From the Left: Schaft COO Narito Suzuki, CEO Yuto Nakanishi, and the Schaft robot (from DARPA video)
Recently Google acquiredSchaft, a Japanese robotics company that grew out of the University of Tokyo. The company won the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials this weekend in Miami, an event aimed at encouraging engineers across the world to develop disaster relief robots, in response to the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
During the competition, robots were tested to measure their motor capabilities in eight different tasks like climbing up-and-down a ladder, removing obstacles and debris, and driving a car. 16 teams competed to advance to the 2014 Finals in an effort to win the $2 million grand prize. The Schaft team took top place, beating out tough competitors like IHMC, Carnegie Mellon University, and MIT.
The company was launched by humanoid scientists Yuto Nakahishi and Junichi Urata back in 2012. Prior to its acquisition by Google, it was backed by Tokyo-based startup incubator TomyK[1] and Tsuneishi Partners, the investment arm of a leading shipbuilding company in Japan.
TomyK is focused on incubating hardware startups, and was launched by Tomihisa Kamada, the inventor of the Japanese feature phone web browser ‘i-mode‘. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese social illustration service Pixiv recently announced its new e-commerce platform, Booth. It was officially launched last week, opening stores of nine prominent artists to sell their works online. We’d like to take a closer look at it right now. Artists’ works could be things like decorative postcards, hand towels, clear file folders, t-shirts, and smartphone cases (see below). After signing up on the platform, you can receive updates from your favorite artists when have new works available. When you buy an item, your purchase action will be posted on the artist’s wall, which encourages other users following that artist to buy as well [1]. For artists, the platform lets you set a selling price or distribute their items to users for free, for evaluation or promotion purposes. Booth’s ‘Warehouse service’ packages, and ships your products on your behalf. The storage charge is free to keep items up to six months, and the shipping and handling charge is 700 yen (about $7), regardless of where in Japan your recipient is located. The goal is to meet all your e-commerce needs online, letting you concentrate on your creative activities. Their dashboard for artists is smartly…
Japanese social illustration service Pixiv recently announced its new e-commerce platform, Booth. It was officially launched last week, opening stores of nine prominent artists to sell their works online. We’d like to take a closer look at it right now.
Artists’ works could be things like decorative postcards, hand towels, clear file folders, t-shirts, and smartphone cases (see below). After signing up on the platform, you can receive updates from your favorite artists when have new works available. When you buy an item, your purchase action will be posted on the artist’s wall, which encourages other users following that artist to buy as well [1].
For artists, the platform lets you set a selling price or distribute their items to users for free, for evaluation or promotion purposes. Booth’s ‘Warehouse service’ packages, and ships your products on your behalf. The storage charge is free to keep items up to six months, and the shipping and handling charge is 700 yen (about $7), regardless of where in Japan your recipient is located. The goal is to meet all your e-commerce needs online, letting you concentrate on your creative activities.
Their dashboard for artists is smartly designed, and it’s easy to check how much revenue you’ve make on the platform. Because of Pixiv’s huge user community and integration with social media, I think the company will succeed in differentiating from competitors doing similar businesses.
Their business model for the platform resembles that of US-based Society6 and Taiwan-based Fandora Shop. ↩
See the original article in Japanese Early this year, we reported on 14 Japanese startups that provide accounting or financial services. Many of them have launched new services or raised funds this year. The recent news that Hottolink, the company behind Hottoscope, went public on the TSE Mothers market shows that this field is rapidly growing. One of the startups we mentioned in that article, Crowd Cast, was founded in 2011 to develops financial solutions for small businesses, including its cloud-based accounting app, BizNote (iOS／Android). The company recently announced a new app for startups called BizNote Expense, which is to be released next month. If you follow the Japan startup scene, you might wonder how the app is different from alternatives like Freee or Money Forward. This field is no longer a Blue Ocean market, so how can Crowd Cast differentiate from competitors? We spoke with Takashi Hoshikawa, the company’s CEO and founder, about their future strategy. After Hoshikawa worked at Microsoft and Digital Equipment Corporation as a project manager, he enrolled in business school to acquire an MBA in 2009. Since then, he had been considering the idea of starting an accounting service. In the fall of 2011, he…
Early this year, we reported on 14 Japanese startups that provide accounting or financial services. Many of them have launched new services or raised funds this year. The recent news that Hottolink, the company behind Hottoscope, went public on the TSE Mothers market shows that this field is rapidly growing. One of the startups we mentioned in that article, Crowd Cast, was founded in 2011 to develops financial solutions for small businesses, including its cloud-based accounting app, BizNote (iOS／Android). The company recently announced a new app for startups called BizNote Expense, which is to be released next month.
If you follow the Japan startup scene, you might wonder how the app is different from alternatives like Freee or Money Forward. This field is no longer a Blue Ocean market, so how can Crowd Cast differentiate from competitors? We spoke with Takashi Hoshikawa, the company’s CEO and founder, about their future strategy.
CEO Takashi Hoshikawa
After Hoshikawa worked at Microsoft and Digital Equipment Corporation as a project manager, he enrolled in business school to acquire an MBA in 2009. Since then, he had been considering the idea of starting an accounting service. In the fall of 2011, he won first prize at the Yayoi App Contest, operated by Yoyoi, Japan’s largest accounting software company. He succeeded in raising 25 million yen ($250,000) from Yayoi in May of 2013.
In addition to raising funds from Yayoi, Crowd Cast has a business partnership with the company. While Yayoi has 74% market share of accounting software in Japan, Crowd Cast focuses on streamlining the process of entering expenses during the accounting process. Hoshikawa explained:
We developed a smartphone app, BizNote Expense, whose feature is focused on entering expenses. By letting employees enter expenses on their smartphones, BizNote Expense reduces work for those in charge of accounting. In small businesses, this is often the CEO himself. Utilizing the network I built while I was at Microsoft, the app was developed in Europe and has a sophisticated design. Development is almost finished. After minor adjustment of the UI/UX, we plan to release the product in January.
The data entered on the app can be viewed on the BizNote dashboard, used in Yayoi’s package software or on its online cloud-based platform for tax returns. Yayoi and Crowd Cast each have different strengths, and they can both enhance their core competencies.
The unknown market for expenses processing
According to Hoshikawa, in the area of expense processing, there are a number of key players:
For large companies with more than 1000 employees, Concur is the biggest competitor. Initial fee: 2.5 million yen ($25,000), Monthly fee: around 500,000 yen ($5000).
For middle-size companies with 200 to 1000 employees, there are about 10 software companies offering services, including Rakurakuseisan. Average initial fee: 30,000 yen ($300), monthly fee: around 10,000 ($100).
For small companies with less than 200 employees, there are several companies like Expensify and Shoeboxed. Monthly fee: 1000 – 10,000 yen
(Note that the listed fees here are just for a reference. They could differ depending on the conditions.)
Crowd Cast aims to expand its client base among small companies with less than 200 employees. Hoshikawa adds:
For these kinds of companies, few of them have an independent department for accounting. In many cases, the management or workers in the general affairs department take care of accounting. With BizNote Expense, companies can automate everything from processing expenses to collecting to accounting, and as a result, they can save time to focus on more important matters.
The fee for BizNote Expense starts from 390 yen ($4) per month. The smartphone app is intentionally minimal in order to provide a reasonable price for small companies, and to make it easy for workers to use.
I had one simple question as I spoke with Hoshikawa. If the expense processing platform is tied up with Yayoi, why doesn’t Yayoi develop such a platform on its own? Could not such a big company form a project team with experienced engineers, and develop a platform quicker and better?
But developing a smartphone app or establishing a cloud service business model is not really what Yayoi is typically good at. Major companies in this kind of situation can find an advantage to tie up with startups. That is open innovation.
Accounting systems differ drastically across regions because of different accounting standards and tax systems. Yayoi used to be under Intuit, but later broke away in 2003 in a management buyout, and was subsequently acquired by livedoor. One of the reasons that Intuit and Yayoi couldn’t find synergies was the difference of accounting systems between countries.
But expense processing doesn’t differ much by country, so that means BizNote Expense could expand globally with minimum localization efforts. The Crowd Cast website already has both Japanese and English versions.
While Crowd Cast has tied up with Yoyoi in Japan, it could be possible for them to partner with Intuit in the future. As more and more startups operate across borders, this solution by Crowd Cast could help make business much more convenient.
The iOS version of BizNote Expense will be available for download in January, and the Android version is to be released in the first quarter of 2014.
Japanese recipe sharing site Cookpad announced today that it has acquired two companies doing similar business: US-based Allthecooks and Spain-based Mis Recetas. Cookpad has no intention to integrate its services with these two, but plans to share knowledge about providing better user experiences and explore possible business synergies. Mis Recetas is a user-generated content platform for sharing recipes. It has 400 million users with about 6 million monthly visitors across Mexico, Argentina, Spain and other countries. Their iOS app is ranked tops in food and drink iOS category in 17 Spanish-speaking countries. It also provides an Android version. Allthecooks is a US-based recipe site that launched back in December of 2012, and their smartphone app has over 1 million users and is ranked number one in the recipe app category on Google Play. According to Japanese tech news sites CNet Japan and IT Media, Cookpad reportedly took over the Spanish company for 1.12 billion yen ($10.7 million), and the US company for a price ranging from $5 million to $10 million.
Japanese recipe sharing site Cookpad announced today that it has acquired two companies doing similar business: US-based Allthecooks and Spain-based Mis Recetas. Cookpad has no intention to integrate its services with these two, but plans to share knowledge about providing better user experiences and explore possible business synergies.
Mis Recetas is a user-generated content platform for sharing recipes. It has 400 million users with about 6 million monthly visitors across Mexico, Argentina, Spain and other countries. Their iOS app is ranked tops in food and drink iOS category in 17 Spanish-speaking countries. It also provides an Android version.
Allthecooks is a US-based recipe site that launched back in December of 2012, and their smartphone app has over 1 million users and is ranked number one in the recipe app category on Google Play.
According to Japanese tech news sites CNet Japan and IT Media, Cookpad reportedly took over the Spanish company for 1.12 billion yen ($10.7 million), and the US company for a price ranging from $5 million to $10 million.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Sassor, the startup best known for creating its Energy Literacy Platform (ELP), announced today it has raised an undisclosed sum from Japanese semiconductor company Innotech. For those who are unfamiliar with their product, check out their promotional video below. The startup is a graduate from the first batch of Tokyo’s Open Network Lab incubator back in 2010, raising seed funding from another incubator, Samurai Incubate, that same year. Subsequently they joined China-based hardware accelerator HAXLR8R (pronounced ‘hackccelerator’) as well. The company first started its business by providing power consumption management solutions for households. But eventually, they got an offer from soup franchise Soup Stock Tokyo, which led them to develop a service for restaurants and retailers called ELP for Biz. This corporate version lets you manage power consumption for all your appliances, helping you optimize the energy expenditure in your business operations. Sasser co-founder Takayuki Miyauchi explains: In addition to providing these products, we’ve also been requested to advise corporate staffers how they can improve power consumption. But we don’t have enough people to consult with them face-to-face. So we’re planning to develop a system to automate the consultation process. Their corporate service…
The Sassor team: Co-founder/CEO Shuichi Ishibashi in the middle, co-founder Takayuki Miyauchi is second from the left.
Tokyo-based Sassor, the startup best known for creating its Energy Literacy Platform (ELP), announced today it has raised an undisclosed sum from Japanese semiconductor company Innotech. For those who are unfamiliar with their product, check out their promotional video below.
The startup is a graduate from the first batch of Tokyo’s Open Network Lab incubator back in 2010, raising seed funding from another incubator, Samurai Incubate, that same year. Subsequently they joined China-based hardware accelerator HAXLR8R (pronounced ‘hackccelerator’) as well.
The company first started its business by providing power consumption management solutions for households. But eventually, they got an offer from soup franchise Soup Stock Tokyo, which led them to develop a service for restaurants and retailers called ELP for Biz. This corporate version lets you manage power consumption for all your appliances, helping you optimize the energy expenditure in your business operations. Sasser co-founder Takayuki Miyauchi explains:
In addition to providing these products, we’ve also been requested to advise corporate staffers how they can improve power consumption. But we don’t have enough people to consult with them face-to-face. So we’re planning to develop a system to automate the consultation process.
Their corporate service has been adopted at about 50 retail stores. They’ve also been receiving inquiries about their products from home appliance makers in Japan and the rest of the world.
Innotech, the investor in this round, says their investment is not about the short-term, but rather is about potential business synergies that may happen in the future. It is said that Sassor has learned about logistics and warehouse management from Innotech.
Beyond the Internet of Things, Sassor is now looking beyond clean-tech to become more than a hardware-focused startup.
We expect to keep serving our customers by making the most of our experience in hardware development. We hope to change people’s quality of life through a combination of hardware and software rather than just providing technology-oriented products.
The company has been specializing in visualizing power consumption. But Miyauchi hopes to diversify their business to sectors like the health care industry.
We want to be a company that can create everything from software to hardware, with the ability to design a more whole service.
They are currently hiring new people to serve better more clients across many business sectors.
See the original story in Japanese. Our readers may recall our report from Line’s annual showcase event back in August where the company announced that it was planning to launch a flea market platform. The service went online today, and is available on Android as a trial version. It’s called Line Mall. The new app is fully integrated with the Line messaging app, and Line users can login without any additional sign-up process. But your credentials for the market platform are independent from the messaging platform, and your history of selling and buying items will be never shared with your friends on the messaging platform without your prior approval. On Line Mall, categories of products range from fashion, baby goods, interior items, consumer electronics, toys, hobby items, foods, and beauty products. To sell your own items on the platform, no preliminary review or subscription fee is required. However, to keep users safe from suspicious items, Line’s staffers review your item before listing it on the platform. When receiving a payment, the messaging company stands between the seller and buyer, in order to prevent possible unfair trades. You can also earn rewards points when you buy things from other users on…
Our readers may recall our report from Line’s annual showcase event back in August where the company announced that it was planning to launch a flea market platform. The service went online today, and is available on Android as a trial version. It’s called Line Mall.
The new app is fully integrated with the Line messaging app, and Line users can login without any additional sign-up process. But your credentials for the market platform are independent from the messaging platform, and your history of selling and buying items will be never shared with your friends on the messaging platform without your prior approval.
On Line Mall, categories of products range from fashion, baby goods, interior items, consumer electronics, toys, hobby items, foods, and beauty products. To sell your own items on the platform, no preliminary review or subscription fee is required. However, to keep users safe from suspicious items, Line’s staffers review your item before listing it on the platform. When receiving a payment, the messaging company stands between the seller and buyer, in order to prevent possible unfair trades. You can also earn rewards points when you buy things from other users on the platform.
The company plans to improve the app based on feedback from users, and will release the official version of the app next Spring. It’s expected that the iOS version will also be available soon.
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
