Tokyo-based Compath.me, the startup behind family photo sharing platform Kiddy, announced today that it has raised 50 million yen (about $492,000) from Japanese internet company United.
The company was originally launched back in 2011, graduating from Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab. This latest news follows its previous seed funding from DG Incubation, Architype, and Netprice.com[1].
Low birth rate, high potential business
The company launched its photo sharing platform in December of 2012, and subsequently started printing and delivering photo postcards and photobooks last year. So far Kiddy has acquired 50,000 households (or families) as users and over 3 million photo and comment entries on the platform. The company’s founder and CEO Hiromichi Ando explained a little more about the funding this time around:
CEO Hiromichi Ando
Our service allows users to deliver printed postcards or photobooks to as many as three different locations. We learned that many customers chose three locations, typically printing photos of their children and delivering them to both sets of grandparents. As for the photobooks, we are providing a premium version (3,100 yen per photo book, excluding shipping) using silver-halide prints in addition to the lower priced offering (1,550 yen per book). The premium option is costly, but it’s selling well. Grandparents want to see how their grandchildren are growing even if they live far away. This motivation helps us increase our sales per customer.
In a low-birth rate society like Japan, it is said that every child has six money streams, if you count parents and grandparents. This concept helps the company be more profitable despite the fact that its user base is not as much as is typically needed for monetization.
Becoming an information platform
The startup intends to shift its platform from family photo storage to a comprehensive information platform where users learn what others family members are doing in their daily lives. Ando explained:
Three or four family members are typically connected to each other on our platform. A couple may divorce or remarry after having their child, so we’ll add a feature that allows users to control privacy about their photo or messages.
He plans to use these latest funds to hire new people and enhance the platform’s features. They are currently a four-person team, but they’ll add a COO and several engineers to accelerate system development efforts.
Global expansion
So far the company has about 20% of users, or about 10,000 families, accessing Kiddy from outside Japan. Considering this demand, they have to think about the internationalization of the platform. Ando explained how they will address the problem:
International shipping has been available only for postcards but not for our photo album products. But considering that as many as 20% of users are from outside Japan, we asked our printing and shipping companies to enable international shipping of photo album products, starting in the first week of June. Shipping charges will be higher than domestic delivery, but I think there’s a huge demand from users out there.
The service is currently available in English and Japanese. But in order to better serve its global user base, they will add French and German interfaces this July. The company has already exhibited and presented at several startup conferences in Europe, such as LeWeb in Paris and WebSummit in Dublin. Ando feels that these promotional activities has helped them build brand awareness in those regions.
In this space we’ve already seen many competitors, including Kazoc, Nicori, BabyDays, Ikumemo, and Wellnote (See this article for details). But Kiddy fares better than these competitors on the App Store in terms of number of reviews and average rating.
Moving forward Kiddy will focus on improving user satisfaction, with the end goal of having the top market share in Japan and the rest of the world. They hope to surpass a million households worldwide by the end of 2015.
Open Network Lab is the incubation arm of Japanese internet company Digital Garage. DG Incubation is the startup-focused investment arm of Digital Garage. The investment arm of NetPrice.com has been rebranded to Beenos. ↩
From KPCB’s internet trends report released yesterday, comes an interesting factoid: 60% of the top 25 tech companies [were] founded by 1st and 2nd generation Americans. (p.148, see table above) I thought this would be a good time to revisit the question we asked this time last year: As the race for high-skilled immigrants begins, does Japan want to compete? To help address that question, here’s a quote from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe from a recent TV interview, cited/translated by The Japan Times: What are immigrants? The U.S. is a country of immigrants who came from all around the world and formed the (United States). Many people have come to the country and become part of it. We won’t adopt a policy like that. That strategy may prove unwise.
from KPCB Internet Trends report (click to enlarge)
From KPCB’s internet trends report released yesterday, comes an interesting factoid:
60% of the top 25 tech companies [were] founded by 1st and 2nd generation Americans. (p.148, see table above)
I thought this would be a good time to revisit the question we asked this time last year:
To help address that question, here’s a quote from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe from a recent TV interview, cited/translated by The Japan Times:
What are immigrants? The U.S. is a country of immigrants who came from all around the world and formed the (United States). Many people have come to the country and become part of it. We won’t adopt a policy like that.
See the original story in Japanese. PocketDuino is an Android-compatible circuit board based on the Arduino prototyping platform. The product was developed by Japanese engineers and recently launched an Indiegogo campaign. What’s unique about this circuit board is the ease with which you can connect external sensor devices. For example, if you have a library to control an alcohol sensor, you can have the board obtain data from the sensor by writing as little as three-line of Java code. With PocketDuino, developers can easily add external sensors to integrate with Android handsets. The PocketDuino team wants to enable software developers to create apps linked with such sensor devices without requiring too much knowledge about hardware architecture. Similar to the Arduino, you can use a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux PC to load your code to the PocketDuino circuit board. Or you can load code from an Android handset using the Arduino development environment Codebender. The team wants to fill the gap between software and hardware with this product, enabling more people to launch their hardware products and startups. They plan to launch a business in the US if PocketDuino can successfully close this campaign, and they hope to invent more hardware…
PocketDuino is an Android-compatible circuit board based on the Arduino prototyping platform. The product was developed by Japanese engineers and recently launched an Indiegogo campaign.
What’s unique about this circuit board is the ease with which you can connect external sensor devices. For example, if you have a library to control an alcohol sensor, you can have the board obtain data from the sensor by writing as little as three-line of Java code.
With PocketDuino, developers can easily add external sensors to integrate with Android handsets. The PocketDuino team wants to enable software developers to create apps linked with such sensor devices without requiring too much knowledge about hardware architecture.
Similar to the Arduino, you can use a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux PC to load your code to the PocketDuino circuit board. Or you can load code from an Android handset using the Arduino development environment Codebender.
The team wants to fill the gap between software and hardware with this product, enabling more people to launch their hardware products and startups. They plan to launch a business in the US if PocketDuino can successfully close this campaign, and they hope to invent more hardware products addressing various problems.
The campaign will run until the end of June. You can receive e-mail updates about further product development if you invest $1 in the project. If you invest $39, you can get a PocketDuino unit, and for $55 you can get a PocketDuino with an alcohol sensor. Early bird discounts are also available.
Yesterday Yahoo Japan announced that its Yahoo Transit application, which tells you directions and transit times for walking, trains, buses, and planes, has surpassed the 10 million downloads milestone as of May 18th. The app was initially released for iOS way back in 2008, and for Android back in 2011. It consistently ranks among the top tier of apps in iOS’s navigation category and Google Play’s transportation category in Japan. Via Venture Now
Yesterday Yahoo Japan announced that its Yahoo Transit application, which tells you directions and transit times for walking, trains, buses, and planes, has surpassed the 10 million downloads milestone as of May 18th.
The app was initially released for iOS way back in 2008, and for Android back in 2011. It consistently ranks among the top tier of apps in iOS’s navigation category and Google Play’s transportation category in Japan.
Sega Networks will hold a collaboration event in the month of June around its mobile soccer game ‘Saka tsuku shoot’ [1] here in Japan with the British pub franchise The Hub, across its 66 locations in the country. When a customer buys a drink, they’ll receive a card with a serial code, which could mean a rare player addition for gamers if they’re lucky. Also in June, there will be a ‘Hub Cup’ held within the game itself, where players can also get rare ‘gacha’ cards for a chance to get new players for use in the game. With the World Cup starting next month, I assume that the Hub will see lots of customers (the time difference with Brazil is a bit rough), and perhaps these are just the audience that Sega is trying to reach. It’s a smart maneuver on the part of Sega Networks to get their game in front of enthusiastic football fans. The sports title was released by Sega Networks late last year, peaking as the number one iOS sports app in Japan back on May 15th, and as the fourth ranked Android sports game in Japan this past Monday (May 26th). If you’d like…
Sega Networks will hold a collaboration event in the month of June around its mobile soccer game ‘Saka tsuku shoot’ [1] here in Japan with the British pub franchise The Hub, across its 66 locations in the country.
When a customer buys a drink, they’ll receive a card with a serial code, which could mean a rare player addition for gamers if they’re lucky. Also in June, there will be a ‘Hub Cup’ held within the game itself, where players can also get rare ‘gacha’ cards for a chance to get new players for use in the game.
With the World Cup starting next month, I assume that the Hub will see lots of customers (the time difference with Brazil is a bit rough), and perhaps these are just the audience that Sega is trying to reach. It’s a smart maneuver on the part of Sega Networks to get their game in front of enthusiastic football fans.
The sports title was released by Sega Networks late last year, peaking as the number one iOS sports app in Japan back on May 15th, and as the fourth ranked Android sports game in Japan this past Monday (May 26th).
If you’d like to try out the game for yourself, it’s a free download for both iOS and Android. Check out the game’s promo trailer below.
See the original story in Japanese. Last week I had a chance to visit Bangkok on the way back from an IT conference in Phuket. And while it’s hard to focus on startups and entrepreneurships during a time of political crisis, I decided to push on and speak with some local leaders in the tech space while I was there. Thailand is, of course, a country to be reckoned with when discussing global social media trends. The market has a great impact on the industry as a whole, with the country representing the world’s second largest user base of the Line messaging app. Many foreign entrepreneurs, including Japanese ones, have launched startups right here. BuzzCommerce’s Shinsuke Wakai is one of these entrepreneurs. For over ten years, he has been working with local people and businesses in Bangkok. He launched a cosmetics-focused buzz media site called Cosmenet four years ago, and has assisted cosmetics brands from the West, Thailand, and Japan market their products among local consumers. Cosmenet is very much Thailand’s answer to @Cosme, the Japanese cosmetics online giant. Brands in the cosmetics industry have been heavily dependent on mass media (e.g. TV commercials and magazines) for their promotional activities….
Last week I had a chance to visit Bangkok on the way back from an IT conference in Phuket. And while it’s hard to focus on startups and entrepreneurships during a time of political crisis, I decided to push on and speak with some local leaders in the tech space while I was there. Thailand is, of course, a country to be reckoned with when discussing global social media trends. The market has a great impact on the industry as a whole, with the country representing the world’s second largest user base of the Line messaging app. Many foreign entrepreneurs, including Japanese ones, have launched startups right here. BuzzCommerce’s Shinsuke Wakai is one of these entrepreneurs.
Cosmenet
For over ten years, he has been working with local people and businesses in Bangkok. He launched a cosmetics-focused buzz media site called Cosmenet four years ago, and has assisted cosmetics brands from the West, Thailand, and Japan market their products among local consumers. Cosmenet is very much Thailand’s answer to @Cosme, the Japanese cosmetics online giant.
Brands in the cosmetics industry have been heavily dependent on mass media (e.g. TV commercials and magazines) for their promotional activities. But many have turned to Cosmenet as a means to reach out to potential customers in a more efficient way. Wakai feels that a media site should provide a neutral perspective to readers, so he has refrained from selling cosmetics on Cosmenet. But since many of the products introduced on the site are difficult to purchase in the city, his team has been receiving frequent inquiries about where to buy them.
So Wakai decided to develop an e-commerce site specifically focused on selling cosmetics from outside Thailand to young local women. It’s called BuzzCommerce. When you import and sell cosmetics, you typically are required to get approval from the food and drug administration in that country — and as you might expect, that takes time. But Wakai’s partner has helped a Japanese drug store chain import products to Thailand, so she is quite good at the requisite paper work, and that has accelerated their business’s launch.
In Thailand, we’ve already seen several notable e-commerce sites like Tarad (by Rakuten) and WeLoveShopping (by Thai telco True, inspired by Tarad). However, the majority of e-commerce deals in the country are typically traded between consumers directly using Facebook or Instagram. On BuzzCommerce, whether young women take to their service will make or break the business.
The company recently raised an undisclosed sum from East Ventures, and Wakai is now completely devoted to developing the e-commerce site. If all goes as scheduled, the web version will be launched by the end of June, with mobile apps will follow in August or September.
On a related note, many of you may recall that Singapore-based cosmetics e-commerce site Luxola raised from several investors earlier this week. In the Asian region, we’ve seen many other subscription-based cosmetic e-commerce services, as well as vertical buzz sites like Fashionguide in Taiwan.
Rocket Internet had been rapidly launching e-commerce services in the Asia region, but they have no portfolio company focused on this space after they sold GlossyBox to VanityTrobe in February of last year. I understand that this left market opportunities in the cosmetics industry in the region, which perhaps leaves room for BuzzCommerce to expand business beyond from Thailand if all goes well.
Masaru Ikeda
Rick Martin
Yasunori Okajima
