See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Thursday that it has fundraised 700 million yen (about $6.4 million US) in the fourth round. This round was led by YJ Capital, the investment arm of Yahoo Japan (TSE:4689), with participatin from VC firms including Shinsei Corporate Investment and Fenox Venture Capital, in addition to Shimane-based local businesses like San-in Chuo TV Broadcasting and Tanabe. This round follows their previous $2.5 million funding from Shimane-based Gogin capital and others back in November of 2016, $3.3 million funding from Pasonatech and DG Incubation back in November of 2015, and about $1 million funding from East Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital back in 2014. With the latest funding, the company has raised at least a total of 1.45 billion yen (about $13.2 million) from investors to date. Similar to the reason why Gogin Capital participated in the previous round, getting companies like San-in Chuo TV Broadcasting and Tanabe as a shareholder may have something to do with the fact that Monstar Lab has a development location in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture. While offering existing offshore app development services…
Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Thursday that it has fundraised 700 million yen (about $6.4 million US) in the fourth round. This round was led by YJ Capital, the investment arm of Yahoo Japan (TSE:4689), with participatin from VC firms including Shinsei Corporate Investment and Fenox Venture Capital, in addition to Shimane-based local businesses like San-in Chuo TV Broadcasting and Tanabe.
This round follows their previous $2.5 million funding from Shimane-based Gogin capital and others back in November of 2016, $3.3 million funding from Pasonatech and DG Incubation back in November of 2015, and about $1 million funding from East Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital back in 2014. With the latest funding, the company has raised at least a total of 1.45 billion yen (about $13.2 million) from investors to date.
Similar to the reason why Gogin Capital participated in the previous round, getting companies like San-in Chuo TV Broadcasting and Tanabe as a shareholder may have something to do with the fact that Monstar Lab has a development location in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture. While offering existing offshore app development services as well, the company plans to invite more engineers from overseas to these locations within Japan, looking to help improve the situation in and around Shimane where companies still struggle with lack of system engineers.
With the recent acquisition of Danish app agency Nodes, the Tokyo company now has 17 locations worldwide for sales and app development efforts. With the latest funding, the company says it will aim to help Japanese companies expand into the Europe and US markets (localization and digital marketing), curate cutting-edge technologies and products from the global market, as well as expecting to receive more orders of outsourced app development work in the Europe and US markets.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Copenhagen-headquartered app agency Nodes ( English / Danish ) for Europe Expansion. This acquisition makes Monstar Lab secure three Nodes’ office locations: Copenhagen (Denmark), Aarhus (Denmark) and London (UK), meaning that the Tokyo company now has 17 locations worldwide for sales and app development efforts. Financial details of the deal such as the investment ratio and the payment date have not been disclosed. When Monstar Lab acquired Manila-based Ideyatech, the former rebranded the latter into Monstar Lab Manila. It is still unclear if the Tokyo company intends to unify its brand with Nodes because the Danish company has a certain level of strong brand presence in the European market where it has clients of globally renowned companies like Samsung, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline. With the acquisition at this time around, Monstar Lab has their presence in three major economies: North America, Asia and Europe. The company claims that it will collect around half of all revenue from outside Japan in 2019. Node is a mobile app development agency founded back in 2008, employing 75 people…
Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Copenhagen-headquartered app agency Nodes ( English / Danish ) for Europe Expansion. This acquisition makes Monstar Lab secure three Nodes’ office locations: Copenhagen (Denmark), Aarhus (Denmark) and London (UK), meaning that the Tokyo company now has 17 locations worldwide for sales and app development efforts. Financial details of the deal such as the investment ratio and the payment date have not been disclosed.
When Monstar Lab acquired Manila-based Ideyatech, the former rebranded the latter into Monstar Lab Manila. It is still unclear if the Tokyo company intends to unify its brand with Nodes because the Danish company has a certain level of strong brand presence in the European market where it has clients of globally renowned companies like Samsung, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline. With the acquisition at this time around, Monstar Lab has their presence in three major economies: North America, Asia and Europe. The company claims that it will collect around half of all revenue from outside Japan in 2019.
Node is a mobile app development agency founded back in 2008, employing 75 people consisting of developers, designers and mobile consultants in three locations in Denmark and UK. Carnival.io, the mobile marketing-focused subsidiary of cloud-based customer relationship management platform developer Sailthru, has chosen Nodes as one of the top 12 European Mobile Agencies in 2017.
Regarding the reasons why Monstar Lab has chosen Nodes for acquisition, the Tokyo company answered that:
Nodes has established its brand in multiple countries in Europe
Nodes has talented engineers and designers
Nodes has a cultural background which may create synergy with Monstar Lab
Hiroki Inagawa, CEO of Monstar Lab, gave us a comment on the acquisition:
Nodes has excellent engineering skills and design capabilities, and is also one of the few companies that has successfully established a high position in the UK market. Our decisive factor was their young founders and management teams with high motivation for growth.
Going forward, we will aim to be Europe’s No.1 digital product developer with Nodes as our regional headquarters, and also aim to be the world’s No.1 digital product developer with all Monstar Lab group companies.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Friday that it has secured 250 million yen (about $2.5 million) from Gogin Capital (investment arm of San-in Gogo Bank headquartered in Japan’s Shimane Prefecture) and Resona Capital in addition to existing shareholders. This follows their previous $3.3 million funding from Pasonatech and DG Incubation. We have not confirmed which funding round this is. Monstar Lab now offers app development in 17 countries worldwide including China, Bangladesh and Vietnam but still busies themselves in further expanding markets. The company’s CEO Hiroki Inagawa visited Jordan in October, which hints at the possibility of expansion into the Middle East from Asia where they now have multiple development locations. The funds raised this time will be used for such market expansion efforts. Getting Gogin Capital onboard as a shareholder may have something to do with the fact that Monstar Lab has a development location in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture. While offering existing offshore app development services as well, the company plans to invite more engineers from overseas to these locations within Japan, looking to help improve the situation in and around Shimane where…
Sekai Lab Bangladesh Team (Image credit: Sekai Lab)
Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Friday that it has secured 250 million yen (about $2.5 million) from Gogin Capital (investment arm of San-in Gogo Bank headquartered in Japan’s Shimane Prefecture) and Resona Capital in addition to existing shareholders. This follows their previous $3.3 million funding from Pasonatech and DG Incubation. We have not confirmed which funding round this is.
Monstar Lab now offers app development in 17 countries worldwide including China, Bangladesh and Vietnam but still busies themselves in further expanding markets. The company’s CEO Hiroki Inagawa visited Jordan in October, which hints at the possibility of expansion into the Middle East from Asia where they now have multiple development locations. The funds raised this time will be used for such market expansion efforts.
Getting Gogin Capital onboard as a shareholder may have something to do with the fact that Monstar Lab has a development location in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture. While offering existing offshore app development services as well, the company plans to invite more engineers from overseas to these locations within Japan, looking to help improve the situation in and around Shimane where companies still struggle with lack of system engineers.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company that provides crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced today that it has fundraised 400 million yen (approximately $3.3 million) from Pasona Tech and DG Incubation. Pasona Tech is a system engineer focused-recruiting company of Japanese leading human resources conglomerate Pasona Group while DG Incubation is an investment arm of Japanese internet giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819). Regarding partnership with Pasona Tech, Sekai Lab will work with Pasona Group’s about 1,000 sales representatives and Pasona Tech’s 70 representatives, helping Pasona’s clients outsource their system development needs to more than 10,000 engineers who are working based out of Sekai Lab’s locations in 15 countries worldwide. According to Pasona Tech, job-offers/-seekers ratio in the company’s business has reached eight-to-one, indicating that it is difficult to cover the demand for human resources with Japanese engineers only. Due to the emerging demand for mobile app developers from clients, Pasona Tech decided to partner with Sekai Lab as part of efforts to decentralize the human resource supply sources, such as hiring engineers from rural areas in Japan. Having established a subsidiary in the US this September, Sekai Lab has started its local operations based out of San Francisco and Los…
Sekai Lab Bangladesh Team (Image credit: Sekai Lab)
Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company that provides crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced today that it has fundraised 400 million yen (approximately $3.3 million) from Pasona Tech and DG Incubation. Pasona Tech is a system engineer focused-recruiting company of Japanese leading human resources conglomerate Pasona Group while DG Incubation is an investment arm of Japanese internet giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819).
Regarding partnership with Pasona Tech, Sekai Lab will work with Pasona Group’s about 1,000 sales representatives and Pasona Tech’s 70 representatives, helping Pasona’s clients outsource their system development needs to more than 10,000 engineers who are working based out of Sekai Lab’s locations in 15 countries worldwide. According to Pasona Tech, job-offers/-seekers ratio in the company’s business has reached eight-to-one, indicating that it is difficult to cover the demand for human resources with Japanese engineers only. Due to the emerging demand for mobile app developers from clients, Pasona Tech decided to partner with Sekai Lab as part of efforts to decentralize the human resource supply sources, such as hiring engineers from rural areas in Japan.
Having established a subsidiary in the US this September, Sekai Lab has started its local operations based out of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Coinciding with the latest funds from DG Incubation, Sekai Lab will set up an office in DG717, a co-working/incubation space in San Francisco run by Digital Garage, in order to cultivate app development demands from the fintech and digital marketing industries in Silicon Valley. Since Digital Garage has no in-house development team, Sekai Lab also aims to receive outsourced projects from Digital Garage and its invested companies.
Sekai Lab’s outsourcing service allows clients in Japan and the US to reduce the cost for app development down from a half to one-third that of a typical in-house development scheme. By arranging for an engineering team in Asia as well as appointing project directors in Japan or local “bridge system engineers,” Sekai Lab enables smooth app development process which will meet their client needs on a project-to-project basis.
In view of outsourced offshore app development, improving the quality of local engineers and securing their loyalty are quite important. Focusing on these points, Hiroki Inagawa, CEO of Sekai Lab and Monstar Lab, revealed that his team is making efforts to increase satisfaction of engineers by providing them jobs requiring high-level skills as well as creating a comfortable and friendly working atmosphere.
Our engineers (based overseas) are gaining the image that our company is rapidly growing. For instance, our lab center in Da Nang, Vietnam consists of 200 engineers working there, so local people think that we are one of the leading systems engineering companies around.
In contrast with Japanese companies where the seniority system still remains, our people are performance-oriented and can work while caring for delivery time and attendance management. Offshore development is a trend of the times. By standing in the middle between engineers in offshore locations and Japanese companies which are less likely to take risks, we want to help our clients fill their demand for human resources.
Founded back in 2006, Monstar Lab launched indie music service Monstar.fm and background music service Monstar.ch, followed by incorporating Sekai Lab as a wholly-owned subsidiary in Singapore in February of last year. Prior to the latest round, the company fundraised 120 million yen (about $1.2 million at the exchange rate then) from East Ventures, SMBC Venture Capital, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital back in August of last year.
See the original story in Japanese. Sekai Lab was launched February last year, to serve those in Asia crowdsourcing app development. The company recently announced a tie-up with China’s biggest crowdsourcing platform Witmart, and started accepting orders in full for entrusted development of apps from China. See also: Japan’s crowdsourced app development service Sekai Lab raises $1.2M Sekai Lab has been offering an entrusted development platform in 15, mostly Asian, countries where some 100 companies such as app developers or systems integrators are participating. By utilizing these international resources, the company provides comparatively inexpensive and high-quality offshore development for projects from Japan and elsewhere. Sekai Lab CEO Hiroki Inagawa told us that the reason for cooperation with Witmart was as follows. Until now China has been entrusted with development projects from outside the country, acting as an offshore development base. However, as labor costs for engineers have risen and the domestic market has grown, China has changed into a client-side market. Witmart is one of the largest crowdsourcing platforms in China, with some 10 million contractor users. On its website, lots of development proposal are submitted, such as for mobile apps, eCommerce websites and so forth. While rather small-scale items…
From the right: Sekai Lab CEO Hiroki Inagawa, PR Manager Ikumi Shiba
Sekai Lab was launched February last year, to serve those in Asia crowdsourcing app development. The company recently announced a tie-up with China’s biggest crowdsourcing platform Witmart, and started accepting orders in full for entrusted development of apps from China.
Sekai Lab has been offering an entrusted development platform in 15, mostly Asian, countries where some 100 companies such as app developers or systems integrators are participating. By utilizing these international resources, the company provides comparatively inexpensive and high-quality offshore development for projects from Japan and elsewhere.
Sekai Lab CEO Hiroki Inagawa told us that the reason for cooperation with Witmart was as follows.
Until now China has been entrusted with development projects from outside the country, acting as an offshore development base. However, as labor costs for engineers have risen and the domestic market has grown, China has changed into a client-side market.
Witmart is one of the largest crowdsourcing platforms in China, with some 10 million contractor users. On its website, lots of development proposal are submitted, such as for mobile apps, eCommerce websites and so forth. While rather small-scale items are accepted by Chinese freelancers, medium-scale projects and above requiring much man-hours beyond their capacities have been left untouched. Sekai Lab aims to accept such matters from China and conduct crowdsourcing through the Sekai Lab platform.
Entrusted matters from inside and outside Japan including China will be ordered to developers in Asia through Sekai Lab platform. Although clients and developers directly conclude contracts in some cases, in fact, Sekai Lab often receive the orders as a prime contractor and conduct project management for actual entrusted developers, or act as a bridge SE (system engineer) between clients and developers.
Taking a project from China as an example, Sekai Lab’s SEs in Japan, Chengdu (Sichuan, China) or Quindao (Shandong, China) conduct hearings on the requirements from the client, then provide details to developers in Da Nang, Vietnam through the platform to commence work.
Inagawa elaborated:
We used to consign entrusted matters evenly to all 100 participating developers in the past. Currently our selection team narrows down the candidates in advance for each project and requests estimates from them, because each developer has its own specialty field such as development languages or frameworks. After collecting estimates from multiple developers, we leave the final decision up to the clients as to entrustees or the type of contract to be concluded.
The Sekai Lab page which recently launched on the Witmart site.
Based on the writer’s experience in systems engineering, large enterprises tend to avoid consigning systems development to subcontractors from the standpoint of information management, despite the general subcontract structure in Japan’s systems integration field. No wonder many enterprises hesitate to entrust development overseas where Japanese laws cannot be enforced.
However, with Sekai Lab such things do not matter, according to Inagawa. This is because his company mainly deals in development regarding web services or apps, independent of mainstay systems. An average budget is around 4 million yen (about $32,000) and an average man-month cost is 14 to 15 for projects handled by Sekai Lab. It dies not compete with major Systems Integrators or consultant firms due to the differences in the scale of targeted projects.
Inagawa added:
Our clients range from individuals to listed companies. Non-IT clients account for 60 to 70 percent of the total base, the rest being IT ones. We see many business software developments involved for projects from outside Japan. Also, there is preponderance in localization of apps ordered by Japanese companies expanding overseas, or vice versa.
When China meant “offshore development base” is a thing of the past. According to Inagawa, labor costs for Shanghai engineers are now almost the same as that of Japanese counterparts. However, not many Chinese developers are capable of high quality apps development even though they are losing ground in price competitiveness. Having built up a reputation for its work through diligent work, Sekai Lab has been able to gain many larger-scale projects from China compared with projects from Japan.
Sekai Lab this month expands into Bangladesh, its 15th development base. As its name ‘Sekai (meaning ‘the world’ in Japanese)’ implies, it is taking on the global market, in both name and deed.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company that provides crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced last week that it has fundraised 120 million yen (approximately $1.2 million) from East Ventures, SMBC Venture Capital, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. See also: Sekai Lab: Crowdsourcing platform lets Japanese companies find developer teams around Asia The company launched Sekai Lab in March, where Japanese companies can crowdsource their app development tasks at affordable rates from over 300 teams comprising 3,000 crowdsourced engineers from 10 countries. The company will use the funds to boost business expansion through their subsidiary in Singapore, aiming to transact more than $10 million in deals, as well as acquire 100,000 crowdsourced engineers in three years. Monstar Lab also provides Monstar Channel, an online music distribution service for merchants and consumers.
The company launched Sekai Lab in March, where Japanese companies can crowdsource their app development tasks at affordable rates from over 300 teams comprising 3,000 crowdsourced engineers from 10 countries. The company will use the funds to boost business expansion through their subsidiary in Singapore, aiming to transact more than $10 million in deals, as well as acquire 100,000 crowdsourced engineers in three years.
Monstar Lab also provides Monstar Channel, an online music distribution service for merchants and consumers.
See the original article in Japanese Sekai Lab, a company under Singapore-based music/game company Monstar Lab, has launched a crowdsourcing platform. It lets companies in Japan find engineers from all around the world, but still using Japanese. With the rapid spread of smartphones in Japan, more and more app developers are needed these days. Sekai Lab COO Ikkei Okuma thought that the company could provide a solution to match Japanese companies with skilled engineers in Asian countries such as China and Vietnam. Okuma explains: There are many great engineers in Asia. But there is no platform in Japanese to match them with companies in Japan, making it very difficult for companies to outsource their work. Workers registered on most crowdsourcing platforms are individuals, which makes it hard to outsource a big project using crowdsourcing platforms. Sekai Lab aims to address these issues. The cost of human resources on Sekai Lab are relatively low. And by providing Asian engineers with high skill sets, the company hopes to alleviate the shortage of engineers currently plaguing Japan. So how does it work? Development processes are executed through communication between the developer team and the company that outsourced the work. And depending on the…
Sekai Lab, a company under Singapore-based music/game company Monstar Lab, has launched a crowdsourcing platform. It lets companies in Japan find engineers from all around the world, but still using Japanese.
With the rapid spread of smartphones in Japan, more and more app developers are needed these days. Sekai Lab COO Ikkei Okuma thought that the company could provide a solution to match Japanese companies with skilled engineers in Asian countries such as China and Vietnam. Okuma explains:
There are many great engineers in Asia. But there is no platform in Japanese to match them with companies in Japan, making it very difficult for companies to outsource their work. Workers registered on most crowdsourcing platforms are individuals, which makes it hard to outsource a big project using crowdsourcing platforms. Sekai Lab aims to address these issues.
The cost of human resources on Sekai Lab are relatively low. And by providing Asian engineers with high skill sets, the company hopes to alleviate the shortage of engineers currently plaguing Japan.
So how does it work? Development processes are executed through communication between the developer team and the company that outsourced the work. And depending on the project, Monstar Lab can provide support as well.
On the Sekai Lab website, you can find engineers across many different categories, such as the type of app required, cost, and the past experience of the team.
Okuma also told us a little about how they screen teams for registration.
For the time being, we only register companies who have an office in Japan, in addition to their developer base outside Japan. We meet the team face-to-face and confirm their past experience. We gather information about the team leader and put it on our website.
In Japan, crowdsourcing service is getting lots of attention these days, with Lancers and Crowdworks showing remarkable growth. Can crowdsourcing beyond Japan’s borders be successful as well? We’ll keep watching Sekai Lab, so stay tuned.
Sekai Lab 
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
