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Smart stethoscope startup AMI wins KDDI’s Mugen Labo accelerator 11th Demo Day

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese leading telco KDDI (TSE:9433) held a Demo Day for its incubation program KDDI Mugendai Labo last week. Among the four teams newly allowed to participate in the three months-long program, AMI developing smart stethoscope won the KDDI Mugen Labo Award, and Warrantee won the Audience Award (refer to this article for details about Warrantee). The following introduces the content of the pitch competition by the four teams that joined the program from the 11th batch. Watcha Korea-based Watcha, supported by Toppan Printing (TSE:7911) and KDDI, is tackling the problems of the content search system. For conventional search methods, in particular for entertainment content, recommended information, advertising, review and query are provided with the search results. On the other hand, Watcha provides better recommendation utilizing machine learning and tag analyses. Analyzing the degree of each user’s preference based on rating data, it constructs patterns for machine learning. By combining tags extracted from content outlines and the results of user analysis, Watcha realized the high-accuracy recommendation. Due to joining the program, Watcha obtained a good result in development; the number of posts with important rating was increased six-fold. Watcha’s rating data is going to be…

Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese leading telco KDDI (TSE:9433) held a Demo Day for its incubation program KDDI Mugendai Labo last week. Among the four teams newly allowed to participate in the three months-long program, AMI developing smart stethoscope won the KDDI Mugen Labo Award, and Warrantee won the Audience Award (refer to this article for details about Warrantee). The following introduces the content of the pitch competition by the four teams that joined the program from the 11th batch.

Watcha

Watcha’s Jaeok Lee
Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

Korea-based Watcha, supported by Toppan Printing (TSE:7911) and KDDI, is tackling the problems of the content search system.

For conventional search methods, in particular for entertainment content, recommended information, advertising, review and query are provided with the search results. On the other hand, Watcha provides better recommendation utilizing machine learning and tag analyses. Analyzing the degree of each user’s preference based on rating data, it constructs patterns for machine learning. By combining tags extracted from content outlines and the results of user analysis, Watcha realized the high-accuracy recommendation.

Due to joining the program, Watcha obtained a good result in development; the number of posts with important rating was increased six-fold. Watcha’s rating data is going to be introduced in a video streaming service Videopass provided by KDDI from June 1st.

Smart Stethoscope by AMI

Shimpei Ogawa, CEO of AMI
Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

AMI, behind a smart stethoscope Cho-Choshinki (literally meaning ‘super-stethoscope’ in Japanese) supported by Toppan Printing and KDDI, won KDDI Mugen Labo Award. Shimpei Ogawa, CEO of AMI, is a practicing medical doctor. The firm developed a stethoscope having an auto-assist function for diagnosis, aiming to find out particular heart diseases by analyzing digitalized heart sounds and combining this data with electrocardiogram.

There is no advanced medical instrument in medical care at disaster sites or remote places. Stethoscopes are useful medical devices especially in these situations, seen everywhere and remaining unchanged since invented in France 200 years ago. The firm focused on this point and aims to establish a device-linked type medical service in order to support home, remote and preventive medicine. The firm has been carrying out verification tests for the device and negotiating with medical organizations.

TeNKYU

Hideki Kan, CEO of TeNKYU
Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

The TeNKYU team has been supported by Softfront Holdings (TSE:2321), Dentsu (TSE:4324), Hitachi (TSE:6521) and KDDI during the program.

TeNKYU is a light bulb-shaped IoT device capable of automatically notifying online information such as weather forecasts by blinking the light; the device shows whether it will rain or not by the color tone of the light using its motion sensor and color LED. The device can also cover pollen information, rate of exchange, garbage day or lucky color, and is switchable via app, so that users will no longer need to search these information with internet communication devices like smartphone.

VRize

Hideyuki Shoda, CEO of VRize
Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

VRize has been supported by Supership, Dai Nippon Printing (TSE:7912), Microsoft Japan and KDDI. The firm offers CMS (content management system) under the same name for development of apps available for VR (virtual reality) platform, enabling distribution of 360-degree videos or 2D videos optimized for VR. This system improves work efficiency of VR app development, shortening a process requiring three months into one-tenth of that.

The firm carried out a test operation of VR videos at lounges in an airport and obtained positive feedbacks in which more than 90% of users answered they would like to use this service again. The firm will commence sales of the product via sales agents and plans to develop its business along with its advertising platform which will also be launched soon.

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Participant startups graduated from the previous 10th batch

Katsunori Shimomura, CEO of Enowa
Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

As for participant startups of the previous 10th batch, namely, Axelspace, Xshell, Enowa and Mamorio, they have been continuously supported and been performing verification tests with partnered companies over half a year.

Axelspace, which is behind a satellite image service, conducted various demonstration tests jointly with KDDI, aiming to turn satellite images into meaningful data available for business utilizing deep learning. For example, the firm has been carrying out tests analyzing images of parking spaces photographed by satellites and utilizing the data for research activities required for setting parking charges, in collaboration with Mitsui Fudosan (TSE:8801).

See also:

Xshell, behind an IoT (internet of things) device development / management platform enabling web service-like management, succeeded in funding and it is the first case to succeed in doing so during program participation.

Makoto Takahashi, Executive Vice President of KDDI
Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

Adding TDK (TSE:6762) and Seibu Railway (TSE:9002), the number of partner companies to jointly develop business with startups will reach 36 from the next 12th batch. The 12th batch will be held over one year from this August to the end of July 2018 and accepts primary applications to entry the program from 18th May to 19th June. It can accept applications after this period but the support term may be shortened.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

UUSIA interior arts marketplace wins KDDI Mugen Labo 9th Demo Day in Tokyo

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See the original story in Japanese. KDDI Mugen Labo, the startup acceleration arm by Japan’s second largest telco, held last week its 9th startup Demo Day in Tokyo for participants of their program. On Demo Day, 4 teams from the Original Program and 2 teams from the Hardware Program pitched the progress they’ve made over the last several months. Camelors, which developed the UUSIA marketplace where artists can sell their interior arts and the UUSIA PICTURE IoT (Internet of Things) photo frame with e-paper that users can decorate with the art items purchased through UUSIA, won the top prize. UUSIA by Camelors (Top award winner) Prize: Fashion accessories by Monoco There are more and more fashionable cafes in town these days, with the cultural setting for enjoyment of interior arts in one’s living room becoming widespread. On the other hand, the arts remain difficult-to-obtain, financially and culturally. At the same time, the artists are unsatisfied with their situation where not enough opportunity to present their artworks exists. UUSIA is a marketplace where artists can sell their interior artworks. Users can casually buy the artworks as if they are buying LINE stickers. Although the platform has not been launched yet, they have…

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See the original story in Japanese.

KDDI Mugen Labo, the startup acceleration arm by Japan’s second largest telco, held last week its 9th startup Demo Day in Tokyo for participants of their program. On Demo Day, 4 teams from the Original Program and 2 teams from the Hardware Program pitched the progress they’ve made over the last several months.

Camelors, which developed the UUSIA marketplace where artists can sell their interior arts and the UUSIA PICTURE IoT (Internet of Things) photo frame with e-paper that users can decorate with the art items purchased through UUSIA, won the top prize.

UUSIA by Camelors (Top award winner)

Prize: Fashion accessories by Monoco

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There are more and more fashionable cafes in town these days, with the cultural setting for enjoyment of interior arts in one’s living room becoming widespread. On the other hand, the arts remain difficult-to-obtain, financially and culturally. At the same time, the artists are unsatisfied with their situation where not enough opportunity to present their artworks exists.

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UUSIA is a marketplace where artists can sell their interior artworks. Users can casually buy the artworks as if they are buying LINE stickers. Although the platform has not been launched yet, they have garnered approvals from 539 artists in a single day. They will release the beta version of UUSIA in March and will also start their crowdfunding campaign from May in the US for their UUSIA PICTURE IoT photo frame. As it is electronic paper-based, it is not necessary to have continuous power supply for its display.

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KDDI was in charge of mentoring, and supported by measuring power consumption, carrying out technical research on electronic parts as well as development of sales channel, among other activities, to realize their concept of service.

Dendama (Audience choice award winner)

Prize: 3 Cool Gadgets presented by Monoco

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A team of 6 who met at a KDDI hackathon event. While Kendama (bilboquet or cup-and-ball) has become known worldwide for the game (Kendama 2.0), this team has evolved Kendama by applying IoT and trying to realize Kendama 3.0 with the new product “Dendama.” With a built-in sensor/communication function using a smartphone/actuator, it makes it possible to have two people play or in teamplay and to provide damage to opponents by catching a ball in the cups or making a ball land on the spike.

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The market of Kendama is approximated at 2 billion yen ($17.6 million). But by channeling in the virtual game market (12.7 billion yen / $112 million), the darts market (119 billion yen / $1 billion) etc. through IoT’izing Kendama and expanding the global market, they are aiming for a market fivefold larger than all of these markets combined. On 29 February, they will launch their crowdfunding campaign on Makuake. While they will sell their product via Makuake or Kickstarter for B2C, for B2B2C they are looking for channels to expand into darts bars, amusement facilities and nursing homes.

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KDDI, which was in charge of mentoring, supported as to parts selection, in obtaining certification and by establishing a mass production system, with cooperation from Yukai Engineering, Jenesis and Crea. They are also considering provision of an opportunity for trial “play stands” at KDDI mobile shops.

HRDatabank

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The HRDatabank team is comprised of Korean and Tunisian entrepreneurs and engineers. They originally provided the “Study in Japan” support service platform for foreign students in Japan. After consulting over 600 users from 50 countries, they found that the users are interested in job hunting more than in study itself. Therefore they established a human resources supply model in developing countries and developed HRDatabank.

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They are specialized in recruiting engineers from developing countries. Normally it takes 100 minutes to review resumes, but thanks to 24 condition filters, now it takes only 10 seconds. Users can communicate by text chat or video chat and organize the interview schedules. If needed, they can create an application form based on data from the resume to submit to the immigration office or entrust visa application to administrative scriveners.

Google and KDDI offered them mentoring. Google mainly supported in terms of marketing methods for global expansion, and offered one-to-one support in the technical fields.

AppMotor by Revode

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It is common to ask someone who is knowledgable or look it up on the Internet, when a bug or an error occurs during programming. However, for someone who is getting into programming for the first time, it is hard to find experts around and it takes a lot of time to look up unfamiliar information on the Internet.

AppMotor is a bug fixing support platform for programmers or future programmers. Users can post their problems and connect with technicians on the platform who can solve it. The users can ask the technicians who guide them for a solution, by sharing user screen, keyboard input and movement of mouse. They also offer video call support.

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They will hold an operational test at the TECH::CAMP developer training course, and have begun recruiting users for the closed version starting 22 February. Sumitomo Realty & Development was in charge of mentoring, and supported in examination of the business model, introduction of clients and offering the opportunity of conducting “touch and try” events.

ViC by AG

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There exists the issue with e-commerce as to the difficulty in telling the customers the product sizes or texture only with product photos. Therefore, especially in e-commerce dealing with fashion or interior goods, it is not so rare for the customers to return the items after trying them. It is because that they can not make the customers understand enough the product information such as texture, comfortability or nuance with its description and photos.

At VIC, they solved this e-commerce problem in using video of the product description as well as the example of use. Users can purchase the product by clicking and selecting on the video. The users can also look up detailed nuances of texture via close-up images by sliding the pointer on the screen.

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Japanese credit company Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS offered mentoring, introducing AG to Parco, one of Japan’s leading fashion department stores, and ViC is now installed in Parco’s EC site Meetscal Store. Their selling point is that their video production costs are the industry’s lowest price level so that they can aim to lead customers from movies, TV series or cooking programs to e-commerce by product replacement.

Buildy by Claude Tech

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In Japan, it is statistically said that 24% of small and mid-sized restaurants and retailers close their business in 2.5 years. For these, the business continuity depends on securing repeat customers. Although they create websites, flyers or coupons, they may not catch a customer’s attention because of information saturation. Also, leading chain stores started to create mobile apps for push notification, using owned media or the merit of being installed in smartphones, but it is still unaffordable for small and mid-sized business owners.

Buildy is a platform targeting small and mid-sized restaurants/retailers to create their own mobile app, where users can use the standard function gratis, the app being completed at shortest in 3 minutes. In addition to the app, they can also create a website. So far, it has been introduced to hair salons, clothing boutiques and restaurants, for starters. In the future, they aim to acquire 2 million small and mid-sized retailers/restaurants, and they aim for their users to secure their own repeat customers through this app. At the moment, its main function is for communication between stores and customers, but in the future they are planning to add functions such as making reservations or e-commerce payment, among others.

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Dai Nippon Printing who was charged with mentoring, supported by brushing up their O2O (Online to Offline) business model and contacting with potential customers and collaborators. Claude Tech won the hackathon event in Tokyo held by PayPal with a service called Talk’nPick, and they launched its beta version on 22 February.

Shifting from incubator to accelerator

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After the pitch of the 9th batch graduating startups, Makoto Takahashi, Managing Executive Officer at KDDI, appeared on the stage and emphasized that since 2011 a total of 45 startups had graduated from KDDI Mugen Labo. To mark the upcoming 10th batch, he announced that the program will be shifting from a seed stage-targeted incubator to an early stage-targeted accelerator.

Specifically, the application condition that candidates have not launched products, has been eliminated, and the target will be shifted to business feasibility and business cooperation with KDDI Mugen Labo partner corporates rather than launch of products. In addition to the 18 existing partner corporates, 12 corporates have been newly added to support in acceleration, and KDDI now has 30 partner corporates. It is interesting that Japanese public broadcaster NHK and all the private broadcasting companies in Tokyo participate in the program, if including their affiliated companies.

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Recently, with the intension of enhancing cooperation between partner corporations and startups, they organize pitches where startups visit Credit Saison, Toppan Printing, Mitsui Fudosan, Dai Nippon Printing to pitch in front of the employees. They also focus on mining new startups in cooperation with the municipalities of Osaka, Ishinomaki, Hiroshima and Fukuoka cities.

At the same time as the end of this year’s (that is, 9th) Demo Day, KDDI Mugen Labo started accepting applications for the 10th batch as from 22 February. In addition to the 9th batch, there are two categories: Original Program and Hardware Program, both targeted in a wide variety of fields: financial /settlement, healthcare, media/advertising, entertainment, life event, business solution, tourism/agriculture, robot/mobility, and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality/Artificial Intelligence.

The deadline is March 22, and the program will start from the end of April. In case of the prescribed number of startups are met before March 22, they may stop accepting the applications. Therefore, we recommend a prompt entry if you’re thinking about applying for it. KDDI will hold briefing sessions on March 1, 2, 9 & 10 from 6-8pm at Shibuya Hikarie (at the KDDI Mugen Labo space) or to skype them.

Translated by Minako Ambiru via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Kurt Hanson

Mobile shoe fitting and ordering app Cinderella Shoes wins 8th KDDI Mugen Labo Demo Day

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See the original story in Japanese. On July 14th at Shibuya Hikarie in Tokyo, Japan’s leading telco, KDDI (TSE:9433) held a Demo Day event for the 8th batch of the KDDI Mugen Labo incubation program. In continuing with the program’s format, partnered businesses offered mentoring and support for participating startups over the three-month incubation period. The audience choice award as well as the grand prize went to Cinderella, the company behind the app Cinderella Shoes. The following is a summary of the participating startups’ pitches that were given. (The title of each section consists of the service’s name and the name of the speaker. The company’s name, if it differs from their service, will be placed in parentheses.) Cinderella Shoes (Cinderella): Pitch by Kumiko Matsumoto In keeping with the name, Cinderella Shoes is an e-commerce service for women which is used to get the most accurate shoe recommendations by entering information about your feet in the app. CEO Kumiko Matsumoto who was selected for the program, has been involved in designing shoes for thirteen years. Finding the most appropriate shoes requires a variety of foot measurements, not just shoe size alone, but the number of people who have actually measured…

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See the original story in Japanese.

On July 14th at Shibuya Hikarie in Tokyo, Japan’s leading telco, KDDI (TSE:9433) held a Demo Day event for the 8th batch of the KDDI Mugen Labo incubation program. In continuing with the program’s format, partnered businesses offered mentoring and support for participating startups over the three-month incubation period.

The audience choice award as well as the grand prize went to Cinderella, the company behind the app Cinderella Shoes. The following is a summary of the participating startups’ pitches that were given. (The title of each section consists of the service’s name and the name of the speaker. The company’s name, if it differs from their service, will be placed in parentheses.)

Cinderella Shoes (Cinderella): Pitch by Kumiko Matsumoto

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In keeping with the name, Cinderella Shoes is an e-commerce service for women which is used to get the most accurate shoe recommendations by entering information about your feet in the app. CEO Kumiko Matsumoto who was selected for the program, has been involved in designing shoes for thirteen years.

Finding the most appropriate shoes requires a variety of foot measurements, not just shoe size alone, but the number of people who have actually measured their feet before is quite few. Meanwhile shoe store staff that actually know proper fitting techniques are rare, and custom order shoes are expensive and often not very cute.

Matsumoto believes that this service will now be able to offer a solution for the challenge of appropriate shoe selection. By taking a picture of your feet and sending it to the service using a smartphone camera, users will be able to get suggestions for shoes that will be a perfect fit. Serving as mentors to Cinderella, KDDI and Sumitomo Fudosan (TSE:8830) were active in collaboration to develop the needed image recognition technology and voice recognition.

Oshareca: Pitch by Natsumi Satake

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“Information about hairstyling is everywhere now, but what if I just want to see information that is more tailored to my personal preferences and hair type? I have a regular stylist and salon but I can’t go very often due to cost. I like to see a service that allows more direct communication with stylists and beauticians.” That was the basis for Oshareca, an application for nominating individual beauticians and making reservations.

As a female student entrepreneur, CEO Natsumi Satake’s aim is to optimize the beauty industry by digitizing the inefficient telephone reservation system that is predominantly used. With Credit Saison participating as Oshareca’s mentor company, follow-ups have been carried out using market data from their business network in the beauty industry.

Bee Sensing: Pitch by Hideki Matsubara

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Bee Sensing is a startup that is automating the management of honey production with AI(artificial intelligence)-equipped beehives. CEO Hideki Matsubara says that because honey producing beehives are typically located away from densely populated areas, there is a large need for automation and optimization in the beekeeping industry. As a beekeeper and honey producer himself, Matsubara founded the company in reaction to market pressure from cheap foreign produced honey.

Depending on location and local flora, the taste of honey can change dramatically. By being able to manage multiple hives in remote areas without having to go all the way there to check on them, Bee Sensing will increase the total number of hives that one person or team is capable of managing.

Matsubara says he hopes to reach half of all domestically produced honey with this project. The mentor company, Toppan Printing, is also considering advancing the service into the agriculture industry as an in-house project.

Handmade goods platform PU (SuperStudio): Pitch by Tsutomu Mano

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SuperStudio proposed a platform for handmade things called PU. The platform will bring together various how-to instructions and information related to DIY targeted at interior and general goods, as well as allow users to post and share their own DIY how-to’s.

With the hopes of creating a more multifaceted platform by soliciting cooperation with web media, events, and e-commerce to, for example, suggest retailers from whom materials can be purchased directly. CEO Tsutomu Mano also plans to create a system of creative collaboration with art university students and others from their warehouse located in eastern part of Tokyo. Tokyo-based private broadcaster TV Asahi offered their knowledge and experience with regard to creating large quantities of video content as PU’s mentor.

Lyncue: Pitch by Teijiro Shiotsuka

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Lyncue is a device that proposes connecting people living far apart using light as a main feature. By turning on one of the paired devices the other will light up, creating a new way to feel the presence of someone even from remote distance. The concept that has been suggested by the company is “communication using light.”

The Lyncue device is equipped with a camera and a projector, so when two paired devices are both lit up video can be transmitted and received. For example, by sending a Lyncue device to your grandparents who live far away, it’s possible for them to talk to and see their children and grandchildren in a convenient and natural manner.

In addition to KDDI, Hitachi also participated as a mentor to the project, offering their wealth of manufacturing knowledge and even offering assistance with things such as circuit design. KDDI also supported the device by incorporating their telecommunications environment to help produce a concrete product.


The Demo Day event came to a close with an explanation of what to expect at the next program from KDDI Representative Director Makoto Takahashi.

The 8th batch was conducted in cooperation and with the support from 15 partnering companies, featuring the first appearance of proposals in the hardware category. Since the beginning of the program a total of 39 startups have graduated from the program and 29 of them have successfully fundraised from investors.

Additionally, with regard to the business matching occurring in the program, collaborations between 70 partner companies have been born, doubling from the previous term.

“There’s definitely pressure to bring new things to the table every time.” Takahashi shared, “We’re paying close attention to manufacturing opportunities right now.” Partner involvement in the 9th batch will be expanded even further, including companies such as Google, Sumitomo Fudosan, Japanese credit card company Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS (TSE:8583) in a list of 18 newly added companies. Collaboration efforts with local governments are also being expanded, with Ishinomaki City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and Fukuoka City now included.

Lastly, it was announced that, starting from next time, a program geared towards aiding manufacturing related businesses will begin. Diverging from the standard three-month pattern, this program will feature a six-month backing term. KDDI explained that they will offer substantial support including business matching with enterprises to the teams that have graduated from the past incubation batches as well.

Translated by Connor Kirk
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

Japan’s CDN startup Mist Technologies raises from Global Brain for global expansion

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Mist Technologies, a startup that has been developing and providing a CDN (content distribution network) platform for rich media content, called MistCDN, announced earlier this week that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from KDDI Open Innovation Fund, a startup-focused fund operated by Tokyo-based investment firm Global Brain. This round follows the startup’s previous funding of 75 million yen ($636,000) from Sirius Partners back in September 2014. MistCDN is a content distribution network leveraging the WebRTC technology, which requires no server but enables peer-to-peer data transfer using only web browsers between users, technically similar to the concept adopted by Skype. MistCDN allows users to receive content distribution from their near users in network topology. So if you distribute rich media content, which are likely to cause a heavy load for networks, MistCDN enables smooth data traffic without using existing commercial CDN services such as Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, and Livelight. Mist Technologies was born out of the 6th batch of KDDI Mugen Labo, the accelerator program by Japan’s second largest telco. Tokyo-based private broadcaster TV Asahi, one of the companies participating in an alliance program for the accelerator, is considering to adopt MistCDN, plus…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Mist Technologies, a startup that has been developing and providing a CDN (content distribution network) platform for rich media content, called MistCDN, announced earlier this week that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from KDDI Open Innovation Fund, a startup-focused fund operated by Tokyo-based investment firm Global Brain. This round follows the startup’s previous funding of 75 million yen ($636,000) from Sirius Partners back in September 2014.

MistCDN is a content distribution network leveraging the WebRTC technology, which requires no server but enables peer-to-peer data transfer using only web browsers between users, technically similar to the concept adopted by Skype. MistCDN allows users to receive content distribution from their near users in network topology. So if you distribute rich media content, which are likely to cause a heavy load for networks, MistCDN enables smooth data traffic without using existing commercial CDN services such as Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, and Livelight.

Mist Technologies was born out of the 6th batch of KDDI Mugen Labo, the accelerator program by Japan’s second largest telco. Tokyo-based private broadcaster TV Asahi, one of the companies participating in an alliance program for the accelerator, is considering to adopt MistCDN, plus KDDI has decided to deploy it into one of their corporate clients.

Mist Technologies will use the funds to strengthen product and business development and expand to the US.

WebRTC enables a stable data distribution regardless of increasing or decreasing browsing users. Because of the unnecessity of server scale-out, it is an ideal solution for startups, especially for those who provide services requiring huge network traffic but cannot afford to invest much on relevant infrastructure. However, the WebRTC technology requires a wide range of engineering knowledge across multiple layers, so not many Japanese startups have developed a business based on it.

NTT Communications unveiled a platform for developing apps using WebRTC in 2014, called SkyWay. Other available examples leveraging the technology by Japanese startups include Sensei Note, a vertical social network platform for schoolteachers.

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Mist Technologies’ CEO Shintaro Tanaka throws a pitch at KDDI Mugen Labo demo day. (Tokyo, July 2014)

Edited by Kurt Hanson

Hospital service improvement startup Dr. Joy wins 7th KDDI Mugen Labo Demo Day

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech incubator of Japan’s second largest telco, hosted a demo day event today. Five startups that graduated from the seventh batch of the incubator’s program showcased their achievements over the last several months, upon receiving assistance from 13 big companies supporting the initiative. Dr. Joy, the service improvement platform for hospitals and other healthcare organizations, won the top award and the audience vote award. Dr. Joy Dr. Joy is a social platform aiming to eliminate waste in medical services. Dr. Joy CEO Hiroaki Ishimatsu is a practicing medical doctor who settled in a hospital for an year to find out what the platform requires. Ishimatsu explained: At hospital, we usually have to wait so long but a doctor’s consultation will finish in a minute. Medical offices are busily occupied with document processing. As soon as your doctor starts your consultation, his phone will ring and he has to care about another patient. Dr. Joy aims to streamline this work flow, by helping doctors and other employees in a hospital share information resources while improving  their daily operations. The team is testing the product at several medical institutions, preparing to deploy the platform at four university hospitals. Sakaseru Sakaseru enables a flower gift to be delivered using smartphones while consulting…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech incubator of Japan’s second largest telco, hosted a demo day event today. Five startups that graduated from the seventh batch of the incubator’s program showcased their achievements over the last several months, upon receiving assistance from 13 big companies supporting the initiative.

Dr. Joy, the service improvement platform for hospitals and other healthcare organizations, won the top award and the audience vote award.

Dr. Joy

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Dr. Joy CEO Hiroaki Ishimatsu

Dr. Joy is a social platform aiming to eliminate waste in medical services. Dr. Joy CEO Hiroaki Ishimatsu is a practicing medical doctor who settled in a hospital for an year to find out what the platform requires.

Ishimatsu explained:

At hospital, we usually have to wait so long but a doctor’s consultation will finish in a minute. Medical offices are busily occupied with document processing. As soon as your doctor starts your consultation, his phone will ring and he has to care about another patient.

Dr. Joy aims to streamline this work flow, by helping doctors and other employees in a hospital share information resources while improving  their daily operations. The team is testing the product at several medical institutions, preparing to deploy the platform at four university hospitals.

Sakaseru

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Goal CEO Yusuke Nishiyama

Sakaseru enables a flower gift to be delivered using smartphones while consulting with advisors. Goal, the company behind Sakaseru, was founded by Yusuke Nishiyama, who owns a flower shop in Tokyo’s fashionable Roppongi district, and award-winning florist Akihiro Nozaki.

Via the Sakaseru platform, users can ask for one’s favorite flower designer by filling an online questionnaire form to create and order a bouquet for someone, regardless of one’s knowledge of flowers. The bouquet can be delivered to a designated location at a designated time.

Ingram

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Ingram allowa one to locate a product of choice for purchase, by taking a picture of it on TV shows or magazines with a smartphone camera. The app was developed by Tokyo-based Add Quality.

Add Quality CEO Soichi Matsuda explained:

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Add Quality CEO Soichi Matsuda

The accuracy of our app in finding relevant results depends on how much its artificial intelligence has learned user cases. We would need to ask someone for additional data if we wanted to increase user cases, obviously a time-consuming task. That’s why we developed an independently-learning system that collects data from users.

While the app is still not good at qualitative search, it allows you to find relevant data without meta information utilizing a statistical observation method. The clipping feature in the app will provide  notification upon spotting a price decrease associated with a product of choice.

Hado

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Meleap CEO Hiroshi Fukuda

Meleap has developed a sports game environment called Hado, leveraging a combination of several technologies such as spatial perception, head-mounted display (HMD) and motion sensors. It virtually reproduces decorated rooms and townscapes for users upon enjoying games or exercises.

The platform consists of a smart watch and a smartphone-connected HMD, aiming to serve users for affordable prices. Yuki Mori of Tokyo-based private broadcaster TV Asahi supporting this startup commented on their mentoring result.

We gave the Meleap team our expertise of engineering and video production as well as event opportunities. We henceforth plan to collaborate with the team for developing content and producing TV programs.

∞books (Mugen Books)

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Mugen Books CEO Yukihiro Sada

Mugen Books is a non-inventory book publishing platform leveraging on-demand printing services. Users can create an article using a web app and order its publication just by pressing a button on the web.

Mugen Books CEO Yukihiro Sada has developed a service that allows authors to publish a book starting with a single copy, having brought 250 book titles. He found that many people are interested in creating their books but are unlikely to do so because of the possible expensive  and obstacles.

Published titles can be distributed digitally as well as in print, which can be put on sale at online bookstores like Amazon.


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KDDI SVP Makoto Takahashi

In the final part of the Demo Day event, KDDI’s SVP Makoto Takahashi unveiled their strategy about how they will conduct the next batch:

I believe that the three-month batch was a memorable experience for participating startups. During the batch, we have given eight business-matching opportunities with our supporting companies to each of these startups. We have also worked on helping companies and startups co-create new ideas together, resulting in bringing out four actual cases.

KDDI will enhance the alliance program for startups in the next batch, adding Credit Saison and Hitachi to a group of the program’s supporting companies. In addition, they will strengthen regional expansion, starting with partnering with Osaka Innovation Hubto better nourish startup communities outside the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

P2P-based content distribution network MistCDN wins at KDDI incubator’s Demo Day

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech incubator of Japan’s second largest telco, hosted a demo day event today, where five startups that graduated from the fifth batch of the incubator’s program showcased their achievements over the last several months. MistCDN, a P2P-based content distribution network leveraging the WebRTC technology, won the top prize at the event. Here’s a quick rundown on what the five teams have been working on. MistCDN by Mist Technologies (The best prize and the ‘best engineer’ prize winner) MistCDN is a content distribution network designed to distribute rich content. Unlike conventional CDN services, it obtains content from another user nearby in the network topology browsing the same content that you want to browse, so it requires no edge server or network. The company launched a live streaming service using the MistCDN technology today. Filme by Coto-Coto (The ‘Family Ties’ prize and the ‘Audience’ prize winner) Mothers like to videotape their children, but many complain that they have no time to edit and share the videos. To address this issue, Filme edits your video clips, creates a DVD, and delivers it to you or other family members periodically. All you have…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech incubator of Japan’s second largest telco, hosted a demo day event today, where five startups that graduated from the fifth batch of the incubator’s program showcased their achievements over the last several months.

MistCDN, a P2P-based content distribution network leveraging the WebRTC technology, won the top prize at the event. Here’s a quick rundown on what the five teams have been working on.

MistCDN by Mist Technologies (The best prize and the ‘best engineer’ prize winner)

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Shintaro Tanaka

MistCDN is a content distribution network designed to distribute rich content. Unlike conventional CDN services, it obtains content from another user nearby in the network topology browsing the same content that you want to browse, so it requires no edge server or network. The company launched a live streaming service using the MistCDN technology today.

Filme by Coto-Coto (The ‘Family Ties’ prize and the ‘Audience’ prize winner)

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Shingo Kadomatsu

Mothers like to videotape their children, but many complain that they have no time to edit and share the videos. To address this issue, Filme edits your video clips, creates a DVD, and delivers it to you or other family members periodically. All you have to do is videotape a 30-second clip every day and upload it to the Filme website. We consider this a version of the Kiddy family photo delivery service.

QuaQua by Ducklings (The ‘New Workstyle’ prize winner)

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Norikazu Takagi

QuaQua is a marketplace for handmade jewelry. Users post a photo of their designs before manufacturing it. Once a design earns enough votes to make a profit, a user can start making, thus reducing the loss risk. While QuaQua initially aimed to establish a marketplace for general handmade crafts, they pivoted to jewelry because of potential competition.

Macaron by SPWTECH (The ‘Key of Beauty’ prize winner)

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Keita Yoshida

Macaron is a fashion and beauty information-focused curation app for young females. Curated by 12 female university students, the app provides useful tips for women on how to be more fashionable and attractive. Its iOS app will be released soon, and its Android app will be out by year-end.

Repro (The ‘Global Create’ prize)

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Yusuke Hirata

Repro is an analytics solution that allows game developers to improve their apps to increase user retention rates. By integrating the Repro SDK, developers can see how users play their app as well as how they look during game play. Twelve developers have adopted Repro’s analytics solution for 16 apps.

Along with this event, KDDI Mugen Labo announced it now accepting applications for the 7th batch of its incubation program. The deadline is August 15th. Apply here.

Japanese mobile auction site for women wins at KDDI Demo Day [Photos]

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Last week KDDI Mugen Labo held a demo day event for its fifth batch of incubated startups. Our readers may recall that we previewed this batch of five startups back in September, which included: Photo curation service Zukan Personal finance app Dr. Wallet Mobile auction app Smaoku (Smart Auction) Bike parking service PedalRest Streaming lecture service Aoi Zemi These five startups pitched their services on stage at the Hikarie event hall in Shibuya at the demo day event, showing the progress they’ve made over the past few months. In the end it was Smaoku that was awarded the top prize of the day, with CEO Daisaku Harada impressing the crowd in attendance with his mobile auction app for ladies. Our readers may recall that we interviewed them last October. Smaoku, while it is not a mobile flea market app, continues the recent Japanese trend of mobile C2C commerce services that we have seen over the past year. Other notable startups in this space include Mercari and Fril to name just a few. Smaoku, Harada has said, will leverage the game-like feeling of auctions in order to stand out from the crowd here in Japan. In his presentation, he explained that…

Daisaku Harada

Last week KDDI Mugen Labo held a demo day event for its fifth batch of incubated startups. Our readers may recall that we previewed this batch of five startups back in September, which included:

These five startups pitched their services on stage at the Hikarie event hall in Shibuya at the demo day event, showing the progress they’ve made over the past few months. In the end it was Smaoku that was awarded the top prize of the day, with CEO Daisaku Harada impressing the crowd in attendance with his mobile auction app for ladies. Our readers may recall that we interviewed them last October.

Smaoku, while it is not a mobile flea market app, continues the recent Japanese trend of mobile C2C commerce services that we have seen over the past year. Other notable startups in this space include Mercari and Fril to name just a few. Smaoku, Harada has said, will leverage the game-like feeling of auctions in order to stand out from the crowd here in Japan.

In his presentation, he explained that the amount of money they have transacted on Smaoku has been growing exponentially over the past few months. As you can see in one of the graphics from Harada’s presentation (see all his slides below). Back in November they were just transacting in the tens of thousands of yen (hundreds of dollars). But that grew by about four times in December to amount to millions of yen, and in January it grew again by five times to be in the tens of millions. These numbers, while admittedly rather vague, are still pretty encouraging.

I was also a little curious about their upside-down hanger logo. Daisaku explained to me that it sort of reflects the experience they want their users to have, turning their frowns upside-down in a similar way. I thought that was kind of cute, certainly a memorable image anyway.

You can check out a few more photos from the event below. We should note that photo curation service Zukan.com won the ‘Audience Prize’ at the event. But we look forward to hearing more from all five of these young startups in the next year or so. So stay tuned!

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KDDI Mugen Labo unveils 5 new incubated startups

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KDDI Mugen Labo is the incubation arm of Japan’s second largest telco, KDDI. It recently unveiled five startups that qualified to participate in the fifth batch of its incubation program. They will receive mentoring in residency at the incubator as well as free rental of smartphone or tablet devices. Here’s a quick rundown of the startups and what they will be working on. Zukan.com Zukan.com is a consumer-generated photo curation site that aims to create a variety of encyclopedias. The platform was developed by two engineers from Kyushu University’s graduate school. One example of how it works is a curated picture book that introduces 2,700 species of fish shown in 34,000 pictures. Dr. Wallet Some of our readers may recall that we recently featured this personal finance data entry solution that simply scans your receipts. Dr. Wallet does not use OCR (optical character recognition) but instead depends on human-powered data entry to ensure accuracy, sorting and classifying your purchases as well. With this human element, the company can achieve data entry accuracy of up to 99.98%, likely enough to ease users’ concerns of erroneous input. The startup is backed by Incubate Fund. SmaOku SmaOku, a Japanese portmanteau of ‘Smart’ and…

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KDDI Mugen Labo is the incubation arm of Japan’s second largest telco, KDDI. It recently unveiled five startups that qualified to participate in the fifth batch of its incubation program. They will receive mentoring in residency at the incubator as well as free rental of smartphone or tablet devices.

Here’s a quick rundown of the startups and what they will be working on.

Zukan.com

Zukan.com is a consumer-generated photo curation site that aims to create a variety of encyclopedias. The platform was developed by two engineers from Kyushu University’s graduate school. One example of how it works is a curated picture book that introduces 2,700 species of fish shown in 34,000 pictures.

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Dr. Wallet

Some of our readers may recall that we recently featured this personal finance data entry solution that simply scans your receipts. Dr. Wallet does not use OCR (optical character recognition) but instead depends on human-powered data entry to ensure accuracy, sorting and classifying your purchases as well. With this human element, the company can achieve data entry accuracy of up to 99.98%, likely enough to ease users’ concerns of erroneous input. The startup is backed by Incubate Fund.

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SmaOku

SmaOku, a Japanese portmanteau of ‘Smart’ and ‘Auction’, is a mobile auction app focused on second-hand clothes for females. Users can create their own store in as little as three minutes using a smartphone. The service was developed by Tokyo-based startup Zawatt, which has been developing notable web services like WishScope and Ohaco. CEO Daisaku Harada believes conventional auction sites don’t fit with user behaviors in the smartphone era, and so he is aspiring to develop a more simple auction platform.

PEDALRest

PEDALRest is a finalist from a recent Startup Weekend Tokyo event. In Tokyo, illegal bicycle parking near railway stations is a big problem for many local governments. But from the commuter’s point of view, it can be hard to find a parking space. This service connects you with landlords who have idle spaces, allowing you to easily find a space for your bicycle. It makes our communities a marginally easier place to live in, and it eliminates the danger of costly parking fines.

Aoi Zemi

Aoi Zemi (‘zemi’ here means ‘seminar’), is a live-streamed online lecture service for junior high students. Their focus is to provide informative live programming as well as opportunities to interact with other users by sharing something they’re calling ‘timelines’. Live-streaming is available for free, but you will be charged for watching recorded lecture programs.

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This 5th batch of the incubator program will start very shortly, and we can expect to see the results of their efforts at their presentation event three months from now.

Japanese social gifting startup launches purchase behavior analysis solution

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See the original story in Japanese. Earlier this week KDDI Mugen Labo, held a demo day event which included a presentation from Giftee, a past graduate from its program. The startup allows you to send friends an e-voucher which they can then redeem at certain retailers. To give a gift, all you need is a connection to that person on a social network, and you can easily send presents to friends without even asking for their physical mail addresses. During their demo day presentation, the company unveiled a new voucher issuing system for businesses. This SaaS solution allows them to issue one-time validity e-vouchers to their customers, who can redeem it at local stores. For retailers, this new solution lets you check the validity of a voucher using the barcode scanner of a POS register at a shop. Extra equipment isn’t required to operate the service. Companies can easily distribute vouchers and analyze user behavior. When companies connect the system with their own CRM systems, they can narrow their target of who can receive e-vouchers according to certain attributes or purchasing histories. If you collect purchasing data of your target users, you can compare their behaviors before and after giving…

gifteeSee the original story in Japanese.

Earlier this week KDDI Mugen Labo, held a demo day event which included a presentation from Giftee, a past graduate from its program. The startup allows you to send friends an e-voucher which they can then redeem at certain retailers. To give a gift, all you need is a connection to that person on a social network, and you can easily send presents to friends without even asking for their physical mail addresses.

During their demo day presentation, the company unveiled a new voucher issuing system for businesses. This SaaS solution allows them to issue one-time validity e-vouchers to their customers, who can redeem it at local stores.

For retailers, this new solution lets you check the validity of a voucher using the barcode scanner of a POS register at a shop. Extra equipment isn’t required to operate the service. Companies can easily distribute vouchers and analyze user behavior.

When companies connect the system with their own CRM systems, they can narrow their target of who can receive e-vouchers according to certain attributes or purchasing histories. If you collect purchasing data of your target users, you can compare their behaviors before and after giving away the voucher.

Giftee was initially launched back in 2010 by three founders who all previously worked with Accenture. The startup received seed funding of 18 million yen (approximately $180,000) from KDDI Mugen Labo, Digital Garage, Kakaku.com, NetPrice, Inspire, and other angel investors back in 2011. Subsequently the company also raised an unknown amount of funds (thought to be in the hundreds of thousands) from Digital Garage and Sunbridge Venture Partners back in 2012.

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5 more fun startups from Japan’s KDDI Mugen Labo

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KDDI Mugen Labo, the tech startup incubator from Japan’s second largest telco, recently unveiled five startups which qualified to participate in the fourth batch of its incubation program. They will start further development and receiving mentoring very shortly. Let’s see what kind of services were chosen, and learn a little about the folks behind them. Class ¶ Class is an alternative social network that lets you experience a sort of virtual reunion by creating a network of ten strangers from the same generation as you. When you sign to the service, you’ll be requested to enter your date of birth. From there, the system will randomly choose someone whom you’ve probably never met but will likely get along with. The service aims to help adults experience the sort of friendships they’ve experienced back when they were students. To help break the ice, the app presents a discussion topic of the day. But interestingly it is a time-limited experience, so the network will be completely gone one month after you create it. Class is being developed by Tokyo-based startup We-b, which is also known for having developed a film or book-oriented Pinterest clone called Log. The app is still in beta…

kddi_mugen_labo_logoKDDI Mugen Labo, the tech startup incubator from Japan’s second largest telco, recently unveiled five startups which qualified to participate in the fourth batch of its incubation program. They will start further development and receiving mentoring very shortly. Let’s see what kind of services were chosen, and learn a little about the folks behind them.

Class

Class is an alternative social network that lets you experience a sort of virtual reunion by creating a network of ten strangers from the same generation as you. When you sign to the service, you’ll be requested to enter your date of birth. From there, the system will randomly choose someone whom you’ve probably never met but will likely get along with. The service aims to help adults experience the sort of friendships they’ve experienced back when they were students. To help break the ice, the app presents a discussion topic of the day. But interestingly it is a time-limited experience, so the network will be completely gone one month after you create it.

Class is being developed by Tokyo-based startup We-b, which is also known for having developed a film or book-oriented Pinterest clone called Log. The app is still in beta but has acquired more than 2,000 users in three days since the launch.

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Kawaii Museum JPN

Inspired by Tokyo Otaku Mode (a subculture media service that has more than 11 million Facebook likes) Kawaii Museum JPN aspires to be a news source about Japanese characters for global audiences. So far it has 3.6 million likes. For monetization, they plan to develop an e-commerce platform specifically for selling character products, and to lead users to stores where they can buy them.

Kawaii Museum JPN is currently being developed by Ruby programmer Taketo Tanaka who previously worked with DeNA.

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Canvas creator

hitokuse_logoCanvas Creator is a tool that helps developers easily design a HTML5-based web app without the need for any coding skills, although the prototype is not yet finalized. The app is being developed by Wataru Miyazaki and his team who are still attending the University of Tokyo, but have won many awards at hackathons or business plan competitions in Tokyo.

Mygrow.jp

life-is-tech_logoMygrow.jp is a tool for teachers which allows them to share and record the growths of their students. The app is developed by Tokyo-based startup Life is Tech, which has been running a bootcamp program for elementary and junior school students to master IT skills. The app visualizes how each students progresses on his or her learning path, helping teachers do their job a little better equipped with this new insight.

Trapro

Trapro aims to solve big social issues such as the low birth rate or global warming. According to the platform’s developer Toshiki Abe, the biggest factors that prevent us from trying to solve social issues are: very few people are interested in it, there’s no information hub about such things, and few people have a solution readily at hand. Trapro allows you to post an article about social issues which you are conscious about, and then invite other users to work on it together.

Mr. Abe is attending the University of Tokyo and organizes a study community called Ridilover. It encourages university students to pay more attention to current social issues.

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This 4th batch for the incubator program will start very shortly, and we can expect to see the results of their efforts at their presentation event three months from now.