This follows their previous funding round in February 2014, raising 1.45 billion yen ($14.3 million) from WiL (World Innovation Lab), Global Brain, Itochu Technology Ventures, Plus (an office stationary company), GMO Venture Partners, and Mixi.
Founded in 2009, Raksul is a fabless company that provides printing services in partnership with more than 1,600 printing facilities across Japan (as of November 2013). Users can place printing orders at affordable rates because the company takes advantage of downtime at participating printers to complete those orders.
Raksul will use the funds to provide additional support for partnering printing companies, including helping these companies buy paper or printing materials at affordable rates for leveraging volume discounts by gathering demand.
In addition, the company is looking to launch the service in other markets beyond Japan. While they are a 100-person team in Japan and Vietnam, they are planning to double its operational force by the end of this year to achieve the 1 million user goal.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by Kurt Hanson Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Grooves provides an online outplacement platform as well as recruiting consultation services. The company recently announced that it has established an R&D unit called Grooves HR Tech Lab, to study and develop technologies bringing artificial intelligence and big data analytics to the recruitment industry. Dr. Kenji Hirata, who has been involved in HR-XML (Human Resources eXtensible Markup Language) and standardizing the competence model for human resources development, was appointed as principal for the new research unit. Grooves has been providing Forkwell Jobs, a platform allowing engineers to find new jobs, in addition to CrowdAgent, as channels for connecting general job seekers with recruitment agencies. Founder and CEO Yukihiro Ikemi told us what they found upon operating these services: If our career advisor helps job seekers, about 60% of these applicants can receive an offer to hire. However, if they rely only on the online platform, the possibility is not more than 10% regardless of how well the matching process is carried out. So the question came up, what makes the difference between having and not having professional support? We have thoroughly monitored how our top consultants communicate with job seekers. Dr. Hirata could visualize an ideal format by analyzing a number of interview cases. If we can carry put this procedure systematically,…
L to R: Grooves CEO Yukihiro Ikemi, Grooves HR Tech Lab’s principal Dr. Kenji Hirata.
Tokyo-based Grooves provides an online outplacement platform as well as recruiting consultation services. The company recently announced that it has established an R&D unit called Grooves HR Tech Lab, to study and develop technologies bringing artificial intelligence and big data analytics to the recruitment industry. Dr. Kenji Hirata, who has been involved in HR-XML (Human Resources eXtensible Markup Language) and standardizing the competence model for human resources development, was appointed as principal for the new research unit.
Grooves has been providing Forkwell Jobs, a platform allowing engineers to find new jobs, in addition to CrowdAgent, as channels for connecting general job seekers with recruitment agencies. Founder and CEO Yukihiro Ikemi told us what they found upon operating these services:
If our career advisor helps job seekers, about 60% of these applicants can receive an offer to hire. However, if they rely only on the online platform, the possibility is not more than 10% regardless of how well the matching process is carried out. So the question came up, what makes the difference between having and not having professional support?
We have thoroughly monitored how our top consultants communicate with job seekers. Dr. Hirata could visualize an ideal format by analyzing a number of interview cases. If we can carry put this procedure systematically, I believe that it will result in something like an artificial intelligence-based engine.
For input and output interfaces for the engine, we can adopt IBM Watson or Softbank Pepper respectively. A core part can be developed by leveraging technologies from Google or other internet companies. So what we must do is to focus on developing an engine that match people and jobs.
There’s a theory called Planned Happenstance in career formation, positing that we don’t always need to plan a career but need to plan to act on happenstance. It is the view that you create opportunities by acting on your curiosity and chance events.
Nevertheless, there has been no attempt to systematize Planned Happenstance and serendipity in the Japanese recruitment industry thus far. Leading recruitment companies typically determine what jobs to introduce based on conditional matching of job descriptions and required skills.
“The environment shapes a person” is my favorite saying, meaning that given a proper environment, people can outperform expected performance levels even if they are new to a field. Given that most cases of startup businesses usually explore unexplored areas, an effort to find a person who has experience in a certain field does not make any sense.
Ikemi added:
The Japanese human resources market didn’t employ HR-XML in the early 2000s, despite it being the industry’s global standard at that time. Because of this, no uniform standard is now uses in Japan and the formats of their job description differ by company, which is an anomaly in the global market.
By having Dr. Hirata on our team, we want to standardize human resources data formats to further study big data and artificial intelligence technologies, aiming to develop new metrics for more accurate matchmaking and provide more efficient hiring solutions.
Looking forward, Grooves stated that it will invite other academic authorities from this sector to accelerate activities of the new R&D unit.
Artificial intelligence has grown enough to outperform humans in certain cases, such as in games of shogi or chess, as well as quizzes and riddles. Some day in the future, artificial intelligence may come to provide relevant advise upon important occasions like career changes, better than that of a flesh-and-blood human consultant?
I’m sure I am not the person looking at this story who can imagine a humanoid robot like Pepper advising job seekers at public job placement offices throughout Japan.
Translated by Sumi Yo via Mother First Edited by Masaru Ikeda and “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Bitforest recently launched a teaser site for the global edition of VAddy, a cloud-based web vulnerability scanning tool. Integrated with continuous integration (CI) tools, VAddy helps developers scan vulnerabilities in code under development. Since its launch back in October 2014, a Japanese edition has been seeing user growth of 50% per month. Their users include notable internet companies like Zigexn (TSE:3679). Many app developers have adopted a continuous integration development method these days, proven by the fact that Jenkins, one of the leading open-source CI tools, has surpassed 100,000 downloads globally. VAddy provides app developers with an optimized security solution that is integrated with CI tools such as Jenkins, TravisCI, and CircleCI. Automated vulnerability scanners for CI tools have been generally trending upward in the developer community, where Google recently unveiled a tool that tests web app security scanners, called Firing Range. Bitforest is now planning to launch the global freemium version of VAddy in March, followed by a premium version this summer. It is interesting to see how Bitforest will fare in bringing the culture of continuous security testing to the global developer community with a Japan-made vulnerability scanning tool. Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Tokyo-based Bitforest recently launched a teaser site for the global edition of VAddy, a cloud-based web vulnerability scanning tool. Integrated with continuous integration (CI) tools, VAddy helps developers scan vulnerabilities in code under development. Since its launch back in October 2014, a Japanese edition has been seeing user growth of 50% per month. Their users include notable internet companies like Zigexn (TSE:3679).
Many app developers have adopted a continuous integration development method these days, proven by the fact that Jenkins, one of the leading open-source CI tools, has surpassed 100,000 downloads globally. VAddy provides app developers with an optimized security solution that is integrated with CI tools such as Jenkins, TravisCI, and CircleCI.
It is interesting to see how Bitforest will fare in bringing the culture of continuous security testing to the global developer community with a Japan-made vulnerability scanning tool.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind a crowdsourced translation service called Conyac, launched a new platform called Conyac Market on Thursday, aiming to support global expansion of companies in more comprehensive ways beyond translation services. The new platform allows users to outsource many tasks required for their global business expansion, such as localization of their service, conducting on-site research in their targeting market, and copywriting the service’s name relevant to their targeting market. Conyac has acquired more than 45,000 crowdsourced bilingual or multilingual translators from over 70 languages. The company had been receiving requests from users asking to deal with comprehensive business services beyond translation, such as proofreading documents by native foreign-language speakers, transcribing documents and composing press releases in foreign languages. In order to leverage the skills of their crowdsourced translators and meet increasing demand from ordering users, we were told that Anydoor has decided to launch the new platform. Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada told us his comment on what they expect upon the launch: Conyac was originally launched to help people break through language barriers rather than providing translation services. While our crowdsourced translators have been increasing in number, demands from our ordering users have become more diversified….
Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind a crowdsourced translation service called Conyac, launched a new platform called Conyac Market on Thursday, aiming to support global expansion of companies in more comprehensive ways beyond translation services. The new platform allows users to outsource many tasks required for their global business expansion, such as localization of their service, conducting on-site research in their targeting market, and copywriting the service’s name relevant to their targeting market.
Conyac has acquired more than 45,000 crowdsourced bilingual or multilingual translators from over 70 languages. The company had been receiving requests from users asking to deal with comprehensive business services beyond translation, such as proofreading documents by native foreign-language speakers, transcribing documents and composing press releases in foreign languages. In order to leverage the skills of their crowdsourced translators and meet increasing demand from ordering users, we were told that Anydoor has decided to launch the new platform.
Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada told us his comment on what they expect upon the launch:
Anydoor CEO Naoki Yamada
Conyac was originally launched to help people break through language barriers rather than providing translation services. While our crowdsourced translators have been increasing in number, demands from our ordering users have become more diversified. In order to make the best of our translators’ skills, we launched Conyac Market to allow them to receive tasks in addition to crowdsourced translation work.
For corporate or individual users, translation is not a purpose but a means. I believe that our translators can provide more to help users achieve their purpose. I expect that this new service to help more corporations and individuals better connect with the global community.
In order to use Conyac Market services, you need to sign up for the Conyac translation platform as an ordering user to request translation tasks instead of using a crowdsourced translator. No monthly fee is needed, but a commission ranging from 2% to 10% for an outsourced task deal transacted through the platform will be charged.
While crowdsourced services fit well within the needs of tasks requiring faster performance and cost efficiency, it is difficult for users to gain feedback on their crowdsourced workers in a continuous job for future performance improvement.
Conyac Market is not a crowdsourcing platform but an outsourcing one, where you can appoint a specific worker who can comply with your detailed demands. With the new platform, corporate users will find it easier to maintain confidentiality despite ordering their business tasks of a third party, thus availing more options to companies in need of translation or other demands for global expansion.
This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. As some Japanese news media reported earlier this morning, Tokyo-based Metaps, the company that provides an app monetization platform using artificial intelligence, will announce today that it has fundraised 4.3 billion yen ($35.7 million) in series C round from several businesses and VC firms from Japan and the US. Details of investors are yet to be disclosed until later on when the company will announce joint venture launches in partnership with these investors. Coinciding with this funding, Metaps announced that Heizo Takenaka, the former Japanese minister of state, has joined the advisory board of the company. Metaps was founded under the former name of E-factor in September 2007 by Katsuaki Sato. Born in 1986, he attended Tokyo’s Waseda University but subsequently dropped out to establish the company, which in 2011 launched app monetization platform Metaps. This was soon followed by securing series A round funding of 440 million yen including 330 million yen from Ngi Group (now known as United); in March 2013 series B round funding of about 1 billion yen from Fidelity Growth Partners Japan and other investors was realized. Headquartered in Tokyo, they started global business expansion in 2011, opening regional offices in Singapore, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, and Shanghai. Foreign…
This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.
As some Japanese news media reported earlier this morning, Tokyo-based Metaps, the company that provides an app monetization platform using artificial intelligence, will announce today that it has fundraised 4.3 billion yen ($35.7 million) in series C round from several businesses and VC firms from Japan and the US. Details of investors are yet to be disclosed until later on when the company will announce joint venture launches in partnership with these investors.
Coinciding with this funding, Metaps announced that Heizo Takenaka, the former Japanese minister of state, has joined the advisory board of the company.
Metaps was founded under the former name of E-factor in September 2007 by Katsuaki Sato. Born in 1986, he attended Tokyo’s Waseda University but subsequently dropped out to establish the company, which in 2011 launched app monetization platform Metaps. This was soon followed by securing series A round funding of 440 million yen including 330 million yen from Ngi Group (now known as United); in March 2013 series B round funding of about 1 billion yen from Fidelity Growth Partners Japan and other investors was realized.
Headquartered in Tokyo, they started global business expansion in 2011, opening regional offices in Singapore, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, and Shanghai. Foreign sales from these markets outside Japan accounts for about 70% of corporate income.
In view of app monetization platforms, they have been often cited with other startups such as Japanese ad technology developer FreakOut. To date, apps adopting Metaps’ monetization platform have surpassed over 1.2 billion downloads globally.
Metaps says that the funds will be used for hiring people and R&D on big data analysis solutions as applied to wearable devices and automobiles. The company has been collecting usage information of mobile app users via the app monetization platform, but aims to acquire that from 800 million people – five times of the current accumulation – by expanding beyond to aforementioned new areas.
This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based Schoo, the company that provides e-learning solutions using online lecture movies, announced that it has fundraised 340 million yen (about $2.9 million) in January from Dentsu Digital Holdings and Link and Motivation with participation from existing investors; Itochu Technology Ventures, Anri, and Incubate Fund. See also: School in your pocket: Japanese startup launches iPhone app for live lecture participation Schoo: Japanese startup wants to set the standard for online learning (Part 1 of 2) Schoo: Japanese e-learning startup strives for excellence in content (Part 2 of 2) This is the third round for the company, following their previous funding worth 150 million yen ($1.5 million) back in June 2013. Schoo CEO Kenshiro Mori told us his team has been verifying a hypothesis theory in since the previous funding round. As part of this verification process, they adopted a new system establishing four departments (web design, business English, startup, and programming) in the e-learning platform like a typical university, where they selected highly-acclaimed lecture videos and sorted them out by subject. After establishing these departments, their conversion rate for premium services and user activity rate were improved, in addition…
This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.
This is the third round for the company, following their previous funding worth 150 million yen ($1.5 million) back in June 2013. Schoo CEO Kenshiro Mori told us his team has been verifying a hypothesis theory in since the previous funding round. As part of this verification process, they adopted a new system establishing four departments (web design, business English, startup, and programming) in the e-learning platform like a typical university, where they selected highly-acclaimed lecture videos and sorted them out by subject.
After establishing these departments, their conversion rate for premium services and user activity rate were improved, in addition to users spontaneously starting to form a community in each department.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by Kurt Hanson Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy
Takeshi Hirano
Masaru Ikeda
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Junya Mori
