On Friday the Osaka City Government launched a startup incubation facility located just in front of the city’s largest railway terminal. The Osaka Innovation Hub is situated in the R&D center complex of Knowledge Capital, which was previously used as a cargo terminal for Japan’s national railway company.
The facility has co-working spaces and 3D printing devices, and is exhibiting innovative scientific products such as a virtual fitting booth, or an android story-teller developed by notable scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro. It also organizes programs for aspiring entrepreneurs to learn more about starting a business, including letting them visit notable startups or incubation facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The facility is a part of the city’s startup incubation efforts, which were first announced last February. At that time there were a number of guests from VC firms from Japan and around the world, including 500 Startups’ Dave McClure and Sunbridge’s Allen Miner.
Local governments in Japan are struggling because most new business and startups are very much concentrated in the Tokyo metropolitan area. So some municipal governments beyond the capital are exploring ways to accelerate their local economies, helping entrepreneurs set up in their regions. In addition to the incubator, the Osaka City Govenment is planning to form a startup fund in the range of 50 to 100 billion yen (approximately $50 million to $100 million) in partnership with private equity companies. They aim is to develop more than 100 business through this effort in the coming three years.
Mayor Toru Hashimoto aspires to create more startups from Osaka.
To providing the appropriate support for startups in the incubation facility, Silicon Valley-based Japanese venture capitalist Hiroshi Menjo and Evernote Japan’s CEO Hitoshi Hokamura joined the managing committee.
On a related note, local digital companies in the city will co-organize a hackathon event at the facility on May 11th, where the top prize winner can receive 500,000 yen rewards in cash. It is our honor to serve them as a media sponsor.
Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc. (UEI for short) is a Tokyo-based startup well known for providing backend-centric software/hardware solutions. The company recently started receiving orders for its new tablet PC for handwriting, called EnchantMoon. They quickly got more than 1,000 pre-orders, selling out in just an hour. EnchantMoon runs on the Enchant OS, which has been developed using technologies from Enchant.js and microZEKE. Enchant.js is a framework for developing simple games and applications in HTML5 and JavaScript, and microZEKE is the startup’s own original middleware for developing Android-based platforms. The tablet gives users the capability to execute commands with handwriting. The startup hopes to change all the world’s paper works to digital format, making them easier to manage and distribute. Many notable people are involved in the design and development process of the product, including the famous film director Shinji Higuchi, Japanese cultural critic Hiroki Azuma, and anime artist Yoshitoshi Abe. On Wednesday a presentation and launch party was held for the product in Tokyo. There was a long queue in front of the venue, and I was waiting my turn for more than one hour but had to give up in the end. According to the company, there were 250 people…
Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc. (UEI for short) is a Tokyo-based startup well known for providing backend-centric software/hardware solutions. The company recently started receiving orders for its new tablet PC for handwriting, called EnchantMoon. They quickly got more than 1,000 pre-orders, selling out in just an hour.
EnchantMoon runs on the Enchant OS, which has been developed using technologies from Enchant.js and microZEKE. Enchant.js is a framework for developing simple games and applications in HTML5 and JavaScript, and microZEKE is the startup’s own original middleware for developing Android-based platforms.
The tablet gives users the capability to execute commands with handwriting. The startup hopes to change all the world’s paper works to digital format, making them easier to manage and distribute. Many notable people are involved in the design and development process of the product, including the famous film director Shinji Higuchi, Japanese cultural critic Hiroki Azuma, and anime artist Yoshitoshi Abe.
On Wednesday a presentation and launch party was held for the product in Tokyo. There was a long queue in front of the venue, and I was waiting my turn for more than one hour but had to give up in the end. According to the company, there were 250 people are waiting for a ‘touch and try’ session.
The tablet was first exhibited at CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas earlier this year, and they’ve generated some buzz among event attendees and international media. The device is available online for 39,800 yen (approximately $398), but sales are temporarily on hold until the next production lot is available.
Ubiquitous Entertainment was founded by award-winning programmer Ryo Shimizu, and it raised 500 million yen ($5 million) from Japanese VC firm Jafco. In late 2012, they established a subsidiary called Enchant.js, Inc. in California to market the Enchant.js framework and sell the EnchantMoon tablet for the North American market.
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo yesterday, nine startups pitched their businesses in front of a panel of judges. The lineup of startups was pretty high quality, not only with startups from Japan but also from Korea, Taiwan, and beyond. Check out our overview of the pitches below to find out which idea walked away the winner. 1. Belladati ¶ Pitched by Martin Trgina, this is a business analytics service that helps companies visualize and analyse all sort of data. Belladati can connect to over 100 different sources of data for a client, including Twitter, Google, Oracle, or SAP, and “bring your data out of the dark,” exported to powerpoint, PDF, or embedded in your own apps. They have predefined templates for certain industries, so users don’t have to start from scratch if they don’t want to. The service is already being used by a number of prominent companies including Red Bull and Korea Telecom. It can be used as either a cloud solution or installed on-premise. 2. CloudDock ¶ This cloud enterprise solution was presented by Shigeta Okamoto, pitched as a sort of Dropbox for business. They want to isolate user data from the PC (things such as…
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo yesterday, nine startups pitched their businesses in front of a panel of judges. The lineup of startups was pretty high quality, not only with startups from Japan but also from Korea, Taiwan, and beyond. Check out our overview of the pitches below to find out which idea walked away the winner.
Pitched by Martin Trgina, this is a business analytics service that helps companies visualize and analyse all sort of data. Belladati can connect to over 100 different sources of data for a client, including Twitter, Google, Oracle, or SAP, and “bring your data out of the dark,” exported to powerpoint, PDF, or embedded in your own apps. They have predefined templates for certain industries, so users don’t have to start from scratch if they don’t want to. The service is already being used by a number of prominent companies including Red Bull and Korea Telecom. It can be used as either a cloud solution or installed on-premise.
This cloud enterprise solution was presented by Shigeta Okamoto, pitched as a sort of Dropbox for business. They want to isolate user data from the PC (things such as documents, pictures, music, etc.), so once you log into CloudDock on a Windows machine, you’ll see your files as normal, but with a small cloud icon on top of them, sort of like Dropbox puts a green check mark on files which have been synced. And when you access that file in an application, it’s quickly downloaded for use. But upon logging out of CloudDock, the data is no longer on that device. This service can be used on mobile as well.
The startup is targeting customers considering VDI systems, and so far they have already managed to sell over 9000 licenses in just two months since their launch in February.
We’ve heard from Conyac a few times before, so regular readers are likely somewhat familiar with this service. Naoki Yamada pitched the startups offering for business, explaining that their crowdsourced translation solution can provide quick translations for businesses for a low price. As a typical business use case, he gave the example of a 10-slide powerpoint presentation, which was translated in five hours and cost $36. In comparison to competing services, Naoki explained that on their platform translators can be educated by more experienced translators, thus giving them an opportunity to improve themselves.
This app is a product from Sony Digital Network Applications (SDNA), a group that presentor Masato Kuninori describes as a team of ‘intrapreneurs’ who operate as a startup somewhat independent of its parent company Sony. This photo app was released about a year ago (I gave it a short review), which presents pictures in a magazine style reminiscient of Flipboard, with a great design and the ability to add labels to organize your photos. But I was curious to hear Kuninori describe one of their business models as becoming a B2B service, where they would create versions of Million Moments for various companies. He also noted that once they create a cloud service, they might try to use the labels that users add to photos, although he was somewhat vague on the details, unable to disclose too much.
This Taiwanese startup offers a range of preschool and entertainment apps for kids, a sort of learning cirriculum in the form of fun games. Currently QLL has over 140 applications, with the goal of offering 300. To date they have seen 4.5 million downloads, 50,000 daily active users, the majority of which are from their home market of Taiwan. The business model is paid advertising in app, as well as licensed content. The company began one and a half years ago, but are now trying to expand abroad, eyeing the Japanese market as one of their next targets. Serkan Toto, one of the judges, asked about how the company planned to market their apps, and presentor Lulu Yeh explained that since they often have a few of their apps ranked very high in app stores, they can then cross promote their other offerings. It seems like a solid idea, and it will be interesting to see how they fare outside Taiwan.
This was another interesting games/entertainment offering for kids, a games and toy startup that was originally launched late last year. The company’s games offer physical stickers as a reward, which they say has worked really well in terms of getting kids excited about playing. For some kids who receive these stickers, it might be the first piece of physical mail they ever receive, so naturally they get quite excited. Typically Roam & Wander will send about 300 stickers a day, with a peak of about 700. But presentor Jason describes it as a viral gateway, and the cost of mailing has dropped a little as they have grown.
The startup also plans to bring their Tutu game character to life in the form of a doll that uses a smartphone as the characters face. Special capacitive touch toys are individually recognized by the application, allowing kids to give the doll a drink for example. They are hoping to soon launch a Kickstarter project in order to drum up some awareness about their product.
The only Korean entry in attendance, Zimly is a startup that has been around for a few years now. But at the pitch event, it was presented as a solution to share video across devices, or as a way to watch videos together with friends. Currently the service shares video from PC to mobile, but they hope to make it from “any device to any device” soon. The previous version of Zimly has about two million users, and it is planned to move them over to this new version, and then increase the number of users.
While there’s no shortage of cute photo apps on the market, this one looks sort of promising. Decoalbum’s value proposition is to offer two of the typical cute photo app functions – photo decoration and photo collage – combined in a single app. Readers may remember that we recently featured the collage creation app Papelook, which had racked up more than 4 million downloads since its initial release back in mid–2011. DecoAlbum, which appears to have been on the app store since the middle of last year, boasts 1 million downloads, and the founders say that’s without any paid promotion. Their business model is printing photos, which they plan to do in cooperation with print service Tolot, as well as photo storage. They also mentioned plans to release stickers next month.
Another Taiwan-based service, TopAdmit offers the editing services of its team of 45+ English speaking editors. The pitched use case was a Japanese student who has written an application to a university abroad, but needs some editing to ensure the quality of the document. But TopAdmit also aspires to expand to provide editing of research papers and business editing. They charge 30 cents per English word, or a retainer feed of $500 per month. TopAdmit was judged the winner of the pitch event [1].
TopAdmit
Speaking as an editor, I’m curious to hear how they handle really awful submissions. I wonder what kind of back-and-forth communication, if any, occurs when a given sentence’s meaning is not clear. ↩
In Japan, since many people are connected with work-related acquaintances on Facebook, many suffer from not being able to express themselves freely. Arrow is an anonymous mini blog that was released in May of 2011, aiming to become a solution to such problems. Arrow has more than 70,000 unique users and over 11 million postings. If you think of this number as people who might be secretly venting about others, that’s a pretty big number. Users on Arrow post their inner thoughts and feelings within the 200 character limit, and then the “Arrow” is sent to a random user on the site. On Arrow, there are no strings attached. The only connection you have with someone is while you’re responding to an arrow or getting a response. Users posts all sorts of things on Arrow, starting from what they’re having for dinner to something more serious like a crisis with their spouse. The good thing about arrow is that you will always get a response. If a user who received an arrow does not respond, the arrow is automatically sent to someone else who would respond. There is a feature called ‘TaraiMawashi’ (meaning to rotate) that allows users to skip…
In Japan, since many people are connected with work-related acquaintances on Facebook, many suffer from not being able to express themselves freely. Arrow is an anonymous mini blog that was released in May of 2011, aiming to become a solution to such problems.
Arrow has more than 70,000 unique users and over 11 million postings. If you think of this number as people who might be secretly venting about others, that’s a pretty big number. Users on Arrow post their inner thoughts and feelings within the 200 character limit, and then the “Arrow” is sent to a random user on the site. On Arrow, there are no strings attached. The only connection you have with someone is while you’re responding to an arrow or getting a response.
Users posts all sorts of things on Arrow, starting from what they’re having for dinner to something more serious like a crisis with their spouse. The good thing about arrow is that you will always get a response. If a user who received an arrow does not respond, the arrow is automatically sent to someone else who would respond. There is a feature called ‘TaraiMawashi’ (meaning to rotate) that allows users to skip arrows as well.
Kazuki Masuda is the COO of Green romp, the company behind Arrow. He elaborated on the network’s uniqueness:
Arrow is different in that users register themselves anonymously and they can never connect to each other. They are free from the stress and attachments of being connected with their boss or clients and can simply be who they are. And whatever they post, they will always get a response from someone. People will never feel fatigue over using our service.
In Japan, there’s something called “Honne to Tatemae” which roughly translates to the contrast between one’s true intentions/feelings and what is said on the surface. Japanese people often prioritize being polite over being blunt or harsh. Arrow is exclusively for Honnne with no strings attached. Green romp hopes that a place like Arrow and other existing social neworks can co-exist for people living in the digital age.
Not only is this service a very clever one but company itself seems very unique. Interestingly they present a questionnaire before Arrow’s user registration, and selects which users can join depending on the answers. Examples of such questions are “Are you a nice person?,” “Can you take a joke?,” or “Do you use drugs?”
See also the original story in Japanese. At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today,We had a chance to hear a panel discussion with co-founders of emerging tech news media from the Asian region. The panelists included [1]: Mohan Belani, co-founder, e27, Singapore Rama Mamuaya, co-founder, Daily Social, Indonesia Masaru Ikeda, co-founder, SD Japan Moderator: Rick Martin, editor-in-chief, SD Japan How do your respective countries help support startups or entrepreneurs? Rama: Our western city of Bandung is one of the hottest places right now. Jakarta is where the money is. The investment people and those who are making money around the startup scene, such as VC firms or incubators are based in Jakarta. Typically entrepreneurs might meet and talk with advertisers or VC firms every week in Japan. Jakarta is not so open to accept entrepreneurs who might make some crazy business – however Bali welcomes them. (laugh) Our government does not actually help us much. And typically Indonesian entrepreneurs launch their business without governmental support. Masaru: Compared to other countries, Japan is very conservative. But it is fortunate that many incubators and accelerators have launched in the last few years. Some Japanese giant IT companies established subsidiaries that specializing in investing…
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today,We had a chance to hear a panel discussion with co-founders of emerging tech news media from the Asian region. The panelists included [1]:
How do your respective countries help support startups or entrepreneurs?
Rama: Our western city of Bandung is one of the hottest places right now. Jakarta is where the money is. The investment people and those who are making money around the startup scene, such as VC firms or incubators are based in Jakarta. Typically entrepreneurs might meet and talk with advertisers or VC firms every week in Japan. Jakarta is not so open to accept entrepreneurs who might make some crazy business – however Bali welcomes them. (laugh) Our government does not actually help us much. And typically Indonesian entrepreneurs launch their business without governmental support.
Masaru: Compared to other countries, Japan is very conservative. But it is fortunate that many incubators and accelerators have launched in the last few years. Some Japanese giant IT companies established subsidiaries that specializing in investing in startups. In terms of creating an environment where entrepreneurs can take risk, these new entities are a great support for them.
Mohan: The Singaporean government provides pretty good support for our local startup scene. When you launch a company in Singapore, if your business meets the criteria, you will receive the maximum amount of up to $5 million, not as an investment but as a grant.
Japanese IT businesses and investors are busy in South East Asia. How are they doing?
Mohan: I think DeNA is doing well, and Gumi has also a presence. And we’ve seen many Japanese VC firms in Singapore. Typically they set up a subsidiary in Singapore and expand to other SE Asia countries to invest in local startups. I think this is a good choice. Because for local startups, the government tells you where you should go for a job, which developers you should partner with, and necessary information for their localization efforts.
Rama: Compared to funding from Indonesian local VC firms, it would be better to get funds from Japanese VC firms. Among them, GREE Ventures is pretty active. DeNA is likely to come next. CyberAgent Ventures has already started investment, and they also brought their subsidiaries (such as MicroAd) to the Indonesian market. In Indonesia, Japanese companies typically are investing in local startups and bringing their portfolio companies over.
The latest startup trends
Rama: Tiket is an impressive service, and they succeeded in raising funds and are pretty aggressive. Mobile gaming and social networking services are very hot. Some Indonesian mobile gaming startups are reaching foreign AppStores in the US, UK, and Japan. (cites TouchTen as an example)
Mohan: We’re hosting satellite events all across the region, and winning teams from those startup pitch sessions are basically teams of professional people. For example, there’s a startup providing a telemedicine service for doctors. These things remind Singaporean entrepreneurs that they shouldn’t keep developing just simple social apps, and they might start providing serious solutions for serious problems in spaces like the construction, medical, and legal industries.
Answers are paraphrased and not quoted verbatim. ↩
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today, Hidetaka Fukushima of Snapdish presented a little background about how his startup set out to take on a global market from the very start. This is certainly unique for any startup, but it’s especially unique in Japan where not too many startups venture beyond the domestic market – and even few startups succeed in their efforts. Hidetaka explained that the majority of posts to Snapdish are of homemade food, specifically 70% – so it’s not just restaurant pictures. They have about 8000 posts per day, and about 2 million in total to date. Currently they’re available in 11 languages, but the process of localizing their service went beyond just simple translation. Hidetake noted that when translating their ‘yummy’ button into other languages requires consideration of what will work in other cultures. So for Japanese that meant using ‘mogumogu’ (which means something like ‘nom nom’). But he explains that they even create food categories based on regional preferences, so for example, China has different categories than Japan. Eventually they came to the realization that taking pictures of food was something that was particular to Asia, and they figured that Asia was going to…
At e27’s Echelon satellite event in Tokyo today, Hidetaka Fukushima of Snapdish presented a little background about how his startup set out to take on a global market from the very start. This is certainly unique for any startup, but it’s especially unique in Japan where not too many startups venture beyond the domestic market – and even few startups succeed in their efforts.
Hidetaka explained that the majority of posts to Snapdish are of homemade food, specifically 70% – so it’s not just restaurant pictures. They have about 8000 posts per day, and about 2 million in total to date.
Currently they’re available in 11 languages, but the process of localizing their service went beyond just simple translation. Hidetake noted that when translating their ‘yummy’ button into other languages requires consideration of what will work in other cultures. So for Japanese that meant using ‘mogumogu’ (which means something like ‘nom nom’). But he explains that they even create food categories based on regional preferences, so for example, China has different categories than Japan.
Eventually they came to the realization that taking pictures of food was something that was particular to Asia, and they figured that Asia was going to be a big market for them. Nevertheless, their team is a very international one, with members from Japan, German, the US, Taiwan, and Denmark.
Snapdish’s Hidetaka Fukushima
The global reach of the smartphone platform let them have significant reach upon launch, becoming the number one photo app in Japan, number eight in Taiwan, seventh in Singapore, and 11th in China. Eventually Chinese social network Renren approached them about a partnership, and they also established cooperation with SK Telecom. They’ve had some good media coverage too, with a mention in Travel + Leisure, as well as a mention on ABCNews.com as one of the top five food photo apps.
During the Q&A session, someone asked about Snapdish monetization strategy, and Hidetaka explained that they have official accounts for companies. Currently those accounts are free, but they will be charged later on. They plan to do paid campaigns eventually as well.
Hidetaka is a pretty sharp founder, so it will be interesting to see if they can make that jump from a large user base to profitability.
Masaru Ikeda
On Wednesday a presentation and launch party was held for the product in Tokyo. There was a long queue in front of the venue, and I was waiting my turn for more than one hour but had to give up in the end. According to the company, there were 250 people are waiting for a ‘touch and try’ session.
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Takuya Tsuchiya
