news

Japan’s Mobcast partners with 13 content providers, wants to dominate sports gaming on mobile

Takeshi Hirano 2013.04.24

Tokyo-based games company Mobcast announced on Monday that it has launched a sport-focused social gaming platform. The company also launched a distribution platform for Open Social-compatible apps called Mbc Connect, a payment solution for content providers called Mbc Wallet, and a knowledge base site for partnering developers.

In addition to that, the company announced that it has partnered with 13 content developers including Konami Digital Entertainment, Koei Temco Games, as well as a Japanese pro baseball team.

According to its financial statements for the fiscal period ending December 2012, Mobcast saw 5 billion yen (approximately $50 million) in revenue, which is 2.5 times what it was the previous year. User growth was not explosive but it did recently surpass 3 million users.

We heard from Takashi Sato, the CSO (chief strategic officer) of Mobcast Inc.
regarding the growth of the sports category in social gaming and their future international expansion.

What differentiates the Mobcast platform from others like GREE or Mobage?

We’ll be focusing on the sports category in gaming, and we want to partner with participating content providers to acquiring a userbase that loves sport. We’re hoping to work with as many companies as possible.

Considering your recent financials, how much potential do you think there is in the sport games market?

This category accounts for 15% of the entire gaming industry, so we need be in position to dominate the niche. I can’t disclose too much about business performance, but we’re thinking about what to do next to ensure our sustained growth.

Your company recently announced it had branched into the media business. It doesn’t account for much of your overall revenue, so why do this?

We thought it would be important to explore non-gaming services such as media, so we could acquire new users as well as the retain our existing ones. In the future, this will enhance our business channels, like e-commerce for example.

When you took over gaming company Entercrews, you spoke a bit about future international expansion, especially in the Asian region. What’s your plan?

We started overseas operations on March 28th. […] We’re seeing what difficulties are ahead for international services. We just landed in the Korean market and will start expansion to the rest of Asia very shortly. Considering that the World Cup is next year, we’re devoting ourselves to making our platform reach as many consumers as possible.

We expect to acquire 1 million users in Korea alone. To date, we’ve already acquired around 17,000 users in Korea, (just in the early phase).

news

Stealth m-commerce startup Origami raises $5M from KDDI and DAC

SCORE 1,168

Junya Mori 2013.04.24

See the original story in Japanese. On Tuesday Tokyo-based startup Origami held a press briefing where they finally unveiled what they had been working on. The company has developed a mobile app (also called Origami) which allows you to follow updates from the accounts of your favorite brands or merchants. When you find something you like, you can also easily purchase using the app. It also has ‘like’ features for items, and you can check-in at both real and virtual retailers if you want to share your shopping experience with friends. The press briefing was held in Tokyo’s fashion district of Omotesando. Brands and retailers using the mobile commerce app for their promotion efforts include names like: Beams, Mori Museum, MoMA Design Store, Hysteric Glamour, Bang & Olufsen, Mizuma Art Gallery, as well as some department stores and art galleries. At the press briefing, Origami’s CEO Yoshiki Yasui introduced their goals: Mobile commerce solves many problems faced by retailers in e-commerce, both online and offline. The gap between of e-commerce and offline retailing is disappearing, and mobile commerce enables merchants to take advantage of both market opportunities. Giving users the ability to follow their favorite brands, the app helps them…

See the original story in Japanese.

On Tuesday Tokyo-based startup Origami held a press briefing where they finally unveiled what they had been working on. The company has developed a mobile app (also called Origami) which allows you to follow updates from the accounts of your favorite brands or merchants. When you find something you like, you can also easily purchase using the app. It also has ‘like’ features for items, and you can check-in at both real and virtual retailers if you want to share your shopping experience with friends.

The press briefing was held in Tokyo’s fashion district of Omotesando. Brands and retailers using the mobile commerce app for their promotion efforts include names like: Beams, Mori Museum, MoMA Design Store, Hysteric Glamour, Bang & Olufsen, Mizuma Art Gallery, as well as some department stores and art galleries.

At the press briefing, Origami’s CEO Yoshiki Yasui introduced their goals:

Mobile commerce solves many problems faced by retailers in e-commerce, both online and offline. The gap between of e-commerce and offline retailing is disappearing, and mobile commerce enables merchants to take advantage of both market opportunities.

Giving users the ability to follow their favorite brands, the app helps them encounter an item of interest in a way other than conventional search process. Through integration with social media, you can share your shopping experience with your friends so that they will be easily encouraged to buy something if they like it, even if you didn’t actually buy it.

On the Origami platform, every merchant has both a real and virtual store. Right now many users have visited the real store, checked in there, and shared using social media. These actions used just not to help merchants with promotion. With our solutions, it allows users gain an access to a brand or a retailer’s website by just clicking on a picture that another user has posted. In other words, every single piece of consumer-generated content will become a sort of billboard ad for brands or retailers.

The startup received funds from Japanese telco KDDI and digital ad agency Digital Advertising Consortium (DAC), and according to some news sources, it amounted to 500 million yen (about $5 million). KDDI’s SVP Makoto Takahashi and DAC’s CEO Hiroki Yajima were in attendance as special guests at the briefing. The telco provides not only financial support but also technical integration with their mobile platform for a better user experience. DAC and its subsidiaries will provide technology solutions for the startup.

They have also partnered with Condé Nast Group, the publisher of magazine brands like Vogue Japan, GQ Japan, and Wired. Condé Nast will give users the latest trends on fashion and gadgets through the app.

The Origami app is still only available only for iOS, but an Android app will follow in two or three months. They also considered developing a desktop version in the future, but they intend to focus on the iOS app for the time being. In the future they hope to expand globally as well.

Founder Yasui previously worked at Lehman Brothers and Silicon Valley-based VC firm DCM. The startup also announced that DCM’s partner Gen Isayama has joined its board of directors.

A recent study by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications shows the Japanese mobile commerce to be worth of $11.7 billion, 16% more than what it was a year ago. In nearby China, the mobile commerce market is expected to reach $27.1 billion, surpassing the United States by 2014.

Origami-Team — From the left: Takashi Nozawa (VP of Technology), Yoshiki Yasui (Founder and CEO), and Max Mackee (VP of Business Development)

news

In conversation with two up-and-coming Japanese e-commerce founders

Rick Martin 2013.04.24

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, the final session featured a discussion of e-commerce, with a two interesting guests: Shota Horii CEO, Fablic Inc. Kakiyama Takehiro, the founder and CEO of Flutterscape Moderator: Yusuke Tanaka, senior vice president at Yahoo Japan Commerce born on mobile Fril is a pretty fascinating service in that it created exclusively for mobile. Horii-san explains that they target female users, encouraging them to sell their unwanted clothes on via the Fril flea market, which lives entirely in their smartphone app. They target primarily 20 year olds who might not have a lot of money, but still want to buy clothes. But interestingly, these same women have a lot of unwanted clothes in their closet, and Fril offers them a way to become ‘shops’ in addition to just shoppers. They can upload pictures quickly to via the smartphone platform, an action that was really tedious in the days of feature phones. He notes that the C2C market in Japan is still small, but for this demographic, other online services like Yahoo Auction might be a little too complex. So…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, the final session featured a discussion of e-commerce, with a two interesting guests:

Shota Horii CEO, Fablic Inc.
Kakiyama Takehiro, the founder and CEO of Flutterscape
Moderator: Yusuke Tanaka, senior vice president at Yahoo Japan

Commerce born on mobile

Fril is a pretty fascinating service in that it created exclusively for mobile. Horii-san explains that they target female users, encouraging them to sell their unwanted clothes on via the Fril flea market, which lives entirely in their smartphone app. They target primarily 20 year olds who might not have a lot of money, but still want to buy clothes. But interestingly, these same women have a lot of unwanted clothes in their closet, and Fril offers them a way to become ‘shops’ in addition to just shoppers. They can upload pictures quickly to via the smartphone platform, an action that was really tedious in the days of feature phones.

He notes that the C2C market in Japan is still small, but for this demographic, other online services like Yahoo Auction might be a little too complex. So Fril really fills a nice gap. Interestingly, their team is made of all guys, but they appear to have no difficulties understanding their customer base.

Unique design for a global market

Kakiyama-san is pretty young entrepreneur, but has already turned many heads with his e-commerce service. He graduated from university just back in 2010, and he had a lot of foreign friends who were telling him to do something global. He liked the idea of making something with overseas reach, as well as having global tastes.

It started out as Flutterscape, which may ring a bell with some readers, but about a year ago they shifted gears to offer a B2C service called Monoco which sells designer interior products to a global market. He describes very strong growth, noting that they have about 650 designers on board, coming on at a pace of about 6 or 7 each day. Their site aspires to be fun, occasionally holding limited time flash sales.

Currently Monoco has seven merchandisers, including one in London, one in Bali, and one in New York. He says that having boots on the ground in different regions allows them to meet a variety of great designers.

Both Fril and Monoco are pretty fascinating business ideas, and it will be interesting to see how they both fare in the future.

news

B Dash Camp Panel: Discussing developments in big data

Rick Martin 2013.04.23

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, there was a panel discussion on recent developments in the field of big data. Participating in the talk was Takashi Kusano, the CEO and president of BrainPad Inc.; Masaya Mori, the executive officer at Rakuten Inc., and Ryuichi Nishida of B Dash Ventures Inc. The moderator Nishida began by wondering about the term big data, and what it means exactly. Kusano noted that in the past, they would just refer to it as data mining. But these days, he figures that it’s data that you can’t process with traditional tools. At his company, BrainPad, they help companies who can’t process such data on their own. He explains that many companies store unstructured data, which is of low value, but of a huge volume. And for most companies, it’s hard to extract meaning from that. And typically, unless the management can see how important it is, then it’s difficult for them to dedicate a special department for this purpose. Mori explained the unique situation facing Rakuten these days, where they have a business that spans across many sectors,…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, there was a panel discussion on recent developments in the field of big data. Participating in the talk was Takashi Kusano, the CEO and president of BrainPad Inc.; Masaya Mori, the executive officer at Rakuten Inc., and Ryuichi Nishida of B Dash Ventures Inc.

The moderator Nishida began by wondering about the term big data, and what it means exactly. Kusano noted that in the past, they would just refer to it as data mining. But these days, he figures that it’s data that you can’t process with traditional tools. At his company, BrainPad, they help companies who can’t process such data on their own.

He explains that many companies store unstructured data, which is of low value, but of a huge volume. And for most companies, it’s hard to extract meaning from that. And typically, unless the management can see how important it is, then it’s difficult for them to dedicate a special department for this purpose.

Mori explained the unique situation facing Rakuten these days, where they have a business that spans across many sectors, such as travel, finance, retail – so they have much data to deal with to say the least. He notes that they analyze (process?) 300 gigabyes daily, and their big data department alone has 160 people – a total that he notes is still not high enough. The findings from this data is not just used for things like recommendation, but it’s also used in areas like online ads and other products.

The moderator Nishida asked Mori about how active they are in hiring skilled data hires. Mori explained:

We have many data scientists and we actively hire for that position. We have about 60 right now in various departments. What we are doing now is accumulating and analyzing data, beyond what marketers would conventionally do, using it in the are of machine learning to try to get our algorithm to improve itself.

news

B Dash Panel: The next stage in social games

Rick Martin 2013.04.23

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to hear from panel of high profile speakers from the social gaming space. Participating speakers included: Naoki Aoyagi, SVP, global operations, GREE Inc. Kenji Kobayashi, the chief game strategy officer, member of the board, DeNA Co. Ltd. Andrew Sheppard, president, Kabam Game Studios Takeshi Sato, director and general manager, platform business division, Mobcast Hironao Kunimitsu, founder and CEO, Gumi Inc. The following are our preliminary live notes from the session. Much of the talk ended up being surprisinly reflective, but there were some notes where speakers looked ahead to the future. 14:28 – Andrew Sheppard says Kabam has 600 employees, 7 offices, been in business three years. Last year they had the top grossing iOS app, top gorrsing iOS game in 50 countries. They were a top 10 mobile gamng comaoaany, with 11 million users. They have $55M in the bank, so doing well! 14:29 – Andrews says that North Amercian is largely an iOS market, and that Asia and Europe are more and more Android. But what’s exciting is that gaming is…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to hear from panel of high profile speakers from the social gaming space. Participating speakers included:

Naoki Aoyagi, SVP, global operations, GREE Inc.
Kenji Kobayashi, the chief game strategy officer, member of the board, DeNA Co. Ltd.
Andrew Sheppard, president, Kabam Game Studios
Takeshi Sato, director and general manager, platform business division, Mobcast
Hironao Kunimitsu, founder and CEO, Gumi Inc.

The following are our preliminary live notes from the session. Much of the talk ended up being surprisinly reflective, but there were some notes where speakers looked ahead to the future.

14:28 – Andrew Sheppard says Kabam has 600 employees, 7 offices, been in business three years. Last year they had the top grossing iOS app, top gorrsing iOS game in 50 countries. They were a top 10 mobile gamng comaoaany, with 11 million users. They have $55M in the bank, so doing well!

14:29 – Andrews says that North Amercian is largely an iOS market, and that Asia and Europe are more and more Android. But what’s exciting is that gaming is the rare content on mobile that indexes high in terms of reach, engagement, and monetization.

14:31 – Kabam’s game Kings of Camelot was a top 5 grossing worldwide game in 2012, at number 4.

14:32 – Andrew reminds us of their recent announcement of a $50M fund for developers. Apologizes for the reminder with a smile.

14:33 – Mobcast’s Sato: The focus on sports games, now open to foreign partners. From yesterday they opened their development partner site. They also have ‘Mobcast Girls’ for promotion.

14:35 – Both Aoyagi of GREE and Kobayashi of DeNA say they are doing well, but things could be better. Kobayashi sounds slightly more optimistic in tone than Aoyagi.

14:36 – Aoyagi: In terms of sales growth the US shows the best performance, so I’m based there. But sometimes my boss calls for me to help out on Tokyo projects. […] So yes, I’m back here quite a bit. Some people create rumors that I’m here in Japan, but there are not many doing well here besides Gungho. If you look at the top titles from makers like Supercell, they’re in the US. When you think about revenue and profit, the US is taking off finally. I think in Japan there was a peak of funding about two years ago […] but I think right now its kind of declining or shrinking.

14:37 – Kobayashi: Basically I’m supervising on a global level, especially on smartphones. Before it was about execution, but now its more about which fields you compete it.

14:39 – Now speaking about Puzzle & Dragons: Andrew says he’s played a bit, says it has not succeed in US yet. Is a very smart game. Because of the mechanic its great for Asian markets, almost like calligraphy. But Americans are slow and not very smart, so maybe it’s difficult (jokingly).

14:41 – Sato: They have TV commercials and that adds to their users. They did all the basics well, and that’s why they have a hit.

14:42 – Kobayashi: The quality when they started was so high. When they started the commercials it was around mid October, and after that it was a really significant increase, and word of mouth and influences really helped. I think they had the right timing.

14:46 – Kobayashi on what’s next? In different countries, different things work. So you can really make whatever you want. But quality is very important. And if you just try to emulate Puzzle & Dragon’s then you will fail.

14:49 – Aoyagi says that the tablet market is something huge, and tablet first is a phrase we’re hearing. If you’re targeting hardcore gamers, the tablet is something you need to look at, especially in the US market. Sato, as you might expect, says they think sports have potential, sand notes the world cup might result in popular soccer games next year.

14:54 – Andrew says he joined when Kabam created KoC, he was very impressed by their CEO, who he describes as a young person but an ‘old soul’. Right from the beginning he put much trust in him, and that’s why he enjoys his job.

14:56 – Sato mentions that he had very good chemistry with his president as well.

15:03 – Andrew notes they have opened an office in Korea to being their Asia push, and they are very exciting about this.

15:04 – I want to focus on foreign markets, and when we listed I was wondering about where we should head. We have the world cup next year, and our president wants to have a global approach, and maybe we can have some kind of global competition among users, and I think that will be intriguing.

15:05 – Kobayashi: foreign markets are really growing so we want to follow and exceed the trend.

15:06 – Aoyagi: Jokes that they plan to acquire Gumi in the future. Says they want to hit good results abroad, thinks that in the past it has been one hit that really changes the world, and he thinks in the future it will also be a sort of trigger like this.

news

New trends in Asian startups

Rick Martin 2013.04.23

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to listen to a general discussion of Asian startup trends. The speakers participating in this chat included Mohan Belani, the CEO of the pan-Asia tech media site e27; Jimmy Rim, the CEO of K Cube Ventures; and moderator Shuji Honjo, the managing director of Honjo International. No better time than now Jimmy started the session off by explaining three areas which he thinks are pretty hot in Korea right now. He cited mobile ads, as well as the notion of capturing a mobile’s front screen sort of like Facebook home. He also pointed towards online to offline trends, as well as R&D companies solving problems like recommendation engines for this like movies or content. Jimmy noted that a lack of exits is something that plagues all of Asia, but noted that in Korea specifically, things are getting much better recently, with companies like TNC being picked up by Google, and Ticket Monster getting acquired by Living Social. This has had a positive effect on the ecosystem as a while, with lots of top…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to listen to a general discussion of Asian startup trends. The speakers participating in this chat included Mohan Belani, the CEO of the pan-Asia tech media site e27; Jimmy Rim, the CEO of K Cube Ventures; and moderator Shuji Honjo, the managing director of Honjo International.

No better time than now

Jimmy started the session off by explaining three areas which he thinks are pretty hot in Korea right now. He cited mobile ads, as well as the notion of capturing a mobile’s front screen sort of like Facebook home. He also pointed towards online to offline trends, as well as R&D companies solving problems like recommendation engines for this like movies or content.

Jimmy noted that a lack of exits is something that plagues all of Asia, but noted that in Korea specifically, things are getting much better recently, with companies like TNC being picked up by Google, and Ticket Monster getting acquired by Living Social. This has had a positive effect on the ecosystem as a while, with lots of top talent realizing that joining a startup was a viable career option. In turn, many investors realized that investing in such companies made sense. He added:

I believe there has never been a better time to do a startup. Japan and korea are traditionally conservative, but if you’re a good engineer, there’s not much risk. even if you fail, the experience of becoming an is [of great value].

More exits, innovation, and optimism

As for Southeast Asia, Mohan mentioned the recent trend of exits and acquisitions in Singapore, citing specifically SingTel and Singapore Press Holdings which have very busy snatching up promising companies. He also noted an improved maturity of entrepreneurs in the region, ones who are developing real solutions to real problems (such as some who are tackling telemedicine in Indonesia), rather than just a social app du jour.

Mohan also took a moment to highlight the standout success of a company called Picmix, which racked up over 9 million users in just three months. They created a photo app for BlackBerry, filling a “unique gap in an area they knew well.” Now that they’ve succeeded on that platform, they have moved on to others.

While Singapore’s ecosystem was very much one that was pushed and promoted by the government, and with government investment, But now there is far more activity from investors, he explains. For companies outside the country, there are lots of business matching opportunities that would make trips to Singapore worthwhile. Mohan closed with a tip of the hat to Japanese investors who he says are a positive influence in the region:

I think investors, including Japanese investors) have been exploring Singapore and Southeast, and this is validation for many startups there. That confidence and cheerleading is something that Japanese companies and investors have done well. […] They realize they can’t understand SEA by just sitting in Japan.

Japan’s Mobcast partners with 13 content providers, wants to dominate sports gaming on mobile

Recent Articles

Trends

Stealth m-commerce startup Origami raises $5M from KDDI and DAC