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NYC-based smart driving app Dash wins Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2016 in Tokyo

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See the original story in Japanese. Innovation Weekend is a showcase event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator SunBridge Global Ventures. Continuing this year, qualifying rounds were held in New York, San Francisco, Berlin, and Osaka, with the winners and runners-up attending the pitch session for the two day event “Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2016” in Tokyo. What follows is a brief summary of the products, market potential, etc. of the finalists who participated in the pitch session. It should also be noted that the selection of winners was based not on judges’ votes, but on that of the general audience at the event. Top Prize: Dash by Dash Labs (Winner of Innovation Weekend 2016 New York qualifying round) Supplemental prize: Round-trip airline ticket between NY and Tokyo, Amazon Fire TV Stick Dash allows users to connect their smartphones and cars via Bluetooth by installing an inexpensive, on-board diagnostic unit. In doing this, they can access various features, including their driving score, alerts about engine issues, feedback on maintenance concerns, or the ability to compare themselves to their friends with gamified social functions. Services such as enabling insurance companies to provide comparatively cheap premiums to safe drivers, as well as advertising…

See the original story in Japanese.

Innovation Weekend is a showcase event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator SunBridge Global Ventures. Continuing this year, qualifying rounds were held in New York, San Francisco, Berlin, and Osaka, with the winners and runners-up attending the pitch session for the two day event “Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2016” in Tokyo.

What follows is a brief summary of the products, market potential, etc. of the finalists who participated in the pitch session.

It should also be noted that the selection of winners was based not on judges’ votes, but on that of the general audience at the event.

Top Prize: Dash by Dash Labs (Winner of Innovation Weekend 2016 New York qualifying round)

Supplemental prize: Round-trip airline ticket between NY and Tokyo, Amazon Fire TV Stick

Dash allows users to connect their smartphones and cars via Bluetooth by installing an inexpensive, on-board diagnostic unit. In doing this, they can access various features, including their driving score, alerts about engine issues, feedback on maintenance concerns, or the ability to compare themselves to their friends with gamified social functions. Services such as enabling insurance companies to provide comparatively cheap premiums to safe drivers, as well as advertising based on driving conditions are also provided.

Dash Labs originated in 2013 from TechStars New York. In March of 2014 Japan’s CyberAgent made known their investment in Dash Labs.

Runner-up: Conichi by Hotel Beacons (Runner-up of Innovation Weekend 2016 Berlin qualifying round)

Supplemental prize: Amazon Fire TV Stick

Conichi is a solution to speed up the check-in/check-out procedures for hotels, providing guests with keyless entry into rooms. Through the collaboration of guests, a mobile app, and a beacon set up at the hotel, by simply approaching the front desk it becomes possible to automatically recognize guests, and through the app hotels can easily determine an estimated time of arrival.

Guests can use the mobile app to pre-settle their bill, and for hotels it can be used for customer relationship management too. To date, they have raised $7.9 million in a seed round from major hotel group HRS.

Runner-up: Ellipse by Velo Labs (Winner of Innovation Weekend 2016 San Francisco qualifying round)

Supplemental prize: Amazon Fire TV Stick

Ellipse (previously SkyLock) is a smart lock for bicycles. Through cooperation with users’ smartphones, it is capable of keyless locking and unlocking. Additionally, an alarm can be sounded in the event of theft or the key breaking. Since the code for unlocking can be shared online, it is also possible to use as a means for bicycle sharing. The smart lock has solar cells and charges automatically when parked outdoors.

They have raised around $1 million in funding over three rounds.

Microsoft Award: Review by Review (Runner-up of Innovation Weekend 2016 Osaka qualifying round)

Supplement prize: Microsoft BizSpark Plus – $120k of Azure credits

Review is an information management platform where survey staff use the app to collect visual information sought by businesses and local governments. It provides the latest information on land that cannot be known from maps and aerial photographs, such as where vacant land exists, and where construction is being carried out.

EY Japan Award: enTouch (Special recommendation by the organizer)

Supplemental prize: E-learning/training services by EY Japan

enTouch is a platform for connecting pharmaceutical companies and doctors online. Rather than the model used until now of medical representatives from pharmaceutical companies visiting doctors, medical representatives for enTouch can do sales for multiple companies using the internet and telemarketing via video calls. Even when it is necessary to make an appointment after ending treatment, it will be able to respond flexibly.

Freee Award: Review (Runner-up of Innovation Weekend 2016 Osaka qualifying round) / enTouch (Special recommendation by the organizer) / MARUI-PlugIn (Winner of Innovation Weekend 2016 Osaka qualifying round)

Supplemental prize: One-year complimentary use of Japanese SaaS accounting platform Freee

The descriptions of enTouch and Review can be found above, so only MARUI-PlugIn is summarized here.

MARUI-PlugIn provides an environment in which existing CG and Anime production software can be connected to HMD such as HTC Vive and Oculus Lift, allowing users to intuitively create and operate content in a virtual reality space. It is offered at 2,000 yen per month (about $18US) using a SaaS model.


Below are the startup teams that entered as finalists but did not receive awards.

Butterfly by Anonymessenger (Runner-up of Innovation Weekend 2016 San Francisco qualifying round)

Butterfly is a platform that automates the PDCA cycle for team improvement within an organization. It supports managers in understanding and improving the problems and displeasures of their subordinates and teams. Butterfly’s mobile app automatically sends out a questionnaire to team members once a week. The results are then provided to the manager as feedback, with advice on measures to improve from the app.

Journy by Reksee (Runner-up of Innovation Weekend 2016 New York qualifying round)

Journy is a service that will tailor-make travel plans based on recommendations of top-ranked chefs, sommeliers, and local experts. It understands a user’s preferences and suggests attractions based on this. It will also make reservations when necessary.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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

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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…

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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)

iwgf-2015-pitch-winner-infarm

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)

iwgf-2015-pitch-winner-agolo

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.

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

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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:

Microsoft Award winner: Liquid (Tokyo, Japan)

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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.

liquidpay_screenshot

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

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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.

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The Pukka website (in Chinese)

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

3D graphics startup Sciement wins Innovation Weekend Grand Finale in Tokyo

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Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. The grand finale is held every December, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year’s grand finale had local preliminary editions in Boston, London, and Singapore, as well as Tokyo. Earlier this week, winners from Japan and three continents competed at the Tokyo event, where Tokyo-based Sciement won the top prize on audience vote. See also: Circuit board design tool ‘Quadcept’ wins Innovation Weekend Grand Finale in Tokyo Sciement is developing science-focused 3D computer graphics solutions. According to Sciement CEO and founder Dr. Hirofumi Seo, some statistics say that there is one congenital cardiac disorder out of 100 to 200 people on average, which is not a small population of this disorder from the global perspective. While not all cases are life threatening, patients can see how their own heart is faring. By creating 3D animation based on 3D scanning, the company will be able to help these patients understand their disorders visually. This technology has unlimited applications and will contribute to the advancement of medicine by combining with other solutions such as 3D printing of human organs….

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Sciement CEO and President Dr. Hirofumi Seo

Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. The grand finale is held every December, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session.

This year’s grand finale had local preliminary editions in Boston, London, and Singapore, as well as Tokyo. Earlier this week, winners from Japan and three continents competed at the Tokyo event, where Tokyo-based Sciement won the top prize on audience vote.

See also:

Sciement is developing science-focused 3D computer graphics solutions. According to Sciement CEO and founder Dr. Hirofumi Seo, some statistics say that there is one congenital cardiac disorder out of 100 to 200 people on average, which is not a small population of this disorder from the global perspective. While not all cases are life threatening, patients can see how their own heart is faring.

By creating 3D animation based on 3D scanning, the company will be able to help these patients understand their disorders visually.

This technology has unlimited applications and will contribute to the advancement of medicine by combining with other solutions such as 3D printing of human organs. Below is a video that simulates a beating human heart, produced in partnership with Riken and the University of Tokyo. If you come up with a good idea, please contact them for collaborative work.

Circuit board design tool ‘Quadcept’ wins Innovation Weekend Grand Finale in Tokyo

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Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Every December there is a big one, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year, Osaka-based startup Quadcept won the finale with its printed circuit board design solutions. Quadcept – Top prize winner Typical factories in the electronics manufacturing industry have to purchase a tool for designing printed circuit boards, usually provided in the form of packaged software, with costs of up to $80,000 for the initial fee and as much as $10,000 for annual fees per user license. But many factories don’t have the budget to distribute that kind of package to all their employees. And collectively, that problem can slow the entire industry. Quadcept looked to the cloud for a solution. Pricing depends on how many licenses you need in your company, with payment possible on a yearly or monthly basis, requiring no initial fee. Quadcept proposes that you only pay for the licenses you need, when you need them, and not waste money on idle seat licenses. The startup wants to be aggressive in helping device makers by sponsoring events like Maker Faire and…

winner-at-innovation-weekend-grand-finale-2013

Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. Every December there is a big one, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year, Osaka-based startup Quadcept won the finale with its printed circuit board design solutions.

Quadcept – Top prize winner

Typical factories in the electronics manufacturing industry have to purchase a tool for designing printed circuit boards, usually provided in the form of packaged software, with costs of up to $80,000 for the initial fee and as much as $10,000 for annual fees per user license. But many factories don’t have the budget to distribute that kind of package to all their employees. And collectively, that problem can slow the entire industry.

Quadcept looked to the cloud for a solution. Pricing depends on how many licenses you need in your company, with payment possible on a yearly or monthly basis, requiring no initial fee. Quadcept proposes that you only pay for the licenses you need, when you need them, and not waste money on idle seat licenses. The startup wants to be aggressive in helping device makers by sponsoring events like Maker Faire and Gugen. They expects to start global business expansion next year.

quadcept-at-innovation-weekend-grand-finale-2013
Quadcept

More than a dozen startups from Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand pitched their apps and services to a crowd from in Tokyo. Here is a quick rundown on some of the new faces.

VisasQ

VisasQ is a platform for consulting that takes advantage of relationships in your social graph, letting users get advice from experts. The company’s founder, Eiko Hashiba, is very experienced, including time working as an investment banker. The concept is inspired by Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG for short), a company providing consultation and advice from over 250,000 subject matter experts worldwide. Hashiba aims to provide such ‘spot consulting’ services for as little as 1% of the price of conventional services. Their team includes engineers from notable Japanese groupware solution Rakumo.

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VisasQ

Pathee

When you want to hang out at a karaoke bar in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, you might first turn to Google Search or Google Maps, inputting keywords like ‘karaoke’ and ‘Shibuya’. But that typically yields irrelevant information like a list of shops you don’t really care about.

But Tokyo-based startup Tritrue has developed a ‘spatial search engine’ called Pathee, which provides more relevant information by narrowing results to buildings within a five-minute walk from where you are, and to certain trending topics as well. So for example, when you arrive at a train/subway station near an event venue, you check how to get there by just entering the name of the event, with no need for the address. The startup is based at Samurai Incubate’s startup space, Startup Island.

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Pathee

ClickonCake

ClickonCake delivers birthday cakes to any part of Japan, based on orders collected from their website. The company’s founder is Shintaro Naganuma, whose family business is a confectionery based in northern Japan. To make the business more profitable, he rolled out a delivery service specializing in birthday cakes. It currently earns 8 million yen ($80,000) in revenue every month.

Typical cake buyers will purchase a cake for someone on or near their birthday. And with this in mind, Naganuma’s team is planning to establish distribution centers all across the Tokyo metropolitan area. He has also invented a frozen type of cake that can be preserved at these centers. In this way, they can give users the option of same-day delivery cakes with unique designs. That would certainly pose stiff competition to conventional cake shops around town.

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ClickonCake

Waygoapp

Waygooapp is a mobile translation application that uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology. For western visitors who come to Asia, one of biggest obstacles is typically reading Chinese characters, since signs and menus usually aren’t in English. And checking them on mobile is hard too, if you haven’t mastered the input method.

But with this app, all you need is to place your phone’s camera over it and let the app figure it out. You will see then English subtitles overlaid on the image. The app is currently available only for Chinese-to-English translation on iOS, but an Android version and Japanese-to-English version will follow soon.

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Waygoapp

Other guests from the overseas

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At a panel on Singapore’s startup ecosystem. From the left: Yuji Horiguchi (IMJ Fenox), Kenny Lew (Entreport Asia), Vinnie Lauria (Golden Gate Ventures), and Ikuo Hiraishi (Sunbridge Global Ventures)
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At a panel on how to launch a global startup. From the left: Yusuke Takahashi (AppSocially) and Tak Harada (Peatix)