The Bridge learned earlier this week that Warrantee, an Osaka-based startup that aims to digitalize product warranties, announced that Japanese recipe site Cookpad has taken a 16% stake in the former company. Details of the investment has not been disclosed but it’s likely to be a seed funding worth six-digits in US dollars.
Warrantee proposes a one-stop process, registering personal data in advance on their service. In this way warranties for a specified user can be quickly registered regardless of products or companies. There are many cases where retail stores offer additional paid warranties, so the startup plans to earn a service charge from retailers by motivating users to opt into such additional warranties. Another business opportunity lies in tying up with retailers, allowing them to utilize user data accumulated on Warrantee for the retailer promotions.
Warrantee CEO Yusuke Shono elaborated their business potential:
By collecting warranty data users, we can learn when and what they have bought as well as predict their next replacement period. With warranty data inputs of multiple home appliances rather than a single one, we can even estimate how they use these appliances in their lives. Such information was out of reach for appliance manufacturers despite extensive partnering efforts with retailers.
He thinks that one possibility with the platform is proposing interior styling and decoration to potential furniture buyers.
See the original story in Japanese. Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their second Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. This year’s event took place at Keio Mita Campus and attracted a large audience of investors, entrepreneurs, and mentors from Japan and Europe. See also: Madrid’s IE Business School and Keio University hold joint entrepreneur event in Tokyo While 10 teams from Europe, Japan, and KMD students competed in a pitch session, Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, a startup that provides a cloud-based invoicing solution, won the top prize. As we have seen familiar faces of MakeLeaps’ people at many events in the local startup scene, it would be better to call them an authority rather than a startup. However, in view of the small number of B2B startups providing SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions in Tokyo, MakeLeaps has been boldly challenging and aiming to better serve local businesses, which won over the judges. MakeLeaps fundraised $600,000 from 500 Startups and AngelList in August. MakeLeaps CEO Jason Winder said they are planning to integrate other services like customer relationship management next year. Makeleaps’ won two roundtrip tickets between Tokyo and…
While 10 teams from Europe, Japan, and KMD students competed in a pitch session, Tokyo-based MakeLeaps, a startup that provides a cloud-based invoicing solution, won the top prize. As we have seen familiar faces of MakeLeaps’ people at many events in the local startup scene, it would be better to call them an authority rather than a startup. However, in view of the small number of B2B startups providing SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions in Tokyo, MakeLeaps has been boldly challenging and aiming to better serve local businesses, which won over the judges.
MakeLeaps CEO Jason Winder (left) receiving prizes.
Makeleaps’ won two roundtrip tickets between Tokyo and Madrid from Turkish Airlines, as well as a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation, a co-working and incubation space near Tokyo station.
2nd prize winner: Wovn.io
Jeff Sandford, co-founder of Minimal Technologies, the company behind Wovn.io (left)
Wovn.io provides multilingual support for your website or blog, bringing your content to the world. Site visitors can quickly toggle between languages using the Wovn.io widget. All editing and management of your translated content can be done from the convenience of your browser. By adding a single JavaScript code to a website source, Wovn.io instantly turns a website into a multilingual environment. It is available in 11 languages including Chinese, English, and French.
According to co-founder Jeff Sandford, almost 70% of Internet users in the world are non-English speakers. Operators of websites in English can reach almost double the number of users by turning their website into a multilingual environment. Wovn.io has translated six million web pages to date. Some 30% of their users are in the US and 29% are in Japan.
Wovn.io won a roundtrip ticket between Tokyo and Madrid from Turkish Airlines, as well as a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation.
3rd prize winner: Breezy not Wheezy
The ‘Breezy not Wheezy’ team
The Breezy not Wheezy team was selected from a KMD session. Asthma is a common affliction among children around the world. One of the co-founders of Breezy not Wheezy has suffered from it since she was a child, and this inspired the team to develop Breezy not Wheezy.
A peak flow meter is a device used to measure lung air flow and is effective for asthma management. The Breezy not Wheezy team connected a peak flow meter to a smartphone to record peak patterns on the cloud. This information will help parents to better manage their child’s asthma by leveraging a med companion connected to the solution.
Breezy not Wheezy won a complimentary three-month residency at Venture Generation.
IE Business School is headquartered in Mardid, Spain, and it is counted as one of top five business schools in line up with other institutions like INSEAD in France. Their Venture Day events have seen a rapid worldwide expansion, being held in over 20 countries to date, with 16 events in 2014 alone.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based School With, the company behind a buzz site that shares buzz and reviews on language studies abroad, announced that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from Japanese seed VC fund East Ventures. School With launched a review site under the same name in April 2013, and was incorporated in July 2013. Since the launch, they have focused on English studies abroad and buzz and reviews on over 100 language schools in the Philippines. School With CEO Hideki Ota visited the Philippines to study English a few years ago, and the experience inspired him to launch the business. He plans to expand the coverage of language schools in Australia and Canada in 2015. School With had been running its operations in a bootstrapping mode via grants from Japanese governmental business support initiative SME Support, Japan. While exploring funding opportunities to put more energy into the business, they received a funding offer from East Ventures in November.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Tokyo-based School With, the company behind a buzz site that shares buzz and reviews on language studies abroad, announced that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum from Japanese seed VC fund East Ventures.
School With launched a review site under the same name in April 2013, and was incorporated in July 2013. Since the launch, they have focused on English studies abroad and buzz and reviews on over 100 language schools in the Philippines.
School With CEO Hideki Ota visited the Philippines to study English a few years ago, and the experience inspired him to launch the business. He plans to expand the coverage of language schools in Australia and Canada in 2015.
School With had been running its operations in a bootstrapping mode via grants from Japanese governmental business support initiative SME Support, Japan. While exploring funding opportunities to put more energy into the business, they received a funding offer from East Ventures in November.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based Active Sonar, the startup behind luxury brand consignment app Reclo, announced today that it has fundraised 245 million yen (about $2 million) from B Dash Ventures and Future Investment. Coinciding with the funds, the company unveiled that it will set up their information distribution channel in Japanese news curation app Gunosy with aiming to better reach their potential customers. In addition, Reclo announced today that it will launch an app called Flip on December 9th. Flip is a 48-hour flash sales app for mobile users, providing time-limited deals on trending and affordable items. According to Active Sonar CEO Koji Aoki, the company has acquired 170,000 dowonloads of the mobile app since its launch six months ago. They boast a high repeat customer ratio, where almost a half of their users have come back to the app again to buy another item. Aoki explained why their users are well satisfied: The main reason is obviously we provide luxury brand items for overwhelmingly low prices. We give 60% to 90% discounts for selected items. In consignment business, a key issue is how to fill an inventory with collected items from…
Active Sonar CEO Koji Aoki
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Tokyo-based Active Sonar, the startup behind luxury brand consignment app Reclo, announced today that it has fundraised 245 million yen (about $2 million) from B Dash Ventures and Future Investment.
Coinciding with the funds, the company unveiled that it will set up their information distribution channel in Japanese news curation app Gunosy with aiming to better reach their potential customers.
In addition, Reclo announced today that it will launch an app called Flip on December 9th. Flip is a 48-hour flash sales app for mobile users, providing time-limited deals on trending and affordable items.
According to Active Sonar CEO Koji Aoki, the company has acquired 170,000 dowonloads of the mobile app since its launch six months ago. They boast a high repeat customer ratio, where almost a half of their users have come back to the app again to buy another item. Aoki explained why their users are well satisfied:
The main reason is obviously we provide luxury brand items for overwhelmingly low prices. We give 60% to 90% discounts for selected items.
Reclo
In consignment business, a key issue is how to fill an inventory with collected items from the market. Reclo serves more than 2,500 items for now. They had been buying items from second-hand distributors at their launch, but now over a half of their inventory is being submitted from users.
I have heard that a massive and continuous community development is very important to encourage individuals to sell their luxury items via online consignment services such as TheRealReal Japan. With this kind of continuous efforts, Aoki thinks that they can expand their business from luxury fashion clothing beyond to furniture. Almost 80% of their users come from mobile, mostly females in around the age of 30 or 40.
While they are steadily growing in both app downloads and user acquisition, they need some more gimmick for overwhelming growth. So they focused on Gunosy because of its high user traffic and partnered for creating the Recro channel in the Gunosy app. However, given that a unique user demographics on the Recro app, they will have to add something more to boost their growth.
That’s why they decided to develop flash sales app Flip. Their team has some former Groupon Japan employees who have many experiences on flash marketing. Aoki elaborated:
On Flip, we will sell items which are unlikely to let users decide whether or not buy. As described in the name, we will list new items fast and furiously.
Prior to launching Active Sonar in 2012, the company’s CEO Aoki has been previously running a mineral water distribution company. He quit the previous company to launch Active Sonar with aiming to create a new business at his own risk.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Goodpatch, a startup that specializes in developing UX/UI improvement solutions, announced today that its prototyping tool Prott now supports app development for the Apple Watch. The platform is available for iOS, desktop (Mac OS and Windows OS) as well as on the web, and it is also integrated with internal communication tools such as Slack and Hipchat, which allows the sharing of updates on prototyping using the Prott app in an engineering team. See also: Japan’s Goodpatch officially launches rapid prototyping tool Prott Prott was launched in beta version in April and an official version was launched in October. Prott has been adding supporting mobile platforms such as iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 5, iPad, and Android. While Apple Watch will start shipping next year, WatchKit, a toolkit for coding and testing apps for the upcoming smartwatch, has been introduced for developers. Goodpatch founder and CEO Naofumi Tsuchiya spoke on Prott and Apple Watch app development support: There will be many Apple Watch apps being developed next year. For most developers, it will be the first time to develop an app for a smart watch, so prototyping while developing apps makes them more helpful. We…
Tokyo-based Goodpatch, a startup that specializes in developing UX/UI improvement solutions, announced today that its prototyping tool Prott now supports app development for the Apple Watch. The platform is available for iOS, desktop (Mac OS and Windows OS) as well as on the web, and it is also integrated with internal communication tools such as Slack and Hipchat, which allows the sharing of updates on prototyping using the Prott app in an engineering team.
Prott was launched in beta version in April and an official version was launched in October. Prott has been adding supporting mobile platforms such as iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 5, iPad, and Android. While Apple Watch will start shipping next year, WatchKit, a toolkit for coding and testing apps for the upcoming smartwatch, has been introduced for developers.
Goodpatch founder and CEO Naofumi Tsuchiya spoke on Prott and Apple Watch app development support:
There will be many Apple Watch apps being developed next year. For most developers, it will be the first time to develop an app for a smart watch, so prototyping while developing apps makes them more helpful.
We will keep up with latest various smart devices. The platform will have some hidden functions. So please have fun finding them.
Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. The grand finale is held every December, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session. This year’s grand finale had local preliminary editions in Boston, London, and Singapore, as well as Tokyo. Earlier this week, winners from Japan and three continents competed at the Tokyo event, where Tokyo-based Sciement won the top prize on audience vote. See also: Circuit board design tool ‘Quadcept’ wins Innovation Weekend Grand Finale in Tokyo Sciement is developing science-focused 3D computer graphics solutions. According to Sciement CEO and founder Dr. Hirofumi Seo, some statistics say that there is one congenital cardiac disorder out of 100 to 200 people on average, which is not a small population of this disorder from the global perspective. While not all cases are life threatening, patients can see how their own heart is faring. By creating 3D animation based on 3D scanning, the company will be able to help these patients understand their disorders visually. This technology has unlimited applications and will contribute to the advancement of medicine by combining with other solutions such as 3D printing of human organs….
Sciement CEO and President Dr. Hirofumi Seo
Innovation Weekend is a monthly showcase and meet-up event organized by Tokyo-based startup incubator Sunbridge Global Ventures. The grand finale is held every December, where the monthly winners from the year compete in a pitch session.
This year’s grand finale had local preliminary editions in Boston, London, and Singapore, as well as Tokyo. Earlier this week, winners from Japan and three continents competed at the Tokyo event, where Tokyo-based Sciement won the top prize on audience vote.
Sciement is developing science-focused 3D computer graphics solutions. According to Sciement CEO and founder Dr. Hirofumi Seo, some statistics say that there is one congenital cardiac disorder out of 100 to 200 people on average, which is not a small population of this disorder from the global perspective. While not all cases are life threatening, patients can see how their own heart is faring.
By creating 3D animation based on 3D scanning, the company will be able to help these patients understand their disorders visually.
This technology has unlimited applications and will contribute to the advancement of medicine by combining with other solutions such as 3D printing of human organs. Below is a video that simulates a beating human heart, produced in partnership with Riken and the University of Tokyo. If you come up with a good idea, please contact them for collaborative work.
Shintaro Eguchi
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
Takeshi Hirano
