Singapore-based AdAsia Holdings announced today that it has commenced development of advertising solutions targeting Smart TV viewers in Asia. The company says that it will distribute video ads to internet Smart TV viewers subscribed to terrestrial and satellite TV channels in the region.
The new company was founded by two Japanese serial entrepreneurs: Kosuke Sogo and Otohiko Kozutsumi. Sogo had been previously serving Southeast Asian subsidiaries of Japanese leading ad network operator MicroAd as CEO. Kozutsumi also served the Vietnamese subsidiary of MicroAd as COO following involvement in the global business expansion efforts of Nobot, a mobile-focused ad network acquired in 2011 by KDDI group company Mediba.
Both men have been engaged in the Adtech business in Southeast Asia for many years. Given the expanding growth for gross domestic product and ad market in the region, they have found huge opportunities in the Smart TV ad industry where there is still few companies capable of running productive marketing campaigns. Similar to Japan, advertising slots on Asian terrestrial and satellite TV channels are mostly controlled by existing ad agents and local TV operators. However, it can be said that the video ads field for Smart TVs are an exception.
In Japan, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners and some other companies have been distributing video ad services for Smart TVs such as Toshiba Regza, Sharp Aquos and Panasonic Viera. But these services have not yet been offered in many parts of the world. Meanwhile, over 200 TV channels are being offered in Korea, Taiwan, China and other Asian countries. The more TV channels on offer, the more the ad inventory and opportunity available… thus the team foresees a huge business opportunity as more viewers in these countries switch to Smart TVs.
See the original story in Japanese. Kamarq Holdings is a startup to offer the high quality and connected furniture brand Kamarq. The company recently announced on Thursday that it has secured a total of about 350 million yen (about $3.2 million) from Energy & Environment Investment, Saison Ventures, iSGS Investment Works as well as angel investors. Saison Ventures is the investment arm of Japanese leading credit card company Credit Saison (TSE:8253). The funds will be used for product development, systems development or human resources. Coinciding with this funding, the firm also announced the launch of its first product called Sound Table, and started accepting pre-orders on the Makuake crowdfunding site. The backers can receive the product before the day of general release, and can purchase it at 80% of the normal price. Sound Table is a wooden IoT (Internet of Things) table capable of playing music or environmental sounds in accordance with the weather, controllable with a mobile app. It offers a product line-up of two types of dining table, low table and bedside table in three colors each. In our previous interview with Kamarq CEO founder and CEO Ken Machino last year, he indicated that he wanted to develop a…
Kamarq Holdings is a startup to offer the high quality and connected furniture brand Kamarq. The company recently announced on Thursday that it has secured a total of about 350 million yen (about $3.2 million) from Energy & Environment Investment, Saison Ventures, iSGS Investment Works as well as angel investors. Saison Ventures is the investment arm of Japanese leading credit card company Credit Saison (TSE:8253). The funds will be used for product development, systems development or human resources.
Coinciding with this funding, the firm also announced the launch of its first product called Sound Table, and started accepting pre-orders on the Makuake crowdfunding site. The backers can receive the product before the day of general release, and can purchase it at 80% of the normal price. Sound Table is a wooden IoT (Internet of Things) table capable of playing music or environmental sounds in accordance with the weather, controllable with a mobile app. It offers a product line-up of two types of dining table, low table and bedside table in three colors each.
Dining tableLow tableBedside tablePower source and USB sockets on table top plate
In our previous interview with Kamarq CEO founder and CEO Ken Machino last year, he indicated that he wanted to develop a voting platform for furniture design availed by the public, and a ‘smartdoor’ which implements sensors or devices for Internet connection. Starting with this Sound Table, a variety of IoT furniture products will be released in the future.
In Indonesia, custom-made furniture e-commerce site Fabelio, which targets the expanding middle-income segment, had succeeded in fundraising in February. Although the targeted market differs a bit, the needs for high quality furniture have been rapidly increasing. If defining IKEA or Nitori (Japan’s major furniture retailer chain) as fast fashion-like SPA (Specialty store retailer of Private label Apparel) in the furniture industry, Kamarq or Fabelio may be considered as the third-wave SPA. Like the innovative designfinder platform for shoes Rooy, which recently expanded into Japan from Seattle, a cooperative business with distribution channels to conventional face-to-face sales players may be expected in the furniture industry, portending a new trend.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s DeployGate, offering a test marketing tool for smartphone app development under the same name, announced last month that it will establish a US subsidiary. DeployGate provides a testing and marketing function that allows mobile developers to distribute beta version of their apps to testing users and collects feedbacks from them before the official launch. Spun off from Japanese internet company Mixi (TSE:2121) just a year ago, DeployGate has been providing this service for more than three years. Currently, it proposes service plans for individuals or SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) as well as the ones for big companies managing multiple apps or many developers involved. It has been adopted by various Japanese internet companies such as Mixi, Recruit (TSE: 6098) and Cookpad (TSE: 2193), in addition to some major game developers. Together with AppBroadCast, a Japanese media company focused on helping mobile gaming developers reach potential users, DeployGate released a test marketing specialized service for these developers called SakiPre. Conventionally, development of console games often required prolongation in order to raise the degree of perfection thoroughly because user reactions or feedbacks could be obtained only after the launch. However, as the game industry…
Japan’s DeployGate, offering a test marketing tool for smartphone app development under the same name, announced last month that it will establish a US subsidiary.
DeployGate provides a testing and marketing function that allows mobile developers to distribute beta version of their apps to testing users and collects feedbacks from them before the official launch. Spun off from Japanese internet company Mixi (TSE:2121) just a year ago, DeployGate has been providing this service for more than three years. Currently, it proposes service plans for individuals or SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) as well as the ones for big companies managing multiple apps or many developers involved. It has been adopted by various Japanese internet companies such as Mixi, Recruit (TSE: 6098) and Cookpad (TSE: 2193), in addition to some major game developers.
Together with AppBroadCast, a Japanese media company focused on helping mobile gaming developers reach potential users, DeployGate released a test marketing specialized service for these developers called SakiPre. Conventionally, development of console games often required prolongation in order to raise the degree of perfection thoroughly because user reactions or feedbacks could be obtained only after the launch. However, as the game industry gradually shifts toward the mobile field, it has realized a new development method which facilitates beta testing so that games are elaborated on by both developers and consumers, or sales promotion conducted before the launch.
DeployGate CEO Yuki Fujisaki commented on the positive response for their product:
Recently, people in the game business often tell me that they have been using DeployGate. The shift toward mobile in the game industry had much influence on DeployGate in providing them a new development environment.
The number of consumers who had downloaded apps from Saki-Pre has already exceeded 40,000. Also from clients, we have been receiving testimonials such as “it became possible to predict whether the game will be a big hit or not before launch” and “for a game which scored more than 3.5 at the Saki-Pre questionnaire, an average of 3.9 on GooglePlay store can be expected” as well as “since the response rate of Saki-Pre participants is more than 30%, points to be improved can be pinpointed at the last minute for the launch.”
Moreover, the company has started providing linking functions with business chat tools such as Slack, Hipchat and Chatwork since July of 2015 for easier communication within companies that makes feedbacks for development smoother as well. They were nominated for CEDEC Awards 2015 in August, followed by having spread its service steadily among global developer communities while participating in conferences in the US such as WWDC or Google I/O as well as holding meetups in tandem with Crittercism, a crash reporting tool startup in San Francisco. The team had been communicating closely with developers at Crittercism or Github, and emphasizing service development for developers from a global perspective.
The service is currently being utilized in about 100 countries. Even at launch, developers with diverse backgrounds such as Americans, Europeans and Scandinavians had used it, while only half of the users were Japanese. Since starting the service for Android first, it has gained esteem from developers in countries with much Android share, like Brazil.
COO Kazuto Yasuda looks back on the first year:
We spent most of the year enhancing the business core. Thankfully we have finished the first period of second year in the black, and have been organizing systems for management and customer supports.
In this situation, the team felt the need for local bases to gain customer support and brush up the product leveraging opinions from local developers as reference for service plans aimed at enterprises. As the first step to global expansion, they announced the establishment of the US while appointing Yasuda as its CEO.
Also the team aims at function expansion while cooperating with other service operators for developers that are under consideration. These days, the service is being enhanced under the theme of ‘how much the development environment for app developers can be simplified’ such as implementation of automated building function from source codes, called Dg Command. These updates can be checked out on the DeployGate blog.
The team is intended to continue operating their business on a bootstrap budget because they already have a good sales prospect and want to more focus on team building, investigating users’ needs, improving the product and user support.
To improve the product upon hearing feedbacks from developers using it directly, the company will set up an independent office this spring to make it easier to hold user meetups periodically. In addition to the three founders, the company has recently acquired new developers and designers, plus customer support representatives who work remotely from the office.
Fujisaki concluded:
DeployGate has grown as a tool essential for developers. Since there is substantial need not only in the IT industry but also in the game industry, many companies and developers are beginning to understand the importance of pre-launch test marketing.
By giving them more opportunities to communicate between developers and their users through our tool, we want to help developers continue developing apps that meet users’ expectations.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
The DeployGate management team: From left, COO Yasuda the second one, and CEO Fujisaki the third.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese seed startup incubator Samurai Incubate was founded in Tokyo, back in 2008. Since then this incubator has relocated its headquarters to a new building called Samurai Startup Island in Tokyo’s waterfront. Shota Morozumi, now 28 of age, had until recently been serving as a director for its incubation initiative. He started becoming involved in the startup scene through interviews on his personal blog Entrepreneurs’ Mind while attending university. After graduation, he continued to spend a lot of his time following Japanese entrepreneurs. He quit Samurai Incubate in January to move on to the next stage. Morozumi announced the launch of his own first startup fund called F Ventures today. The size of the funds is expected to be 500 million yen (about $4.5 million). He will spend almost a full year from now to raise more funds from investors. F Ventures, derived from the initial letter of Fukuoka where Morozumi was born and raised, is focused on participating in seed round investments, with amounts ranging from 5 to 15 million yen ($4.5 to $13.4 million) per investment deal. It sees local entrepreneurs, startups with a plan to relocate to Fukuoka and Asian startups…
Japanese seed startup incubator Samurai Incubate was founded in Tokyo, back in 2008. Since then this incubator has relocated its headquarters to a new building called Samurai Startup Island in Tokyo’s waterfront. Shota Morozumi, now 28 of age, had until recently been serving as a director for its incubation initiative. He started becoming involved in the startup scene through interviews on his personal blog Entrepreneurs’ Mind while attending university. After graduation, he continued to spend a lot of his time following Japanese entrepreneurs. He quit Samurai Incubate in January to move on to the next stage.
Morozumi announced the launch of his own first startup fund called F Ventures today. The size of the funds is expected to be 500 million yen (about $4.5 million). He will spend almost a full year from now to raise more funds from investors.
F Ventures, derived from the initial letter of Fukuoka where Morozumi was born and raised, is focused on participating in seed round investments, with amounts ranging from 5 to 15 million yen ($4.5 to $13.4 million) per investment deal. It sees local entrepreneurs, startups with a plan to relocate to Fukuoka and Asian startups working closely with Fukuoka as their investees. They have already decided to invest soon in two Japanese startups and several Korean startups.
Leveraging the ability to act rather than experience or knowledge, Morozumi claims that he will be committed to providing investments in startups with hands-on support for public relations, not to mention human resource inculcation and development through partnership with programming schools and by holding hackathon events.
For the time being, he will spend half a month at East Ventures office in Tokyo and spend the remainder at Startup Cafe, a startup incubation hub run by the local city government in Fukuoka. Futhermore, CEO Shogo Sato of Tokyo-based producer nurturing company Qreator Agent, known for ex-manager of popular Japanese comedy duos Ninety-nine and London Boots Ichi-gō Ni-gō, will participate in the funds as an advisor upon finding promising startups and in supporting entrepreneurs.
See the original story in Japanese. A current model of the pet smart feeder named Petly from Tokyo-based Rinn has received one of the world’s most prestigious design awards, Red Dot Design Award, of Germany. See also: Japanese hardware startup Rinn introduces automatic pet feeder Petly The Red Dot Design Award is one of the largest design awards recognized globally, offered by the German Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen to designs of products which have been manufactured within two years. Awards are made based upon nine criteria such as design innovation, functionality, human engineering, ecology or durability. As for 2016, 5,214 products were considered for the awards from designers or companies in 57 countries, and Petly was awarded the Product Design Award 2016 from among these. The award winning products will be displayed at the Red Dot Design museum as well as website. In Japan, some products labeled ‘Red Dot Design awarded’ are found in interior product and brand item stores. For products like Petly, winning this award will help the team in the future. Rinn had launched the original Petly in July of 2014. After that, it began publishing a life-style magazine entitled MILL Magazine, which focuses on life with…
A current model of the pet smart feeder named Petly from Tokyo-based Rinn has received one of the world’s most prestigious design awards, Red Dot Design Award, of Germany.
The Red Dot Design Award is one of the largest design awards recognized globally, offered by the German Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen to designs of products which have been manufactured within two years. Awards are made based upon nine criteria such as design innovation, functionality, human engineering, ecology or durability.
As for 2016, 5,214 products were considered for the awards from designers or companies in 57 countries, and Petly was awarded the Product Design Award 2016 from among these. The award winning products will be displayed at the Red Dot Design museum as well as website.
In Japan, some products labeled ‘Red Dot Design awarded’ are found in interior product and brand item stores. For products like Petly, winning this award will help the team in the future.
Rinn had launched the original Petly in July of 2014. After that, it began publishing a life-style magazine entitled MILL Magazine, which focuses on life with cats, while starting a branding business called Mill Creative, for products related to cats.
MILL Magazine
Masahiro Ryohara, CEO of Rinn, commented on his prospects for the future:
Within this year, we will start sales of Mill overseas including EU, Asia and the US, and also will enhance sales of Petly globally. We had planned from the onset to expand sales of MILL for cities seen having large demands for Petly as well. In 2017, we will be placing an IoT (Internet of Things) product on the market too.
While emphasizing the design properties, Rinn has been developing various products and businesses. We look forward to further details of the IoT product planned for launch.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Based out of New York City, Material Wrld provides a high-end marketplace for used clothes. Launched in 2012, the company avails a secondary circulation focused on luxury fashion items. Women can thus update the content of their closet according to events and seasonal changes. See also: Closet shopping for material girls: Material Wrld makes its public debut The company announced on Wednesday that it has secured $9 million from Start Today (TSE:3092) and Nissay Capital in a series B round. Start Today is a Tokyo company behind Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce site Zozotown, while Nissay Capital is the investment arm of a leading Japanese insurance company which participated in the previous funding round. With the latest funding, the American company has secured a total of $13 million to date. In October of 2015, Materal Wrld unveiled a prepaid debit card for luxury shoppers called Material Wrld Fashion Trade-In Card. Through the Discover Card network, this card allows users to buy new clothes at more than 700 fashion retailers both online and offline using trade-in values they got upon selling their used clothes, handbag and shoes to Material Wrld. Available retailer chains include Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom,…
Based out of New York City, Material Wrld provides a high-end marketplace for used clothes. Launched in 2012, the company avails a secondary circulation focused on luxury fashion items. Women can thus update the content of their closet according to events and seasonal changes.
The company announced on Wednesday that it has secured $9 million from Start Today (TSE:3092) and Nissay Capital in a series B round. Start Today is a Tokyo company behind Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce site Zozotown, while Nissay Capital is the investment arm of a leading Japanese insurance company which participated in the previous funding round. With the latest funding, the American company has secured a total of $13 million to date.
In October of 2015, Materal Wrld unveiled a prepaid debit card for luxury shoppers called Material Wrld Fashion Trade-In Card. Through the Discover Card network, this card allows users to buy new clothes at more than 700 fashion retailers both online and offline using trade-in values they got upon selling their used clothes, handbag and shoes to Material Wrld. Available retailer chains include Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Intermix and Seven Alan.
Since Material Wrld clienteles using this card buy new items worth 2.5 times more than what they have sold, the company has received high praise from department stores because of the win-win situation created for both these stores and the clienteles. Going forward, the company wants to expand awareness of the unique debit card system in the fashion industry.
Material Wrld founders: Rie Yano (left) and Jie Zheng (right)
Material Wrld co-counder Rie Yano and Jie Zheng offered their comment in a statement upon unveiling a new platform they are currently working on:
We will launch a new online platform in the US in several months from now. It will be a one-stop solution that allows people to submit their luxury brand items for trade-in, purchase new brand arrivals as well as second-hand items situated in others’ “closets.”
This is the first investment in the North American market for Start Today. This company wants to not only provide financial cooperation but also explore cross-border synergy in global business operations by sharing the experience of their secondhand fashion commerce service Zozoused in addition to leveraging the brand image and the vast network of Material Wrld.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Masaru Ikeda
Shintaro Eguchi
F Ventures, derived from the initial letter of Fukuoka where Morozumi was born and raised, is focused on participating in seed round investments, with amounts ranging from 5 to 15 million yen ($4.5 to $13.4 million) per investment deal. It sees local entrepreneurs, startups with a plan to relocate to Fukuoka and Asian startups working closely with Fukuoka as their investees. They have already decided to invest soon in two Japanese startups 
Junya Mori
Yukari Mitsuhashi
