrity as a platform, proposal for lifestyles, natural aspects, and friendliness rather than a mere membership system.

Awarded startups listed below will proceed to the second phase (Incubation 2) of the program, including an integration test with T-site, the versatile information portal site of CCC.

Top Award Winner: Agrimedia

Supplementary prizes: participating in the program’s Incubation 2 phase, 300,000 T-points (rewards available at Tsutaya bookstores and affiliated retailers), complimentary one-year subscription to Tsutaya Discas (mail-delivered DVD rental service).

t-venture-2015-public-review-share-hatake-1
Agrimedia CEO Takashi Morofuji

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Tokyo-based startup Agrimedia provides vegetable gardens for rental in suburbs, called Share Batake. What makes them stand out from other providers is that it offers courses on vegetable farming by professional farmers and gardening advisers. Urban gardeners can participate in growing vegetables without bringing their own tools to these garden. One could grow around 20 different kinds of vegetables throughout a year and take the harvests home. The company also offers the premium option of hiring a “garden manager” for those who have no time to take care of the vegetables.

Agrimedia plans to set up a trial garden space at a T-site real store premise in the Tokyo suburb of Shonan, looking for more opportunity to reach potential customers.

Outstanding Startups Award winner: Onemore

Supplementary prizes: participating in the program’s Incubation 2 phase, 100,000 T-points (rewards available at Tsutaya bookstores and affiliated retailers)

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Tokyo-based Onemore, the company behind crowdfunding platform called Green Funding, introduced its successful use case having raised for producing novel-based film “The Light Shines Only There” starring the superb Japanese actor Go Ayano. The company proposed a film production-focused crowdfunding site integrated with T-site, leveraging user attribute information associated with T-site user id to present relevant recommendations to potential crowdfunding backers. The company says, other possible merit may include allowing backers to participate in crowdfunding campaigns using T-point reward points, as well as allowing film project owners to invite backers to exclusive events promoting their films.

See also:

Outstanding Startups Award winner: Filme by Coto Coto

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Filme lets mothers produce a movie recording their children’s growth, named Seicho Cinema, literally meaning Growth Cinema.

See also:

When a mother keeps recording a 30-second movie clip shooting her child every day for 20 days, Coto Coto’s original movie-editing engine produces a movie consisting of them. The service allows her to ask for a DVD to be sent to the grandparents who typically live apart from their grandchildren.

Coto Coto proposed setting up a booth near the kid’s space in the T-site real store, accepting movie production orders from families and giving them opportunities to enjoy the growth of their children by playing back their memories at a café nearby.

(‘Seicho Cinema’ is a trademark of Coto Coto.)

Speiclal Jury Award winner: Smaoku (Smart Auction) by Zawatt

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Smaoku (Smart Auction) is a mobile app inspired by the flash sale concept, aiming to bringing a sense like being at the real auction site. The company wants to buy unwanted items from users at real T-site stores.

See also:

Speiclal Jury Award winner: Saka No Tochu (On the Slope)

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Kyoto-based Saka No Tochu (On the Slope) provides a subscription-based organic vegetable delivery service, promoting low environmental-load agriculture and new agricultural workers. Japanese farmers are usually small-scaled and their yield is easily affected by natural factors. But the company aims to optimize the cultivation management and farming plans by deploying financial engineering techniques to agriculture, looking to secure valuation of the agricultural industry.

While a conversion rate from trial users to subscribed users are around 10% on typical food delivery e-commerce services, the company targets 25-30% and sees 250,000 yen (about $2,100) in a user’s lifetime value despite a per-user acquisition cost of 5,000 yen (about $42).

T-Point Award winner: Cashback Chintai

Supplementary prize: 50,000 T-points

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Cashback Chintai is a platform for rental homes and apartments, charging ad costs to property owners or agents on a total-performance basis so that they have to pay nothing until tenants are found.

See also:

The platform gives cashback rewards to tenants who have signed an agreement with a property owner, so these tenants are pleased to inform the platform that the deal is conducted using it. In this way, the platform can catch up with all transactions and charge all property owners or agents whose deals are handled via the platform regardless of whether receiving any report from the latter parties.

Cashback Chintai has listed over 1.8 million properties to date, and is ranked at the top 3 in the industry. The company proposed that they would give users cashback rewards using T-points in partnership with the T-site portal.

Tsutaya Award winner: Filmarks by Tsumiki

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Filmarks is a social review site focused on films. Since its launch back in June of 2013, it has acquired more than 4.5 million reviews to date. For instance, brand new film Big Hero 6 acquired 3,904 reviews comparing to Yahoo Movies with 1,451 reviews (as of this writing). It is, at least considered from the movie reviews standpoint, seen being in an invincible position.

The platform will find synergy in collaboration with Tsutaya which provides a huge variety of movie titles both online and offline.

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

Japanese entertainment retail conglomerate launches startup incubation program

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See the original story in Japanese. T-media Holdings, the internet business-focused intermediate stock holding company of Japan’s largest bookstore chain operator Culture Convenience Club (CCC for short, TSE:4756), held a briefing with their subsidiaries IMJ and IMJ Investment Partners on Friday. CCC is Japan’s largest bookstore chain operator. The internet business-focused company group announced that it has launched a startup support program called T-Venture Program. Under this program, every participating startup can integrate T-site user accounts and fundraise up to 100 million yen ($894,000) from IMJ Investment Partners when necessary. Making full use of the strength of their assets, such as a database of 50 million members of CCC’s cross-industry loyalty program, a database of films and music titles available in Japan, as well as their rewards point system, T-media Holdings wants to help startups market their apps or web services by driving user traffic and cross marketing between T-media holdings’ media portal T-site and its affiliated web services. T-Media Holdings will give these startups the convenience of testing integration with the T-site platform in advance, which the company thinks will differentiate them from similar incubators. On a related note, they will release a T-site mobile app in early November….

t-venture-program_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

T-media Holdings, the internet business-focused intermediate stock holding company of Japan’s largest bookstore chain operator Culture Convenience Club (CCC for short, TSE:4756), held a briefing with their subsidiaries IMJ and IMJ Investment Partners on Friday. CCC is Japan’s largest bookstore chain operator.

The internet business-focused company group announced that it has launched a startup support program called T-Venture Program. Under this program, every participating startup can integrate T-site user accounts and fundraise up to 100 million yen ($894,000) from IMJ Investment Partners when necessary.

Making full use of the strength of their assets, such as a database of 50 million members of CCC’s cross-industry loyalty program, a database of films and music titles available in Japan, as well as their rewards point system, T-media Holdings wants to help startups market their apps or web services by driving user traffic and cross marketing between T-media holdings’ media portal T-site and its affiliated web services.

T-Media Holdings will give these startups the convenience of testing integration with the T-site platform in advance, which the company thinks will differentiate them from similar incubators. On a related note, they will release a T-site mobile app in early November.

Through this program, T-media Holdings aims to invite web services other than what the company provides, such as services for pets, cooking, health and beauty, cameras, kids, and bicycles. It will add them into their service line-ups for consumers in partnership with participating startups. Applicant startups must be younger than five years, but not only consumer-focused services but also tools or technology-oriented projects are welcomed.

To take part submit an application via this form by November 28. About 40 teams will be selected in the first screening, which will be narrowed to 10 finalists during the second screening process based on a face-to-face interview. Finalists will be presented at an event to be held on 20 January 2015 at Shibuya Hikarie, Tokyo. CCC founder and CEO Muneaki Masuda will take part.

In November, T-media Holdings plans to hold briefing events in Kyoto, Osaka, and Fukuoka. If you reside outside Tokyo but are interested in participating in the program, check out these opportunities.

Q&A session with entrepreneurs at a briefing on Friday. L to R: T-media Holdings CEO Toru Sakurai, managing director Hiroshi Nemoto, oprating officer Shinga Sakata, IMJ Investment partners' Japan office manager Hiroshi Oka
Q&A session with entrepreneurs at a briefing event on Friday.
L to R: T-media Holdings CEO Toru Sakurai, managing director Hiroshi Nemoto, operating officer Shinga Sakata, IMJ Investment partners’ Japan office manager Hiroshi Oka

Japan’s Crowd Cast fundraises from IMJ, looking to conquer expense management market with new app

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Crowd Cast, a startup developing cloud services and apps for expense management, launched a new iOS app called Staple today. Coinciding with this, the company also announced today that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from IMJ Investment Partners to strengthen service expansions in Japan and Asia. Crowd Cast released late last year an expense processing app called BizNote Expense. This app allows users to input company expense records via smartphone, which then transmits the data to a company’s accounting system. But Crowd Cast learned from experience that users only need an expense record input app since most companies have legacy workflow systems for expense reimbursements. That is why they split the workflow feature off from BizNote Expense and developed Staple, which is specifically focused on inputting expense records. Input records can be downloaded in CSV format on the web, enabling user records arrangement to conform with existing expense reimbursement systems. The company’s CEO Takashi Hoshikawa explained: We provide the personal edition of the Staple app for free, and its team edition, which we’re still working on, will be a paying app. By Launching the personal edition first, it helps users learn how…

staple_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Crowd Cast, a startup developing cloud services and apps for expense management, launched a new iOS app called Staple today. Coinciding with this, the company also announced today that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from IMJ Investment Partners to strengthen service expansions in Japan and Asia.

Crowd Cast released late last year an expense processing app called BizNote Expense. This app allows users to input company expense records via smartphone, which then transmits the data to a company’s accounting system. But Crowd Cast learned from experience that users only need an expense record input app since most companies have legacy workflow systems for expense reimbursements.

That is why they split the workflow feature off from BizNote Expense and developed Staple, which is specifically focused on inputting expense records. Input records can be downloaded in CSV format on the web, enabling user records arrangement to conform with existing expense reimbursement systems.

The company’s CEO Takashi Hoshikawa explained:

We provide the personal edition of the Staple app for free, and its team edition, which we’re still working on, will be a paying app. By Launching the personal edition first, it helps users learn how to use the app and will lower the barriers for them to start using the Staple team edition when it’s live.

The Crowd Cast team developed the Staple app from scratch to prepare for the chance when possible heavy traffic is put on their cloud platform while more people start using the app on an individual basis rather than for their company. Moreover, the architecture restructuring may also help Crowd Cast add more functions to the app in the future.

Crowd Cast aims to launch the app’s desktop version for personal use, an Android version for personal use, and the team edition for all different platforms.

Worth mentioning is that the Android version will allow the import of transit riding records from contactless smart cards such as Suica or Pasmo, just by placing the smart card behind a handset of an NFC (near field communication)-enabled Android phone. For the Mobile Suica app, riding records will be automatically transferred to the Staple app, so that a user will not have to manually import records. The Suica and Pasmo platform’s smart-card system has a maximum capacity of 20 riding records, so a notification function will be added to the Android version so that users will not forget to import records from their smart cards.

Meanwhile, they have no plan to support the riding data importing function for the iOS version because iPhones do not have NFC chips. The new iPhone 6 has an NFC chip but is limited to Apple Pay.

US-based expense solution vendor Concur recently integrated with Uber and AirBnB, and allows users to import expense records from these “sharing economy” services, which will be followed by other companies like Expensify. In contrast with these trends, Crowd Cast is targeting Japanese/Asian city-dwellers with their solution, in particular with a public transit focus, to discourage standards-based formation of barriers against new market entries.

In this space, Japan and Singapore-based Klavis launched an app called Streamed, which also aims to support importing data from public transit smart cards.

Survey shows Japan switching to smartphones, but not as fast as you might think

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Riding on the train here in Tokyo recently, I’m noticing more and more people using their smartphones, and less people using feature phones. It’s really interesting to see how things are changing. But for a more quantified view of what’s going on, let’s take look at a user survey conducted in March by IMJ exploring the current state of mobile in Japan. According to this survey of 26,418 correspondents between the ages of 15 to 59, almost 52% say they own a feature phone, with about 41% owning a smartphone. 7.4% answered that they own both a feature phone and a smartphone. It’s interesting to note that before the smartphone network environment in Japan was really ready widespread public use, many people were forced to carry both kinds in order to make up for frequent bad reception. In terms of age segement, teenagers and people in their 20s are more likely to own advanced smartphone in comparison to feature phones. When asked about switching from feature phones to smartphones, 39.4% of feature phone owners answered that they plan to changing to a smartphone, and 31% plan to do so within the next six months. But there are still some people…

Riding on the train here in Tokyo recently, I’m noticing more and more people using their smartphones, and less people using feature phones. It’s really interesting to see how things are changing. But for a more quantified view of what’s going on, let’s take look at a user survey conducted in March by IMJ exploring the current state of mobile in Japan.

According to this survey of 26,418 correspondents between the ages of 15 to 59, almost 52% say they own a feature phone, with about 41% owning a smartphone. 7.4% answered that they own both a feature phone and a smartphone. It’s interesting to note that before the smartphone network environment in Japan was really ready widespread public use, many people were forced to carry both kinds in order to make up for frequent bad reception.

In terms of age segement, teenagers and people in their 20s are more likely to own advanced smartphone in comparison to feature phones.

smartphone-survey-japan
From markezine.jp, labels translated by SD Japan

When asked about switching from feature phones to smartphones, 39.4% of feature phone owners answered that they plan to changing to a smartphone, and 31% plan to do so within the next six months. But there are still some people who plan to stick with feature phones. Of those, 14.4% responded that they would even switch to another featured phone, and 44.4% have no plans to switch. About 56% of existing smartphone users wish to switch to an even newer smartphone.

Within two years, the number of feature phone user is estimated to decline to about 44%. By age segment, the smartphone penetration rate among teenagers and people in their 20s is predicted to go as high as 60%. But among the older generation, for example, 56% of people in their 50s will likely still carry feature phones two years from now. So even though almost all the mobile phones sold by the major carriers in Japan are now smartphones, feature phones will still linger because a high portion of Japan’s very old population doesn’t see any need to change.