This newly formed company also released its first mobile iOS game today, titled Brave Frontier. It’s available for free over on the App Store if you’d like to try it out. The company’s CEO Eiji Takahashi tells us that they are preparing to release an Android version and an international edition as well. More games will be coming later on.
We had an opportunity to hear from Hironao Kunimitsu, the company’s executive director and the CEO at Gumi. He claimed that they company will try to produce games based on top-class IP in partnership with Fuji TV.
It will be interesting to see what this new company has in store for mobile gamers!
The investment arm of Tokyo’s private TV station Fuji TV. ↩
The investment arm of Japanese gaming giant Gumi. ↩
Newsletters are amazingly popular here in Japan. People tend to be less hesitant to pay for content when it’s delivered directly to their inbox. Not just any content though, but typically something that is exclusively published, or written by professionals from a certain field or even celebrities. There are many services around the world that provide backend operations for sending out newsletters, but in Japan there are newsletter content platforms that work more like an information portal. The biggest player in this sector is MaguMagu. The company was founded way back in 1997, and it currently has over 10 million subscribers 1. Many of the newsletters are provided for free, from individuals to small businesses. If you take a look at the newsletters that people pay for, most are business related. One of the most successful business personalities on MaguMagu is Takafumi Horie, the famous founder of Livedoor. Back in November of 2010, the internet tycoon had almost 10,000 subscribers to a weekly newsletter that changed 840 yen monthly. The newsletter was called What I can’t write on my blog. It’s likely that the number of subscribers have jumped even higher after his release from the prison for alleged securities…
ChokuMaga Kadokawa
Newsletters are amazingly popular here in Japan. People tend to be less hesitant to pay for content when it’s delivered directly to their inbox. Not just any content though, but typically something that is exclusively published, or written by professionals from a certain field or even celebrities. There are many services around the world that provide backend operations for sending out newsletters, but in Japan there are newsletter content platforms that work more like an information portal.
The biggest player in this sector is MaguMagu. The company was founded way back in 1997, and it currently has over 10 million subscribers 1. Many of the newsletters are provided for free, from individuals to small businesses. If you take a look at the newsletters that people pay for, most are business related.
One of the most successful business personalities on MaguMagu is Takafumi Horie, the famous founder of Livedoor. Back in November of 2010, the internet tycoon had almost 10,000 subscribers to a weekly newsletter that changed 840 yen monthly. The newsletter was called What I can’t write on my blog. It’s likely that the number of subscribers have jumped even higher after his release from the prison for alleged securities fraud.
A new comer to the premium newsltter platform is the Japanese publisher Kadokawa. Its platform is called Choku Maga (‘Choku’ means ‘directly’ in Japanese). The company is leveraging its relationships with authors and its professional editorial skills to bring their content into forms other than printed books.
Many famous personalities and professionals will join, such as the general director of Gundam, or popular illustrators or comedians. The content can be enjoyed as newsletters, on the web, or even in ePub format.
In Japan, only 20% of taxi rides are booked in advance. And many taxi companies are releasing their own mobile apps to simplify the process of calling up a cab, and hopefully filling up more of their empty cabs at the same time. Nihon Kotsu is one such company, with its mobile app Zenkoku Taxi Haisha (roughly translated as National Taxi Dispatch). The app was first released back in December of 2011 and within a year it had over 500,000 downloads. The sales resulting from the app have exceeded 500 million yen, with over 40 prefectures and 76 taxi groups making use of it. And now the company has announced the release of a Taxi Ojisan Fare Calculation app in collaboration with a startup called Fuller. Fuller is known for its Android phone management app ‘Boku Sumaho’ (meaning ‘I’m smartphone’ in Japanese). The app lets you run your mobile phone more efficiently by uninstalling apps that are not used, or killing unnecessary tasks. What’s unique about the app is that a small ojisan character (‘ojisan’ refers to an older man) in the app can be nurtured as you better manage the usage of your Android phones. In the taxi fare…
In Japan, only 20% of taxi rides are booked in advance. And many taxi companies are releasing their own mobile apps to simplify the process of calling up a cab, and hopefully filling up more of their empty cabs at the same time. Nihon Kotsu is one such company, with its mobile app Zenkoku Taxi Haisha (roughly translated as National Taxi Dispatch).
The app was first released back in December of 2011 and within a year it had over 500,000 downloads. The sales resulting from the app have exceeded 500 million yen, with over 40 prefectures and 76 taxi groups making use of it. And now the company has announced the release of a Taxi Ojisan Fare Calculation app in collaboration with a startup called Fuller.
Fuller is known for its Android phone management app ‘Boku Sumaho’ (meaning ‘I’m smartphone’ in Japanese). The app lets you run your mobile phone more efficiently by uninstalling apps that are not used, or killing unnecessary tasks. What’s unique about the app is that a small ojisan character (‘ojisan’ refers to an older man) in the app can be nurtured as you better manage the usage of your Android phones.
In the taxi fare calculation app, this same ojisan character lends a helping hand as well. By entering the starting point and destination from keywords or a map, the app calculates the estimate taxi fare. It uses the engine of the National Taxi Dispatch app, allowing you to call for a cab right after you do the math.
CNet Japan points out that the founders of Nihon Kotsu and Fuller met at an Evernote Hackathon in Tokyo held back in January. The CEO of Nihon Kotsu, Ichiro Kawanabe, explains:
At many companies, the decision makers are middle aged men. The common problem we have is to expand our reach to women and the younger generation. Getting support from a young startup sounded like a good idea. Our collaboration will trigger more projects like this […] which are lacking in the Japanese business society.
Back at the Japan New Economy Summit, we Uber CEO Travis Kalanik talk about the problems he encountered when trying to bring his car service to Japan:
In Tokyo they fix the prices on private car services at 5540 yen. There are something like 90 different zones with different minimum fares, different rules. We are in cities all over the world and we haven’t seen anything like this. The government has essentially said that only rich people are able to get car service. […] These laws are set up to protect the taxis and your city is worse off because of it. In order for us to connect you to a car service through an app, we have to become a licensed travel guide. We have to hire certified travel guides. I don’t know why. They’re just trying to make it hard.
So while it’s certainly good to see taxi companies like Nihon Kotsu experimenting with new technologies, we hope that regulators leave some space for up-and-coming services like Uber to innovate as well.
Booklap is a handy service that helps you find good books. It was created by Tokyo-based startup Prosbee, which announced today that it has raised 20 million yen ($200,000) from Incubate Fund, Voyage Ventures, and Genuine Startups [1]. This follows the previous funding of 3 million yen (about $32,000) from Incubate Fund last July. The service has two ways to help you discover new books: The first method is based on your interests, pulled from ‘social graphs’ like your Facebook profile. The other way is by presenting quotes from books that impressed other users. Since its beta launch back in June of 2012, they have built up a decent userbase, with recent changes to their interface, adding features intended to boost growth. CEO Reo Kasai explains: We reflected back on our original goal, when our mission was to visualize the impressions of book readers. We created a UX map and a detailed profile of how a typical user behaves, and considered which parts needed to be modified or refined. As a result, a featured image behind an overlaying quote is now on the book recommendation page. The image is referenced from the book publisher’s website using Bing image search API. They…
Booklap is a handy service that helps you find good books. It was created by Tokyo-based startup Prosbee, which announced today that it has raised 20 million yen ($200,000) from Incubate Fund, Voyage Ventures, and Genuine Startups [1]. This follows the previous funding of 3 million yen (about $32,000) from Incubate Fund last July.
The service has two ways to help you discover new books: The first method is based on your interests, pulled from ‘social graphs’ like your Facebook profile. The other way is by presenting quotes from books that impressed other users. Since its beta launch back in June of 2012, they have built up a decent userbase, with recent changes to their interface, adding features intended to boost growth. CEO Reo Kasai explains:
We reflected back on our original goal, when our mission was to visualize the impressions of book readers. We created a UX map and a detailed profile of how a typical user behaves, and considered which parts needed to be modified or refined.
As a result, a featured image behind an overlaying quote is now on the book recommendation page. The image is referenced from the book publisher’s website using Bing image search API.
They also added a feature that allows users to organize a reading circle, with a discussion around a specific book. You can designate a start and finish date to let participating users to know when to read the book, and subsequently they’ll be able to organize a virtual meet-up online to talk about their impressions.
The company is currently preparing to release two mobile apps. One is the Booklap Camera app (for iOS only), which has an OCR feature and helps users to scan a memorable quote and post it to Booklap. The other one is the Booklap mobile app (for Android and iOS), which gives you an easier access to the service and helps you share your reading experience without the need to be seated in front of a PC.
Their revenue streams are still limited, with banner and affiliates ads driving user traffic to sites where books can be purchased. But the company is focusing on user acquisition first, and will explore global business expansion later on.
Genuine Startups is an investment fund spun off from Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Schoo is a Tokyo-based MOOC (massive open online course) startup providing livestreamed lectures on the internet. The startup announced today that it has raised 152 million yen (approximately $1.52 million) from Itochu Technology Ventures, Incubate Fund, and Anri. This follows its previous funding from Incubate Fund and Anri back in October of 2012. Schoo was launched back in January 2012 under the mission of “ridding the world of graduations” [1]. It provides more than 130 different online courses, and to date it has more than 40,000 users, mostly office workers in their late 20s and early 30s. With these funds the startup plans to hire an engineer and content director, and develop a system for giving lectures to other schools or companies. In the last several months, we’ve seen more than a few MOOC startups raising funds in Japan, including Smart Education, Mana.bo, and Street Academy. We heard from the startup’s CEO Kenshiro Mori regarding their business model: With our service concept, we aim to earn money by making the most of livecast programming and interaction with users, and also generating revenue streams from other sources including e-commerce services. […] We’re aiming to make…
Schoo is a Tokyo-based MOOC (massive open online course) startup providing livestreamed lectures on the internet. The startup announced today that it has raised 152 million yen (approximately $1.52 million) from Itochu Technology Ventures, Incubate Fund, and Anri. This follows its previous funding from Incubate Fund and Anri back in October of 2012.
Schoo was launched back in January 2012 under the mission of “ridding the world of graduations” [1]. It provides more than 130 different online courses, and to date it has more than 40,000 users, mostly office workers in their late 20s and early 30s.
With these funds the startup plans to hire an engineer and content director, and develop a system for giving lectures to other schools or companies.
In the last several months, we’ve seen more than a few MOOC startups raising funds in Japan, including Smart Education, Mana.bo, and Street Academy.
We heard from the startup’s CEO Kenshiro Mori regarding their business model:
With our service concept, we aim to earn money by making the most of livecast programming and interaction with users, and also generating revenue streams from other sources including e-commerce services. […] We’re aiming to make our service into a platform, where we can consider possible monetization models such as charging a commission fee for item sales.
We need to adopt a progressive business model. We’ll add more attractive features for our paying users, and focus on acquiring more users, and improve our conversion and retention rates.
Schoo is expecting to surpass a million users by this December. Stay tuned to see whether the startup can disrupt the conventional concepts in this space in Japan.
That’s a translation, and obviously not really very catchy in English. ↩
See also the original story in Japanese. Shintaro Yamada is a Japanese entrepreneur who previously sold his startup Unoh to Zynga back in August of 2010. The company subsequently became Zynga Japan, and he was named general manager. But in January of 2012, he suddenly quit and started traveling around the world. He returned from his travels this past February, and has now founded a new startup called Kouzoh. The idea has finally been unveiled to the public, a mobile flea market app for Android called Mercari. The app allows you to take a picture of what you want to sell, and publish it to the marketplace. The buy and sell process happens entirely on your smartphone, and the successful bid is payable via credit card, bank teller, or even at a convenience store counter. An iOS app will be live in a few weeks, we’re told. The service takes a 10% commission for selling your item. And in order to prevent possible user disputes over money transfers, the startup stands in middle of every single trade between a buyer and a seller. In this space, we’ve already seen many flea market apps like Fril, Pashaoku, and Listor. Shintaro explained…
Shintaro Yamada is a Japanese entrepreneur who previously sold his startup Unoh to Zynga back in August of 2010. The company subsequently became Zynga Japan, and he was named general manager. But in January of 2012, he suddenly quit and started traveling around the world. He returned from his travels this past February, and has now founded a new startup called Kouzoh. The idea has finally been unveiled to the public, a mobile flea market app for Android called Mercari.
The app allows you to take a picture of what you want to sell, and publish it to the marketplace. The buy and sell process happens entirely on your smartphone, and the successful bid is payable via credit card, bank teller, or even at a convenience store counter. An iOS app will be live in a few weeks, we’re told.
The service takes a 10% commission for selling your item. And in order to prevent possible user disputes over money transfers, the startup stands in middle of every single trade between a buyer and a seller.
Kouzoh’s Shintaro Yamada
In this space, we’ve already seen many flea market apps like Fril, Pashaoku, and Listor. Shintaro explained how he expects to differentiate this from existing competitors:
For now, there’s no dominant player in this space. We’d like to present our app as a place where users can buy and sell things with their smartphones safely. We still have many things to do from now, but we have an awesome team, so please stay tuned.
They have not yet set any specific target revenue volume, but the company aspires to transact a total in the range of 50 billion yen to 600 billion yen ($500 million to $6 billion).
But why would Yamada operate a mobile marketplace following his previous experience in the gaming business? He explained that nothing has been changed in terms of his strategy:
My interest is C2C (consumer-consumer) business in a broad sense. It’s one of the leaps that the internet has enabled. I really want to make something innovative in this space. Our company’s mission is to make internet services widely used in the world, and that’s the same goal as my previous company Unoh. It was mobile gaming at that time, but now we’re focusing on a flea market app.
Yamada was born in 1977, and he’s seen as a new-generation serial entrepreneur in Japan, as well as an angel investor. We will keep our eyes on how he progresses from here.
Takeshi Hirano
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Masaru Ikeda
