From the left: Yasuhiko Yurimoto (Global Brain CEO), Nobutake Suzuki (Global Brain Partner), Jung Yong Kim (Mbite CEO)
Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain announced today it has invested in South Korea’s Mbite, the Seoul-based startup behind illustration task crowdsourcing platform Rainbow.dot. Details of the investment have not been disclosed.
Rainbow.dot allows game developers to improve the efficiency of their production systems by crowdsourcing their illustration tasks to more than 300 remote workers in Korea. To help foreign game developers order their work from Korean crowdsourced workers using the platform, the company has installed a multilingual translation system to eliminate language barriers.
Since it launch in 2011, the company has been providing a content distribution platform for amateur cartoonists in Korea called Indiket. They subsequently launched a new platform called Inkoo last year to give Korean cartoonists more opportunities to work with Japanese companies.
Mbite will use the funds raised to expand their business in the Chinese and English-speaking markets. For Global Brain, this is their third investment in Korean startups following 5Rocks and VCNC. In this space, we’ve seen several Japanese startups like Mugenup doing a similar business.
Tokyo-based Carnival, a startup behind the platform sharing experience on festivals ‘EventCarnival‘, announced today it has raised an undisclosed amount from Japanese investment firm East Ventures. The platform provides information in English about local festivals and events around the world, ranging from traditional rituals to nightclub events. The company’s marketing team is in Thailand, content production team is in the Philippines, and system development team is in Vietnam. They will use the funds to strengthen their workforce in these three Asian countries. The company says it will soon add a new function allowing users to find other users to visit festivals or events together. EventCarnival was launched in May. Prior to that, the company’s founder and CEO Kota Saito had co-founded the startup Social Recruiting, where he had been serving as COO. He was subsequently involved in business development of an English conversation school in India where he came up with the idea of Event Carnival.
Tokyo-based Carnival, a startup behind the platform sharing experience on festivals ‘EventCarnival‘, announced today it has raised an undisclosed amount from Japanese investment firm East Ventures.
The platform provides information in English about local festivals and events around the world, ranging from traditional rituals to nightclub events. The company’s marketing team is in Thailand, content production team is in the Philippines, and system development team is in Vietnam. They will use the funds to strengthen their workforce in these three Asian countries. The company says it will soon add a new function allowing users to find other users to visit festivals or events together.
EventCarnival was launched in May. Prior to that, the company’s founder and CEO Kota Saito had co-founded the startup Social Recruiting, where he had been serving as COO. He was subsequently involved in business development of an English conversation school in India where he came up with the idea of Event Carnival.
See the original story in Japanese. MerryBiz is a Tokyo-based startup that provides a crowdsourced bookkeeping service for companies. The company announced today it has renewed its service line-up and rolled out a web interface. Coinciding with this, the company has rebranded its name from Libv K.K. to MerryBiz Inc. MerryBiz was launched in October 2012 and fundraised 55 million yen ($550,000) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Venture Capital in May. In their previous service, until today, when you mailed a portion of receipts for company expenses to the company, they subsequently e-mailed back a list of expense records in your preferred file format, such as Excel, CSV, or importable formats for other online accounting platforms like MoneyForward. With the launch of the new web app this time around, you can download these files any time you want, as well as browse scanned images of recorded receipts especially when you, or your accountant, need to confirm evidence for any company expenses you have paid. We’ve seen several startups providing a similar function in this space, such as Dr. Wallet‘s “Receipt Bin” (crowdsourced bookeeping service) or CrowdCast (improving efficiency accounting tasks by a mobile receipt-scanning app). So what’s the advantage of MerryBiz?…
MerryBiz is a Tokyo-based startup that provides a crowdsourced bookkeeping service for companies. The company announced today it has renewed its service line-up and rolled out a web interface. Coinciding with this, the company has rebranded its name from Libv K.K. to MerryBiz Inc.
MerryBiz was launched in October 2012 and fundraised 55 million yen ($550,000) from Mitsui Sumitomo Insuarance Venture Capital in May. In their previous service, until today, when you mailed a portion of receipts for company expenses to the company, they subsequently e-mailed back a list of expense records in your preferred file format, such as Excel, CSV, or importable formats for other online accounting platforms like MoneyForward. With the launch of the new web app this time around, you can download these files any time you want, as well as browse scanned images of recorded receipts especially when you, or your accountant, need to confirm evidence for any company expenses you have paid.
We’ve seen several startups providing a similar function in this space, such as Dr. Wallet‘s “Receipt Bin” (crowdsourced bookeeping service) or CrowdCast (improving efficiency accounting tasks by a mobile receipt-scanning app). So what’s the advantage of MerryBiz? In a response to this question, the company’s founder and CEO Hiroki Kudo explained:
For those who are less familiar with bookkeeping, the categorization process of expenses is quite difficult. So we hired certified public accountants with over three years of experience in this field as our crowdsourced workers. We can also accept your requests that are unique to your company, such as a certain type of expense for dining with someone that should be categorized as a meeting expense.
Online accounting platforms like Freee or MoneyForward are becoming popular in the Japanese startup scene. But we understand that MerryBiz will not provide accounting services but will be more focused on bookkeeping services by converting paper-based receipts to digital records. That’s why MerryBiz’s new web app allows you to download files in formats for other Japanese major accounting platforms like MoneyForward, Yayoi Kaikei, and Kaikeio. In the future, I think MerryBiz may introduce an API (application program interface) for integrating with other online services, which will not require you to import or export data files.
The company expects certified public accountant offices to also encourage their clients to use the MerryBiz platform. Kudo told us about this:
Since the accountant market is becoming saturated in Japan, they are very conscious about their competitiveness. New and small accountant offices may be our potential competitors, because they need to receive any tasks including bookkeeping from their clients.
However, mature accountant offices want to provide more value-added services for their clients, so they are likely to outsource bookkeeping operations. Our platform allows them to browse scanned images of receipts as expense evidences of their clients. We’ve been earning a good reputation from accountant offices that are using our service.
The company can improve the routine of their crowdsourced operations with the launch of the new app, which has enabled them to change its pricing to three types of monthly flat rate plans. The plan depends on how many expense records you request for bookkeeping in a month.
I’ve known Kudo for some time. But I realized in the interview that they had not been providing a web interface or mobile app to date. What we can learn from this is that not all tech startups have to have their web interface or mobile app for their business. Especially for B2B services, you can decide not to start developing a web interface or mobile app until your work flow is well streamlined and users validate your service, which greatly helps you to not increase the burn rate.
The launch of the web interface this time around will enable them to partner and integrate with other platforms and may bring them huge business potential.
GMIC (Global Mobile Internet Conference) is a Beijing-based annual conference event organized by GWC (Great Wall Club), the organization comprising of delegates from outstanding internet companies in China. We have covered the conference for over several years (in Japanese). The conference started holding its Silicon Valley edition a few years ago, and they will finally hold its first event in Tokyo this coming week, which will take place on July 11th in the Shibuya Hikarie building. At the event, entrepreneurs and innovators from China as well as the rest of the world will come together, and share their insights and perspectives about the latest global mobile trends with an audience. Their remarkable speakers include: Masatoshi Kumagai, CEO, GMO Internet Group Gaofei Wang, CEO, Weibo Isao Moriyasu, CEO, DeNA Idezawa Takeshi, COO, Line Edward Long, Co-founder, Dianping Takeshi Natsuno, Professor, Keio University Tetsuzo Matsumoto, Senior Advisor of Softbank Mobile Abhay Singhal, Co-founder, InMobi Sheng Fu, CEO, Cheetah Mobile Miriam Warren, VP, New Markets, Yelp Details of speakers and an agenda are available on the GMIC Tokyo website. We’ll be proudly serving the event as a media partner and bring you live coverage with our on-site reports. Our readers can avail a 20%…
GMIC (Global Mobile Internet Conference) is a Beijing-based annual conference event organized by GWC (Great Wall Club), the organization comprising of delegates from outstanding internet companies in China. We have covered the conference for over several years (in Japanese).
The conference started holding its Silicon Valley edition a few years ago, and they will finally hold its first event in Tokyo this coming week, which will take place on July 11th in the Shibuya Hikarie building.
At the event, entrepreneurs and innovators from China as well as the rest of the world will come together, and share their insights and perspectives about the latest global mobile trends with an audience. Their remarkable speakers include:
Masatoshi Kumagai, CEO, GMO Internet Group
Gaofei Wang, CEO, Weibo
Isao Moriyasu, CEO, DeNA
Idezawa Takeshi, COO, Line
Edward Long, Co-founder, Dianping
Takeshi Natsuno, Professor, Keio University
Tetsuzo Matsumoto, Senior Advisor of Softbank Mobile
Abhay Singhal, Co-founder, InMobi
Sheng Fu, CEO, Cheetah Mobile
Miriam Warren, VP, New Markets, Yelp
Details of speakers and an agenda are available on the GMIC Tokyo website. We’ll be proudly serving the event as a media partner and bring you live coverage with our on-site reports.
Our readers can avail a 20% discount for purchasing GMIC Tokyo tickets (excluding a VIP pass) using the discount code OVERSEAkkAlQaq2. So if you are interested in being part of it, don’t hesitate to check them out and have your ticket now.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Star Festival, a startup behind bento box delivery and catering service Gochikuru.com, announced today that it has fundraised 2.8 billion yen (about $27.4 million) from and partnered with Japan’s largest office supply mail-order company Askul. Both companies serve corporate users, and will explore a synergy in this partnership by sharing their user bases and business resources. To explore improvement of delivery efficiency and expand delivery coverage, Star Festival will soon start using Askul’s logistics company Bizex to deliver lunch boxes, and Askul will leverage the downtime of Star Festival’s delivery cars to deliver office supplies. Both companies also agreed that the Gochikuru.com lunch box delivery service will be added to a line-up of Askul’s services.
Tokyo-based Star Festival, a startup behind bento box delivery and catering service Gochikuru.com, announced today that it has fundraised 2.8 billion yen (about $27.4 million) from and partnered with Japan’s largest office supply mail-order company Askul.
Both companies serve corporate users, and will explore a synergy in this partnership by sharing their user bases and business resources.
To explore improvement of delivery efficiency and expand delivery coverage, Star Festival will soon start using Askul’s logistics company Bizex to deliver lunch boxes, and Askul will leverage the downtime of Star Festival’s delivery cars to deliver office supplies.
Both companies also agreed that the Gochikuru.com lunch box delivery service will be added to a line-up of Askul’s services.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported earlier today that Tokyo-based gaming coompany Gumi has funrraised 5 billion yen (approximately $49 million) from Silicon Valley-based investment firm WiL (World Innovation Lab) and other investors. The report says the funding will be completed on July 4th, and Sega Networks, which participated in this round, partnered with Gumi to market service the service in the US. In addition, Alim, the Gumi subsidiary co-founded with Gumi Ventures, Fuji Startup Ventures, and B Dash Ventures, surpassed 1 billion yen ($98 million) in sales as of April 2014, which their smash-hit gaming title Brave Frontier has contributed to. Since its launch back in June 2007, Gumi fundraised about 4.6 billion yen ($45 million) in the past rounds. CEO Hironao Kushimitsu unveiled at a recent conference in Singapore that the company has 650 employees and is preparing for an IPO by the end of this year.
Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported earlier today that Tokyo-based gaming coompany Gumi has funrraised 5 billion yen (approximately $49 million) from Silicon Valley-based investment firm WiL (World Innovation Lab) and other investors. The report says the funding will be completed on July 4th, and Sega Networks, which participated in this round, partnered with Gumi to market service the service in the US.
Since its launch back in June 2007, Gumi fundraised about 4.6 billion yen ($45 million) in the past rounds. CEO Hironao Kushimitsu unveiled at a recent conference in Singapore that the company has 650 employees and is preparing for an IPO by the end of this year.
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
Takeshi Hirano
