Japanese “owned media” marketing company Somewrite fundraised 120 million yen (about $1.1 million) from Gree Ventures and other undisclosed investors.
In May of 2013, Somewrite won the fifth batch of Incubate Camp, an intensive two-day business development program for entrepreneurs organized by Japan’s Incubate Fund. In July of 2014, the company announced a set of comprehensive “owned media” marketing services called Somewrite Networks, which provides content marketing, owned media distribution, and native advertising platform services.
Somewrite Ad, the company’s native advertising network platform, picks up advertorial articles from owned media sites and distributes them to other partnering news media sites as a native ad so that these articles match the form with other regular articles in which they are placed. The platform has a tracking engine which learns the preference of users in real time.
In a response to our request for comment upon this funding, Somewrite’s CEO Yasunari Shibata said:
Because our Somewrite Ad service has been seeing good growth, we’ll be more focused on the ad network business. We’ve been running this on a test basis to date, but we’ll be shifting to a full-scale service from the middle of this month.
They will use the funds to fulfill their management base as well as to strengthen system development and marketing expansion, in addition to hiring more people.
Japanese startup BHI announced today that it has launched a suite of mobile apps called Swingnow, which will prevent information overload in messaging. The company is based in Tokyo, but they have made these apps available on the iTunes app store in English-speaking and Nordic countries such as the US, the UK, Australia, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden. The Swingnow suite is comprising of three mobile apps of Swingmail (e-mail), Swingbook (contact book), and Swingcal (calendar). Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox and reply-only app that helps reduce information overload and clutter. The app aggregates messages from Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and calls from phone and FaceTime, so that you have everything in one inbox. Swingmail will filter out junk, spam, and messages that don’t require your immediate attention, so that you can stay focused and only receive messages from people that are important. Swingbook is a prioritizing contact list seamlessly integrated with the Swingmail app. Based on past messaging patterns, current time and location, Swingbook learns, predicts and suggests the most likely contacts who you would want to get in touch with at any given moment. Swingcal is a minimalistic calendar app that thinks about your contacts. The app focuses…
From the left: Yasuhiro Himukashi (CEO), Jun Inoue (CMO), and Emelie Fågelstedt (public relations)
Japanese startup BHI announced today that it has launched a suite of mobile apps called Swingnow, which will prevent information overload in messaging. The company is based in Tokyo, but they have made these apps available on the iTunes app store in English-speaking and Nordic countries such as the US, the UK, Australia, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden.
The Swingnow suite is comprising of three mobile apps of Swingmail (e-mail), Swingbook (contact book), and Swingcal (calendar).
Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox and reply-only app that helps reduce information overload and clutter. The app aggregates messages from Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and calls from phone and FaceTime, so that you have everything in one inbox. Swingmail will filter out junk, spam, and messages that don’t require your immediate attention, so that you can stay focused and only receive messages from people that are important.
Swingbook is a prioritizing contact list seamlessly integrated with the Swingmail app. Based on past messaging patterns, current time and location, Swingbook learns, predicts and suggests the most likely contacts who you would want to get in touch with at any given moment.
Swingcal is a minimalistic calendar app that thinks about your contacts. The app focuses on the agendas that you have with someone up to a week in the future.
BHI launched Swingmail out of these three apps late last year. In addition to developing two other apps in the suite, they abandoned the previous version of the Swingmail app and opted to develop it from scratch again for giving users a better experience.
Regarding the geographical limitation on the availability of these apps, I had assumed that it was because of a language-dependent algorithm in filtering messages. But BHI CMO Jun Inoue explained why this assumption was mistaken:
We are a startup, so our resources are limited. Filtering or analyzing algorithms used in our apps properly work in any language. But if we want to market to the global market, we need to optimize the user interface of the apps in every different language market to fit the preference of locals.
Compared to the Japanese market, we understand there’s obviously a larger potential in the entire English-speaking market. We know English is not a mother tongue for Nordic people, but they don’t feel uncomfortable using apps with an English-language interface. That’s why we started with these countries.
If the apps can receive good reaction in the countries where they have just launched, they will expand availability to other countries like Canada, South Africa, and Singapore. Based on feedback from users, they may also develop an Android version.
BHI fundraised an undisclosed amount of investment in a series A round from an undisclosed Japanese investor in April this year.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based TransLimit, the startup that develops social quiz app BrainWars, announced on Thursday that it has fundraised 300 million yen (approximately $2.8 million) form Line Ventures, United, East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Genuine Startups. Line Ventures is a subsidiary of messaging company Line, focused on managing a $10 million investment fund called ‘Line Game Global Gateway.’ After start-up in August, the fund has already invested in Japanese gaming company Gumi as its first portfolio company. See also: Japanese startup Translimit raises $100,000 to launch social quiz app Japanese startup launches social quiz app ‘BrainWars’ Japanese quiz app BrainWars ranks in the app store top charts As for BrainWars, during the five months following its launch on May 14, over 3 million downloads of the app from across the world have taken place. Coinciding with this announcement, TransLimit secured a partnership with Line and will “line up” a new game title using the Line user base. The gaming company also unveiled a planned development of a smartphone media business with United, another investor in this round.
Tokyo-based TransLimit, the startup that develops social quiz app BrainWars, announced on Thursday that it has fundraised 300 million yen (approximately $2.8 million) form Line Ventures, United, East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Genuine Startups. Line Ventures is a subsidiary of messaging company Line, focused on managing a $10 million investment fund called ‘Line Game Global Gateway.’ After start-up in August, the fund has already invested in Japanese gaming company Gumi as its first portfolio company.
As for BrainWars, during the five months following its launch on May 14, over 3 million downloads of the app from across the world have taken place.
Coinciding with this announcement, TransLimit secured a partnership with Line and will “line up” a new game title using the Line user base. The gaming company also unveiled a planned development of a smartphone media business with United, another investor in this round.
Line’s CSMO Jun Masda unveils their investment in Translimit at Line Conference Tokyo 2014.
Japanese messaging app Line held an annual showcasing event called Line Conference Tokyo today, where they announced the launch of brand new services like payments, taxi calling, food delivery, indoor maps and more. Line Pay, micro-payments solutions using the messaging app, will be provided in partnership with Japan’s Mizuho Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking. Line Taxi, the cab-hailing feature, will be provided in partnership with Nihon Kotsu which already has their own mobile app that allows users to hail a cab. Line Wow, the food delivery service, will be also provided in partnership with Korean startup Woowa Brothers but it’s delivery area is limited only to Shibuya, in central Tokyo. In addition to these services, Line will launch a new app called ‘Line Maps for Indoor’ later this week, which allows users to check out updates from retailers in shopping malls such as Parco and Lumine. To strengthen development of gaming apps, Line also announced that it has launched a joint venture with Japanese internet companies CyberAgent and GREE. Furthermore, as part of their initiative upon investing in Japanese game developers, which was announced a few months ago, Line announced that they have selected TransLimit, the startup behind globally-trending gaming…
Image from Line’s livecast
Japanese messaging app Line held an annual showcasing event called Line Conference Tokyo today, where they announced the launch of brand new services like payments, taxi calling, food delivery, indoor maps and more.
Line Pay, micro-payments solutions using the messaging app, will be provided in partnership with Japan’s Mizuho Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking. Line Taxi, the cab-hailing feature, will be provided in partnership with Nihon Kotsu which already has their own mobile app that allows users to hail a cab. Line Wow, the food delivery service, will be also provided in partnership with Korean startup Woowa Brothers but it’s delivery area is limited only to Shibuya, in central Tokyo.
In addition to these services, Line will launch a new app called ‘Line Maps for Indoor’ later this week, which allows users to check out updates from retailers in shopping malls such as Parco and Lumine.
To strengthen development of gaming apps, Line also announced that it has launched a joint venture with Japanese internet companies CyberAgent and GREE. Furthermore, as part of their initiative upon investing in Japanese game developers, which was announced a few months ago, Line announced that they have selected TransLimit, the startup behind globally-trending gaming app BrainWars, to help nurture at a faster rate and larger reach from now.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Uluru, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform using housewives called Shufti, recently announced that it has fundraised 630 million yen (about $5.8 million) from Japanese VC firm Nissay Capital and wedding-related buzz marketing site Minnano Wedding. Uluru started its business providing business process outsourcing services in 2001, and subsequently launched crowdsourcing platform Shufti in 2007. The platform has acquired over 76,000 users to date. The company plans to use the funds to enhance human resources for further development and management of crowdsourcing business. Shufti was one of the oldest platforms of this kind. While they launched the platform in 2007, there were another several crowdsourcing services launched in Japan at that time, such as Lancers and C-team. So they started the crowdsourcing platform almost five years before Crowdworks, one of the most popular services in this space. According to Uluru’s vice president Yuhei Okeyama, the company still generates its primary revenue stream from their outsourcing services rather than the Shufti platform. They have a database called NJSS, showcasing tendering opportunities from governmental organizations around the country for their outsourcing needs; this DB has acquired nearly 1,500 corporate users to date and account for 60% or 70% of the market share. To…
Tokyo-based Uluru, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform using housewives called Shufti, recently announced that it has fundraised 630 million yen (about $5.8 million) from Japanese VC firm Nissay Capital and wedding-related buzz marketing site Minnano Wedding.
Uluru started its business providing business process outsourcing services in 2001, and subsequently launched crowdsourcing platform Shufti in 2007. The platform has acquired over 76,000 users to date. The company plans to use the funds to enhance human resources for further development and management of crowdsourcing business.
Shufti was one of the oldest platforms of this kind. While they launched the platform in 2007, there were another several crowdsourcing services launched in Japan at that time, such as Lancers and C-team. So they started the crowdsourcing platform almost five years before Crowdworks, one of the most popular services in this space.
According to Uluru’s vice president Yuhei Okeyama, the company still generates its primary revenue stream from their outsourcing services rather than the Shufti platform. They have a database called NJSS, showcasing tendering opportunities from governmental organizations around the country for their outsourcing needs; this DB has acquired nearly 1,500 corporate users to date and account for 60% or 70% of the market share.
To collect tender announcements from local governments, Uluru has been sending their people to governmental offices around the country. Hearing from Okeyama, we found that they have been using crowdsourced forces from Shufti to collect these announcements to build up the NJSS database.
Many of crowdsourced workers on the Shufti platform are married women. So it will be easy for the aforementioned buzz site Minnano Wedding to find synergy by driving potential users to the Shufti platform.
See the original story in Japanese. Yasuhiro Horiuchi, an evangelist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Japan, recently stepped down; it has been said that many startups or companies have been keen to invite him into their boards. It was unveiled at an AWS user group event last night that he will join Japanese fintech startup Money Forward as a technical advisor. Horiuchi is also known as the former CTO of Japanese game developer Gumi. According to those in the know, he will not join them on a full-time basis. Yet his move is seen impacting future trends in careers of engineers in the Japanese startup scene, with fintech startups in particular gaining greater attention from now on. Born in 1978, Horiuchi joined teleconferencing solution company V-cube after graduating from Keio University. In 2005, he was involved in developing a video sharing site called Flipclip (shut down in 2012), then later joined Gumi and served as CTO.
Yasuhiro Horiuchi, an evangelist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Japan, recently stepped down; it has been said that many startups or companies have been keen to invite him into their boards. It was unveiled at an AWS user group event last night that he will join Japanese fintech startup Money Forward as a technical advisor. Horiuchi is also known as the former CTO of Japanese game developer Gumi.
According to those in the know, he will not join them on a full-time basis. Yet his move is seen impacting future trends in careers of engineers in the Japanese startup scene, with fintech startups in particular gaining greater attention from now on.
Born in 1978, Horiuchi joined teleconferencing solution company V-cube after graduating from Keio University. In 2005, he was involved in developing a video sharing site called Flipclip (shut down in 2012), then later joined Gumi and served as CTO.
Junya Mori
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
