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5 Apple Watch apps and platforms from Japanese startups that you don’t want to miss

Masaru Ikeda 2015.03.14

apple-watch-briefing — Via Flickr by Rosa Jiménez Cano. Licenced under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

See the original story in Japanese.

Apple Watch was officially introduced earlier this week. Because its planned shipping volume will overwhelmingly exceed that of Android Wear or other smart watches, Apple Watch is the main topic everywhere in the tech community for the first half of this year.

As the launch of Apple draws near, people are more likely to be interested in what Apple Watch apps crop up in the future. We collected plans of Apple Watch app launches from Japanese startups, primarily involving our reader base.

We couldn’t collect a lot of information as it is so soon after the official announcement of Apple Watch. However, this will provide a clue in assuming what kind of user experience will be delivered as well as what startups will bring these apps. So I hope this will help provide a future outlook for this space.

Dr. Wallet (by BearTail)

Dr. Wallet is a cloud-based household accounting solution that lets one track personal finances by simply scanning receipts. Dr. Wallet’s Apple Watch app allows entry of expenses from the wrist and sync with Dr. Wallet’s smartphone app. If a scanned receipt is used with the smartphone app, one can receive notification via Apple Watch app when BearTail’s operators finish digitalizing the scanned data so one can handle expense records in the app. If a monthly limit of expenses is set with the app, one can easily see with the Apple Watch app what percentage has already been consumed.

Seeing is believing. Check out the video below.

Prott（by Goodpatch）

Prott is a prototyping tool for smart devices apps, and now supports designing user interfaces for Apple Watch apps. This doesn’t mean one cannot control Prott with Apple Watch. However, as more startups develop Apple Watch apps, the more users Prott can acquire.

Nain

Nain is a Tokyo-based startup launched in November 2014, currently developing a social network service for smart watches. The above slides show what they intend to do. We will provide more details later on.

SnapDish (by Vuzz)

SnapDish is one of popular food photo apps from Japan. In contrast with other apps, their users are more likely to take pictures of their homemade dishes, so Vuzz, the company behind the the SnapDish app, thinks that developing an Apple Watch app syncing with “hunger pangs” is possible. (Photo below is the smartphone version of SnapDish.)

TennisCore

Yuichi Kato previously worked at Rakuten as a project manager for their recently-acquired chat and messaging app Viber. He quit the e-commerce giant and is currently developing an AppleWatch app for tennis players, called TennisCore.

When tennis players get ahead in their game, they tend to forget counting their scores. To prevent this, Kato developed an iPhone app that allows players to count their scores. But as it is hard to play the game while holding a smartphone, he planned an Apple Watch app that lets them keep counting with their wrist.

Towards April 24th when Apple will launch the smart watch product here in Japan, we are told that more startups are preparing release of Apple Watch apps soon. We also heard undisclosed updates regarding these apps from several Japanese startups, so people will receive user experiences never before experienced.

The Bridge’s editorials expect to be overwhelmingly busy covering more Apple Watch apps from Japanese startups over the next 6 weeks.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s online car rental platform Veecle raises estimated $570,000

Veecle Experience

Shintaro Eguchi 2015.03.11

See the original story in Japanese. Fukuoka-based Reevo, a company that provides a smartphone-based car rental service called Veecle!-experience (Veecle), announced in February that it had fundraised from Daiwa Corporate Investment and Sagin Capital & Consulting. [1] While details of the investment have not been disclosed, Reevo’s capital was increased to 93.3 million yen ($768,000) after securing the funds. Some resources say that the funding amount was estimated to be $570,000. Veecle provides a wide variety of vehicles, ranging from camper vans to imported luxury cars, allowing users to complete the entire process from search to booking confirmation using their smartphones. Reevo has acquired about 3,000 automobiles available for rent in partnership with 80 car rental service providers as of February 2015. Veecle had been initially delivering vehicles to user’s homes upon their booking via smartphones, but subsequently pivoted its business model. In their current model, they are a fabless company but can provide users with car rental services in Kyushu as well as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Shimane, and Ehime, in partnership with other car rental service providers. Reevo CEO Ryoma Matsuo told The Bridge what is behind the funding: Japan’s domestic car rental market is valued at 510 billion…

See the original story in Japanese.

Fukuoka-based Reevo, a company that provides a smartphone-based car rental service called Veecle!-experience (Veecle), announced in February that it had fundraised from Daiwa Corporate Investment and Sagin Capital & Consulting. [1] While details of the investment have not been disclosed, Reevo’s capital was increased to 93.3 million yen ($768,000) after securing the funds. Some resources say that the funding amount was estimated to be $570,000.

Veecle provides a wide variety of vehicles, ranging from camper vans to imported luxury cars, allowing users to complete the entire process from search to booking confirmation using their smartphones. Reevo has acquired about 3,000 automobiles available for rent in partnership with 80 car rental service providers as of February 2015.

Veecle had been initially delivering vehicles to user’s homes upon their booking via smartphones, but subsequently pivoted its business model. In their current model, they are a fabless company but can provide users with car rental services in Kyushu as well as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Shimane, and Ehime, in partnership with other car rental service providers.

Reevo CEO Ryoma Matsuo told The Bridge what is behind the funding:

Japan’s domestic car rental market is valued at 510 billion yen ($4.2 billion). In addition, I believe it will grow because of the change of consumers’ mindset from ownership to usership in the use of vehicles for their daily lives. On the other hand, more than half of all 500,000 vehicles for rent in Japan are dealt by fragmented service providers that are typically small, and their systems are outdated and cause low operational efficiency. Leveraging special-purpose trucks or low-priced autos that these providers have, we can help improve their business and acquire more customers.

The company plans to use the funds to increase the number of available vehicles and expand its coverage area of car rental services. They want to expand the service nationwide in Japan by this summer, aiming to partner with 500 car rental service providers with 10,000 automobiles.

Matsuo added:

Daiwa Corporate Investment has love and passion for us, especially for our business and relationship with each other. It is said that the ideal relationship between an investor and an entrepreneur is like a marriage, so I asked Daiwa “Would you marry us?” when we decided to receive the funds from them. Regarding Sagin Capital, a key factor in the decision was we wanted to make a solid connection with local businesses in the Kyushu region through the deal.

Car rental service is obviously part of the vibrant “sharing economy” movement. So it may give the younger generation more chances to enjoy leisure activities or holiday trips.

Sagin Capital & Consulting is the investment arm of Saga Bank, a regional bank in Japan’s Kyushu Island. ↩

Translated by Sumi Yo via Mother First
Edited by Masaru Ikeda and Kurt Hanson

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Hairstudy offers Japanese hairstyling techniques online, serving beauticians worldwide

Hairstudy

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2015.03.11

See the original story in Japanese. An increasing number of online services for beauticians and hair salons are emerging. Good examples include Minimo, Mixi’s search engine for hairdressing models, and Coupe that helps beauticians find their hairdressing models. I’d like to introduce a new service called Hairstudy, which has recently rolled out a new interface. See also: Japanese service matches novice hairdressers with those who need a cut Japan’s Coupe helps beauticians find hairdressing models online More than 3,000 beauticians are learning Since its launch back in June 2011, Hairstudy has been offering beauticians with an online video-based hairstyling learning platform. Premium plans for individual users are reasonably available from 2,500 yen to 3,700 yen (about $20 to $30), so it receives a lot of support from beauticians based in rural areas and self-employed beauticians who are likely to have less opportunities to attend a seminar to learn new hairstyling techniques. Gradually growing a user base, the service has acquired over 3,000 beauticians from about 1,500 salons in Japan. The platform has over 120 uploaded case study videos and received more than 1.5 million views from users so far. Typical use cases include junior stylists watching these videos in the…

See the original story in Japanese.

An increasing number of online services for beauticians and hair salons are emerging. Good examples include Minimo, Mixi’s search engine for hairdressing models, and Coupe that helps beauticians find their hairdressing models. I’d like to introduce a new service called Hairstudy, which has recently rolled out a new interface.

See also:

More than 3,000 beauticians are learning

Since its launch back in June 2011, Hairstudy has been offering beauticians with an online video-based hairstyling learning platform. Premium plans for individual users are reasonably available from 2,500 yen to 3,700 yen (about $20 to $30), so it receives a lot of support from beauticians based in rural areas and self-employed beauticians who are likely to have less opportunities to attend a seminar to learn new hairstyling techniques. Gradually growing a user base, the service has acquired over 3,000 beauticians from about 1,500 salons in Japan.

The platform has over 120 uploaded case study videos and received more than 1.5 million views from users so far. Typical use cases include junior stylists watching these videos in the back room or during a commute to prepare for their after-hour technique training, as well as beauty salon chains offering it for their employees as an educational platform. There are also Japanese beauticians based in the U.S. or Australia using the platform to keep up with the latest hairstyle trend in Japan.

Poised for global expansion

The purposes of the new interface roll-out are for optimizing the Hairstudy platform for browsing on multiple devices including smartphones as well as multilingualization preparing for global expansion. Beauticians have to work long hours and are busy for attending seminars even after their business hours or when they have a day off work. In order for these busy beauticians to use the service leveraging their spare time, all functions including payments in the app are designed as simple as possible for intuitive operations. We were told that they have an increasing number of users from beauticians in Southeast Asia, Korea and Taiwan as well as Japanese beauticians working outside Japan.

Prior to launching Hairstudy, Kenichi Kamata, CEO of the platform’s operator Akubi, had been previously working as a sales representative at a beauty product company, after being a beautician after graduating from a vocational school.

He explained about what prompted him to launch the platform:

Many beauticians quit their jobs, and I heard that one of the reasons why they do so is the lack of opportunities to learn hairstyling techniques. Hence, I thought things could be driven more readily using online videos which started becoming vibrant at that time. Since I myself used to be a beautician, I rediscovered how fascinating that job is after I quit. So I wanted to help beauticians see their job as awesome before they give up.

Japanese hairstyling techniques are highly reputed

Kamata asserted that the skill level of Japanese beauticians is the highest in the world so their techniques are often imitated by beauticians outside Japan. For example, as beauticians in Korea are very interested in attending seminars, many of them are eager to learn the skills of well-known beauticians in Tokyo.

Upon roll-out at this time, Akubi plans to add more content for hair coloring or perming, with more designed ones for assistant beauticians and salon owners. They aim to acquire 10,000 premium users in Japan and Southeast Asia. It will be interesting to see how the company helps improve the techniques of beauticians around the world.

Translated by Kenji Hayakawa via Conyac crowdsourced translation service
Edited by Masaru Ikeda and “Tex” Pomeroy

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Handmade item marketplace Anders brings new Japanese-flavored designs every Monday

SCORE 1,631

Masaru Ikeda 2015.03.09

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Creema provides a handmade item marketplace under the same name. Our readers may recall that the company secured $1 million funding round from KDDI Open Innovation Fund last year, followed by an iOS app launch in November. The company officially today launched a new app called Anders in six locations, bringing made-in-Japan handmade items to the global market. The app is available for iOS on AppStore in Japan, the U.S., Singapore, France and Germany, plus Taiwan. Based on the concept – Long Life Design, HandMade in Japan – Anders introduces new lineups every week from a variety of accessories, fashion items and foods as well as home interiors. Members can buy these items for reduced prices within a week after their initial appearance on the marketplace. If one introduces friends to Anders, one can earn rewards of up to 6,000 yen (about $50) in value according to how many friends are introduced. Moreover, the friends introduced can also earn rewards of 500 yen in value each. Planned participating designers and brands include Astro Nuts, Januka, Jaren, “GaTa” watch smith, Enku, and C-Brain. What differentiates Anders most from their conventional service is that users can enjoy shopping in English as well as Japanese. According to Creema, each of more than five designers intends to introduce their 10 to 20 new items every Monday as…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Creema provides a handmade item marketplace under the same name. Our readers may recall that the company secured $1 million funding round from KDDI Open Innovation Fund last year, followed by an iOS app launch in November.

The company officially today launched a new app called Anders in six locations, bringing made-in-Japan handmade items to the global market. The app is available for iOS on AppStore in Japan, the U.S., Singapore, France and Germany, plus Taiwan.

Based on the concept – Long Life Design, HandMade in Japan – Anders introduces new lineups every week from a variety of accessories, fashion items and foods as well as home interiors. Members can buy these items for reduced prices within a week after their initial appearance on the marketplace.

If one introduces friends to Anders, one can earn rewards of up to 6,000 yen (about $50) in value according to how many friends are introduced. Moreover, the friends introduced can also earn rewards of 500 yen in value each. Planned participating designers and brands include Astro Nuts, Januka, Jaren, “GaTa” watch smith, Enku, and C-Brain.

What differentiates Anders most from their conventional service is that users can enjoy shopping in English as well as Japanese. According to Creema, each of more than five designers intends to introduce their 10 to 20 new items every Monday as of the time of launch, meaning dozens of new handmade items debuting on the app every week.

Since its teaser site launch on February 23, the company has been accepting pre-registrations from users until today. In a recent conversation with Creema CEO Kotaro Marubayashi, he couldn’t disclose how many users they have acquired to date but shared a ratio of overseas users of around 50% as expected, thereby seeing a good start.

There are many players fiercely competing in this space, including Etsy and Fab in the U.S., Pinkoi in Taiwan, in addition to Tenote and Minne, not to mention Iichi, in Japan. So it will be interesting to see how favorably the concept of handmade items based out of Japan are accepted by the global market.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Border better serves business travelers, looks to disrupt travel agency industry

Border

Masaru Ikeda 2015.03.08

See the original story in Japanese. I’m in Jakarta, and will be in Taiwan next week. Booking flights and accommodation is time-consuming. While friends recommend that I use an online secretary service like Kaori-san, it would be difficult to tell someone my exact preference. We have had no choice but to make online bookings by ourselves. However, a Japanese startup recently popped up to address this dilemma. They are called Border (named after ‘Business Order’), where tour operators help you book and make arrangements focused on business travel. The above diagram shows how an order will be processed when making a flight and a hotel reservation. In conventional systems, your order is transferred from a travel agency to an airline company or a hotel via a tour operator. This flow is not changed even with discounted travel ticketing sites like Expedia, so they are not disruptive from that point of view. In other words, their cheap prices are made possible by no physical storefront and efforts for reducing intermediate cost by tour operators, airline companies, and hotel operators. Meanwhile, if you use Border, your order will bypass a travel agency. Instead, several tour operators will propose travel plans based on…

See the original story in Japanese.

I’m in Jakarta, and will be in Taiwan next week. Booking flights and accommodation is time-consuming. While friends recommend that I use an online secretary service like Kaori-san, it would be difficult to tell someone my exact preference. We have had no choice but to make online bookings by ourselves. However, a Japanese startup recently popped up to address this dilemma. They are called Border (named after ‘Business Order’), where tour operators help you book and make arrangements focused on business travel.

The above diagram shows how an order will be processed when making a flight and a hotel reservation. In conventional systems, your order is transferred from a travel agency to an airline company or a hotel via a tour operator. This flow is not changed even with discounted travel ticketing sites like Expedia, so they are not disruptive from that point of view. In other words, their cheap prices are made possible by no physical storefront and efforts for reducing intermediate cost by tour operators, airline companies, and hotel operators.

Meanwhile, if you use Border, your order will bypass a travel agency. Instead, several tour operators will propose travel plans based on your preferences for airlines or hotels. This is similar to Ietty where users can receive proposals for their new home from multiple property companies.

Border CEO Tomoki Hosotani explained:

Tour operators are all Japanese companies. They are licensed under Japan’s Travel Agency Act, and they also have local offices in major cities in the world. Their representative in these offices will hear your preference using our service, so they can propose travel plans to you while other discounted ticketing sites.

While these tour operators usually wholesale their packages to travel agencies, they have certified travel service supervisors in the company that can deal with travel orders in Japanese. We asked our business proposals to these tour-operating companies, and seven companies decided to work with us. They are strong in arranging trips to Southeast Asia as well as North America and Latin America.

Our readers may wonder why they are focused on business travel, since there is no big difference in the booking process from that for sightseeing trips. According to Hosotani, business travelers can fix their plans after making two interactions with a tour operator, while sightseeing trip users need to interact ten times on average. Besides that, people’s needs are more diversified in sightseeing trips. The Border team decided to focus on business travel needs, which is easier to simplify and standardize the entire trip arrangement process.

Similarly to Designclue, a crowdsourced logo design order service by Tokyo-based startup PurpleCow, by standardizing the format of work flows, startups can develop an online platform that allows customers to make orders in Japanese, but allows non-Japanese crowdsourced workers to receive orders in their language. If any foreign tour operator outside Japan deals with orders from Japanese customers through the Border platform, Japan’s Travel Agency Act would not be applied to these transactions, which helps non-Japanese tour operating companies more likely to take part in the platform in the future.

Big companies typically request business travel arrangements to their long-familiar travel agencies. While the annual market size of overseas business travels from Japan is estimated 1 trillion yen ($8.4 million), the need for trips to the Asian region alone can account for 667 million yen ($5.6 million). So the Border team is planning to focus on serving SMEs and startups in need of business travel to Asian destinations.

Border founder Tomoki Hosotani previously worked for the Japan Research Institute, a top Japanese think tank, followed by attending UCLA for his MBA. He has launched a business in the US, but closed it to focus on launching a new startup in Japan. Investors include an unnamed former executive from a Japanese travel agency, which suggests they are serious about disrupting the Japanese travel agency industry.

The Border team established an owned media offering information around international conferences and business travels, aiming to better reach potential customers. They aim to strengthen their promotional efforts in collaboration with other services operators such as taxi hailing apps.

border_tomoki-hosotani_featuredimage — Border founder and CEO Tomoki Hosotani

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by Masaru Ikeda and Kurt Hanson

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Japan’s Incubate Fund holds its first global edition of bootcamp program in Singapore

Masaru Ikeda 2015.03.07

See the original story in Japanese. Incubate Camp is a startup bootcamp program that lets entrepreneurs brush up their business idea with mentoring support from investors on a face-to-face basis, periodically organized by Japanese startup-focused investment firm Incubate Fund. Seven editions of the program have been held to date in Japan. The firm held its first global edition called Incubate Camp Asia on February 25th, at Singapore University of Technology Design, SUTD for short. SUTD is known for Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab, which has been nourishing gaming developers in partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During the first global edition dubbed Incubate Camp Asia, gaming developers (entrepreneurs) from all across Asia and gaming publishers (investors providing mentoring support) mainly from Japan came together, teamed up and presented their polished business ideas after several review sessions. Their ideas were scored by mentors and participating SUTD students with consideration of investment potentials, where three startups were selected out of all participating 10 startups upon their final pitch session. Note: Some of gaming titles featured in this article are still under development. Top Prize: JOY Entertainment J.S.C. (Vietnam) (Mentoring by Allan Simonsen, Founder and CEO, Boomzap) JOY Entertainment J.S.C. is a Vietnam-based gaming…

See the original story in Japanese.

Incubate Camp is a startup bootcamp program that lets entrepreneurs brush up their business idea with mentoring support from investors on a face-to-face basis, periodically organized by Japanese startup-focused investment firm Incubate Fund. Seven editions of the program have been held to date in Japan.

The firm held its first global edition called Incubate Camp Asia on February 25th, at Singapore University of Technology Design, SUTD for short. SUTD is known for Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab, which has been nourishing gaming developers in partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

During the first global edition dubbed Incubate Camp Asia, gaming developers (entrepreneurs) from all across Asia and gaming publishers (investors providing mentoring support) mainly from Japan came together, teamed up and presented their polished business ideas after several review sessions.

Their ideas were scored by mentors and participating SUTD students with consideration of investment potentials, where three startups were selected out of all participating 10 startups upon their final pitch session.

Note: Some of gaming titles featured in this article are still under development.

Top Prize: JOY Entertainment J.S.C. (Vietnam)

(Mentoring by Allan Simonsen, Founder and CEO, Boomzap)

JOY Entertainment J.S.C. is a Vietnam-based gaming developers and has acquired 2 million users in the Southeast Asian region with their 3D MMOTPS (multiplayer onlinne third-person shooter) gaming titles. Going forward, the company wants to expand their business beyond to mainland China, Japan, Korea, and other markets, exploring potential partnership with gaming companies like Tencent in China as well as DeNA and Gumi in Japan. They are currently raising money to start self-publishing their titles in Vietnam.

Allan Simonsen, who has been working for over a decade in this space, lectured about improvements in user experience and monetization strategies. He acclaimed the team because of their passion and the promising achievement of having introduced apps that have attracted many users in the region.

1st-incubate-camp-asia-joy-ent-2 — Allan Simonsen provides mentorship.

2nd Prize: Alkemis Games (Indonesia)

(Mentoring by Juno Shin, Business Development Leader, Tencent Japan)

Alkemis Games is now developing a gaming title which will be launched this coming spring in Indonesia. They are interested in keeping the app in the higher rank on the AppStore for a long time, rather than taking a stab at top rank fame.

The team introduced their use case based on Pickfu.com, where developers can receive feedback from the market through presentation of multiple improvement proposals. Tencent’s Shin advocated some ideas like adding a GvG (Guild vs Guild) flavor or the concept of swapping and renting virtual items in the game, aiming to help them differentiate from other competing titles in the U.S.

1st-incubate-camp-asia-alkemis-games-2 — Juno Shin reviews his mentoring sessions.

3rd Prize: SnoozeFox (Thailand)

(Mentoring by Minori Iwaki, COO and Senior Vice President, Sega Networks)

Bangkok-based SnoozeFox has developed a game title called Chaos Sphere. They were advised to add some features like auto-batting mode as well as increasing the variety of characters, weapons and consuming virtual items in the game, aiming to gain a lifetime value of users.

Iwaki praised the team for its awesome game assets and having adopted GvG experience in their app.

1st-incubate-camp-asia-snoozefox-2 — Minori Iwaki (right) reviews his mentoring sessions.

What impressed me during the event was a comment given by David Ng, CEO of Gumi Asia. According to him, gaming developers who have less experience in working with gaming publishers usually start developing an app without considering its publishing process. These developers are so devoted to refining user interface and experience that the size of their app may be larger than 1 gigabytes. Such a huge size for gaming apps means a quick death regardless of quality, especially when broadband connectivity is likely unavailable such as in Indonesia.

Although it may be hard for developers in Southeast Asia where they typically have few gaming publishers in the neighborhood, Ng noted that developers should stay alert on the publishing side but not scamp the improvement process of user interface and experience regardless of whether your title is a major or indie one. Other participating mentors also agreed with his insight that encourages developers to listen to market voices.

Other participating startups and mentors were:

Altitude games (the Philippines), mentoring by Jakob Lykkegaard, Co-Founder/CEO, Playlab
Dreamlords Digital (the Philippines / US), mentoring by Akira Abe, General Manager, DeNA Asia Singapore
Firebeast Studio (Indonesia), mentoring by Kazuyuki Hagiwara, COO, Aiming
Hextek (China), mentoring by David Ng, CEO of Gumi Asia
Ixora Studios (Singapore), mentoring by Gerald Tock, Co-Founder/CEO, Inzen Studio
Touch Dimensions (Singapore), mentoring by Kent Byers, Co-Founder/CEO, Booster Pack
Witching Hour (Singapore), mentoring by Yusuke Murata, General Partner, Incubate Fund

1st-incubate-camp-asia-discussion-2 — A scene from mentoring sessions.

1st-incubate-camp-asia-discussion-1 — A scene from mentoring sessions.

1st-incubate-camp-asia-mentors — Entrepreneurs deliver their pitch to a crowd of mentors.

1st-incubate-camp-asia-sutd-view-1 — The first edition of Incubate Camp Asia took place here at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

Disclosure: Incubate Fund is a sponsoring member of The Bridge.

Translated by Sumi Yo via Mother First
Edited by Masaru Ikeda
Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy