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Japan’s curated news app SmartNews secures $38 million in series D round

SmartNews

Masaru Ikeda 2016.07.08

Tokyo-based SmartNews, the startup offering curated news apps both in Japan and the US, announced today that it has fundraised 3.8 billion yen (about $37.8 million) in the latest round, meaning the total of their previous funds has reached over 9.1 billion yen (equaling to about 80 million to 90 million in US dollars but depends upon the exchange rate when each funding round was secured).

This round was led by the Development Bank of Japan with participation from other investors including SMBC Venture Capital and Japan Co-invest Limited Partnership in addition to Kotaro Chiba, a notable angel investor and co-founder of Japanese mobile game company Colopl (TSE:3668).

The company isn’t disclosing its valuation but TechCrunch reports that it is between $500 million and $600 million, in post money.

The company issued a statement saying that the funds will be used to strengthen human resources, product development and marketing efforts in Japan as well as the rest of the world. They also announced that the news app has surpassed 18 million downloads globally.

See also:

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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I’m bullish on Fintech investment in Japan. So are a bunch of CVCs.

The Bridge 2016.07.08

This guest post is authored by Mark Bivens. Mark is a Silicon Valley native and former entrepreneur, having started three companies before “turning to the dark side of VC.” He is a venture capitalist that travels between Paris and Tokyo (aka the RudeVC). You can read more on his blog at http://rude.vc or follow him @markbivens. The Japanese translation of this article is available here. Several weeks ago I summarized my first impressions of Japan’s burgeoning Fintech sector. Now that I’ve had an opportunity to meet more of the key actors, I’m relatively bullish on this market for both innovation and venture investment. Perhaps reinforcing my appetite, this recent piece in TechCrunch offers a worthwhile primer on the Fintech world beyond Silicon Valley and Europe but ostensibly neglects to mention Japan. The Japanese government’s support of innovation in Fintech, such as by way of its modernizing of financial regulations and offering business incentives to firms that encourage the creation of startup incubators — is one contributing factor. Another is the average Japanese consumer’s substantial investable asset base, especially after the mid-life step function I explained earlier. Although I would not quite characterize the Japanese consumer of holding the same degree…

tokyo-stock-exchange — CC BY 2.0 via Flickr by Guilhem Vellut

Several weeks ago I summarized my first impressions of Japan’s burgeoning Fintech sector. Now that I’ve had an opportunity to meet more of the key actors, I’m relatively bullish on this market for both innovation and venture investment.

Perhaps reinforcing my appetite, this recent piece in TechCrunch offers a worthwhile primer on the Fintech world beyond Silicon Valley and Europe but ostensibly neglects to mention Japan.

The Japanese government’s support of innovation in Fintech, such as by way of its modernizing of financial regulations and offering business incentives to firms that encourage the creation of startup incubators — is one contributing factor. Another is the average Japanese consumer’s substantial investable asset base, especially after the mid-life step function I explained earlier. Although I would not quite characterize the Japanese consumer of holding the same degree of mistrust for banks the way we do in the West, investing experience of the average household is relatively more limited in Japan than say in the U.S. In fact, I observe a more kindred mindset of conservatism (or prudence) with European households.

That is not to suggest that Japanese consumers are close-minded to creative financial products. On the contrary, some very promising young firms are tapping into a consumer appetite for solutions ranging from robo-advisory (Money Design) to peer-to-peer small business lending (Crowdcredit). The recent Microsoft Innovation Day featured some other compelling entrepreneurs with global ambitions.

See also:

Japan’s P2P lending platform Crowdcredit raises $1.7 million from trading giant Itochu

Financial institutions in Japan are determined to not just remain bystanders. To their credit, many acknowledge that innovation can take place outside their corporate walls… and sometimes even outside the country’s borders.

Increasingly, these established corporations are taking small stakes in Fintech startups. A new draft measure in Japan’s parliament will ease the restrictions on banks’ ability to invest in operating companies.

Many are also setting up dedicated venture capital units. Although historically corporate venture capital funds underperform independent VC firms on a purely financial return basis, a corporation’s objectives also encompass strategic considerations, so making direct investments in startups can make sense.

By last tally, I’ve counted over 20 corporate venture capital funds in Japan who make Fintech investments. This list is by no means exhaustive, but includes (listed alphabetically):

Adways Ventures
Credit Saison Ventures
DBJ Capital
Dentsu
GCI Capital
GMO Venture Partners
Gree Ventures
Intel Capital
Itochu Corporation
Mitsubishi UFJ Capital
Mitsui Fudosan
Mizuho Venture Capital
Monex Ventures
Opt Ventures
Rakuten Ventures
Recruit Strategic Partners
Salesforce
SBI Holdings
Shinsei
SMBC Venture Capital
YJ Capital

Although I haven’t met all of them yet, the relatively few of this group with whom I’ve coinvested have behaved much like a purely financial VC would expect of them. By this I mean that these funds have issued relatively market-standard term sheets, have not demanded any special privileges, and have at least in my experience properly balanced the financial objectives of the investment with their own strategic agenda. Far from viewing them as competitors, I welcome the opportunity to coinvest with CVCs because of their complementarity with independent, financially-driven VCs.

In addition to open innovation initiatives or establishing in house CVC units, I submit that another option exists which merits serious consideration for Japanese corporations and financial institutions. More on that soon…

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Agribuddy, financial app for rural farmers in Cambodia, wins Nikkei FinTech competition

Nikkei FinTech

Takeshi Hirano 2016.07.07

See the original story in Japanese. I have come to Nikkei FinTech Conference 2016 where various financial entities, business operators and FinTech startups from within and outside of Japan gathered together to explore recent trends. During the latter part of the conference, seven next-generation financial tech startups which are likely to dominate the Japanese FinTech market gave pitches to showcase their services. Eventually, Agribuddy, which supports financial management of farmers in Cambodia, was most highly evaluated by the jurors. Agribuddy: financial management support app for farmers in Cambodia Most of farmers in emerging countries have trouble in accessing financial services or their finance management capacity. If they borrow funds from the bank on the security of the farm, they easily spend the money for living expenses before harvest due to poor management capacity. Therefore, they dabble in consumer loan services and that results in a flame-out. Agribuddy creates credit scoring of farmers according to who grows what kind of crops and provides them to the bank as credit information. Based on the information, the bank loans funds within the credit limit to farmers’ smartphones. The farmers can purchase agricutural articles such as fertilizers from cooperating retailers. eNFC: next-gen NFC utilizing the human body eNFC realizes a solution…

See the original story in Japanese.

I have come to Nikkei FinTech Conference 2016 where various financial entities, business operators and FinTech startups from within and outside of Japan gathered together to explore recent trends.

During the latter part of the conference, seven next-generation financial tech startups which are likely to dominate the Japanese FinTech market gave pitches to showcase their services. Eventually, Agribuddy, which supports financial management of farmers in Cambodia, was most highly evaluated by the jurors.

Agribuddy: financial management support app for farmers in Cambodia

Most of farmers in emerging countries have trouble in accessing financial services or their finance management capacity. If they borrow funds from the bank on the security of the farm, they easily spend the money for living expenses before harvest due to poor management capacity. Therefore, they dabble in consumer loan services and that results in a flame-out.

Agribuddy creates credit scoring of farmers according to who grows what kind of crops and provides them to the bank as credit information. Based on the information, the bank loans funds within the credit limit to farmers’ smartphones. The farmers can purchase agricutural articles such as fertilizers from cooperating retailers.

eNFC: next-gen NFC utilizing the human body

eNFC realizes a solution capable of new Near Field Communication (NFC), which are used for the electronic money card Suica, by replacing NFC antenna with the human body. For example, wearing the provided wearable devices (as a smart device or placed into the human body), users are able to pass ticket checkers in stations only by using his / her finger.

When passengers walk through the NFC device embedded underground, their bodies work as antennae and they can pass the checker just by touching the checking machine with a finger.

deBit: debit card for bitcoin

Bitcoin is available only in 1,500 stores domestically. Contrary to its distribution amount, it has not been in use in the real economy. To solve this problem, deBit adopted the debit card method which is available in stores displaying the VISA mark.

nikkei-fintech-2016-debit-2 — Bitcoin credit card issuers in the world

Although other companies overseas such as Shift are ahead in this field, the deBit team highlighted its advantage in that it grasps the highest and the lowest prices of bitcoin through real-time data collection from exchanges around the world, so that it is able to propose users the best condition for transaction.

The deBit team at Slush Asia 2016 (Image credit: deBit)

Since they have already constructed a business model in which the firm gains profits corresponding to the transaction amount of virtual currency, the service does not require any handling charges on the card. Only an increase of use of virtual currency (via its infrastructure) will produce profit for the company. The service has already been judged lawful in Japan through a legal check.

See also:

Capitalico, forex algo-trading platform, wins FinTech startups gathered at FIBC in Tokyo

Quoine: aiming to be bitcoin exchange of exchanges

The bitcoin exchange Quoine, which had recently announced the fundraising totaling $16 million from Jafco and others, came on stage. The trading amount of bitcoin at Quione is ranked 7th among the bitcoin exchanges around the world, as assessed by real-time market portal for virtual currency Coinhills (at pitch time, it was ranked 4th).

nikkei-fintech-2016-quoine-2 — Quoine CEO Kariya Kayamori

Contrary to other exchanges which provide services focusing on consumers, Quoine adopts a B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer)-like model. It provides back-end service for exchanges by operating like an OEM (original equipment manufacturer), and can even act as an agent for the entire operation of exchanges.

Quoine CEO Kariya Kayamori mentioned that the transaction volume of foreign exchange (FX) in Japan has reached 5 quadrillion yen (about $48.6 trillion), and said that 10% of that may be replaced to virtual currency in the future. Current daily trading volume of bitcoin at Quoine accounts is only 1 billion yen (about $48.6 million) approximately, but Kayamori expects that it can be increased byup to 100 times.

Guracone: enlightens about bitcoin donation

nikkei-fintech-2016-guracone-1 — Gracone CEO Mai Fujimoto

The team thought of constructing a donation system for mothers, but sending money overseas requires high handling charges. For example, sending 100,000 yen (about $973) requires thousands of yen (tens of dollars). However, it costs only tens of yen via bitcoin. Gracone promotes active donation through enlightening about remittance utilizing bitcoin.

Lognote: marketing support through e-receipt

Lognote is an e-receipt platform supporting e-receipt issuance work for smart devices, for infrastructure construction and for user retailer marketing. It allows user retailers to contact consumers by issuing point sales system (POS)-linked e-receipt. The firm fundraised 10 million yen (about $83,000 at the exchange rate then) from Japan’s leading online marketing company Adways (TSE:2489) in May of last year.

Nowcast: informs economic trend leveraging big data

Nowcast established in 2015 originated from the University of Tokyo, and has been working on visualization of economic activities under the theme of ‘to know about the latest economy.’ Its service CPI Now is capable of calculation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) only within two days, although the national statistics require about six weeks. Since its launch about half a year ago, the service has been utilized by about 180 financial entities.

nikkei-fintech-2016-nowcast-2 — Nowcast CEO & CTO Satoshi Imai

Although the previous version had handled the national index, the current version has made available the index for each local area. That enables the setting of prices in specific areas and to set the optimal interest by area or industry.

From the viewpoint of regional revitalization, it provides decision-making data possible by comparing governmental statistics, such as what kind of results had been obtained from measures implemented by financial entities or what was generated at that time.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Triple W Japan, developer of bowel movement notifier, gets $4.9M from Foxconn, others

Masaru Ikeda 2016.07.04

See the original story in Japanese. Triple W Japan, developer of wearable bowel movement predictor DFree, recently announced that they have fundraised 400 million yen ($3.9 million) from 2020, iSGS Investment Works, Daiwa Corporate Investment, Mizuho Capital, SBI Investment and Revamp in a series A round, in addition to 100 million yen (about $980,000) in loans from Mizuho Bank and Japan Finance Corporation. 2020 is the investment arm in Japan of Taiwan-based hardware manufacturing giant Foxconn. This funding round follows their previous undisclosed amount of funding from Nissay Capital and iStyle Capital (now known as iSGS Investment Works) back in April last year as well as up to 120 million yen (about $1 million at the exchange rate then) funding from the Japanese governmental business promotion agency NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) and Osaka-based Hack Ventures. Triple W Japan was launched back in February of 2015 (US operations started in June of 2014) by UC Berkeley graduate Atsushi Nakanishi. He had unexpected incontinence when moving to a new home in Berkeley, which triggered him to launch the business to solve humanity’s universal problem – excretion. DFree uses ultrasonic waves to measures the size of excreta in the…

See the original story in Japanese.

Triple W Japan, developer of wearable bowel movement predictor DFree, recently announced that they have fundraised 400 million yen ($3.9 million) from 2020, iSGS Investment Works, Daiwa Corporate Investment, Mizuho Capital, SBI Investment and Revamp in a series A round, in addition to 100 million yen (about $980,000) in loans from Mizuho Bank and Japan Finance Corporation. 2020 is the investment arm in Japan of Taiwan-based hardware manufacturing giant Foxconn.

This funding round follows their previous undisclosed amount of funding from Nissay Capital and iStyle Capital (now known as iSGS Investment Works) back in April last year as well as up to 120 million yen (about $1 million at the exchange rate then) funding from the Japanese governmental business promotion agency NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) and Osaka-based Hack Ventures.

Triple W Japan was launched back in February of 2015 (US operations started in June of 2014) by UC Berkeley graduate Atsushi Nakanishi. He had unexpected incontinence when moving to a new home in Berkeley, which triggered him to launch the business to solve humanity’s universal problem – excretion.

DFree uses ultrasonic waves to measures the size of excreta in the intestine; it then estimates when the sacrum will be stimulated and when the user will begin to feel the urge to go to toilet. A user will then have sufficient time to find a toilet and be relieved from the stress of bowel incontinence. Parkinson’s disease sufferers, the physically handicapped, or the elderly who have difficulty to go to toilet will no longer need to use diapers, thus helping people regain their dignity.

In a crowdfunding campaign for the DFree device last year, the company succeeded in raising over 12 million yen (more than $100,000). During the first batch of Heart Catch, the two-month mentoring program for startups to brush up products, they revealed that they were exploring better design and marketing strategies.

Based on the capital partnerships with the aforementioned investors, Triple W Japan expects to provide comprehensive support in the following areas respectively.

2020 – Engineering and business expansion to Asia through its parent company Foxconn
iSGS – Expansion to health and beauty verticals through iStyle, the leading investor of the VC firm and the owner of Japan’s top beauty products portal @Cosme.
SBI Investment – Expecting support in the healthcare, biomedical and ICT fields, the bailiwick of the VC firm’s investment manager Yukiko Kato who won the top in the Japanese version of Midas List issued by Forbes Japan last year.
Revamp – Offering testing opportunities and building sales channels to nursing facilities

Upon funding this time, the company also announced addition of new people to the team. In June, Yuichiro Kuzuryu, who was previously working at iPad music keyboard developer Miselu, was named CTO while mechatronics authority Akihiro Kawata joined the team as Executive Engineer to facilitate product development and manufacturing of the DFree device.

heart-catch-2015-d-free — CEO Nakanishi delivered his pitch at Heart Catch 2015.

According to Nakanishi, DFree is currently under clinical testing at four nursing facilities in Japan, expecting to increase up to 20 facilities by September. They are planning to move from a testing phase to launch phase this fall, followed by commencing a B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) service through nursing homes next year.

Since excretion is becoming a common problem for aging societies in developed countries, the company has been garnering attention from outside Japan as well. Korea’s Seoul Broadcasting System features on its news site what had triggered founder Nakanishi to start developing the DFree device. Furthermore, they have been receiving inquiries from Australia, China, Taiwan, France and others. Because of tangible needs out there, their global expansion can be smoothly implemented as long as they can find relevant local partners in each respective country.

Triple W Japan consists of seven employees and three interns now. By hiring more engineers, the company wants to contribute to society by helping hardware engineers get out from big corporates into startups taking advantage of Japan’s strong manufacturing base.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Leading Japanese system integrator to hold first FinTech hackathon in Israel

Masaru Ikeda 2016.07.04

Leading Japanese system integration company TIS Intec Group unveiled today that it will hold a FinTech-focused hackathon in Israel on July 19th and 20th, called TIS – Japan Cashless Hackathon. In association with Japanese credit card company JCB as well as Japanese startup accelerator Samurai Incubate which has a local office in Tel Aviv, the event will take place at Rise by Barclays, a FinTech startup hub located in the most startup-dense neighborhood of the ‘Startup Nation’. Prior to the event, TIS Intec Group is looking for 15 talented teams to attend with innovative cashless payment ideas with interest in expanding around the world including Japan, especially for the verticals of artificial intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things) and Blockchain. The winning team will win a trip to Tokyo to discuss future collaboration and business opportunity with TIS Intec Group’s executives while the second and third runner-ups will get the opportunity to work with the firm also. Starting with the first FinTech hackathon by local bank Leumi Group in 2013, MasterCard, IBM Watson and other many global giants have hosted FinTech-focused hackthon events in Israel to find diamonds in the rough. The country is now considered as one of the world’s…

hackathon-image — CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr by Andrew Eland

Prior to the event, TIS Intec Group is looking for 15 talented teams to attend with innovative cashless payment ideas with interest in expanding around the world including Japan, especially for the verticals of artificial intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things) and Blockchain. The winning team will win a trip to Tokyo to discuss future collaboration and business opportunity with TIS Intec Group’s executives while the second and third runner-ups will get the opportunity to work with the firm also.

tis-open-innovation-diagram — Image credit: TIS Intec Group

Starting with the first FinTech hackathon by local bank Leumi Group in 2013, MasterCard, IBM Watson and other many global giants have hosted FinTech-focused hackthon events in Israel to find diamonds in the rough. The country is now considered as one of the world’s most busiest birthplaces of prominent FinTech startups, represented by FundBox, Payoneer, and eToro.

In addition to representatives from TIS Intec Group and Samurai Incubate, CTO Yoav Intrator of Israel’s Bank Hapoalim as well as Dorel Blitz, Head of FinTech at KPMG Israel, will join the board of judges during the event. If you are interested in joining this, check out the details and fill the form right here.

See also:

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Israeli-fintech-companies — Israeli FinTech companies – click to enlarge (image credit: Carmel Ventures)

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Japan’s Recruit holds Tech Lab Paak Demo Day, teams from 4th batch present results

Masaru Ikeda 2016.07.03

See the original story in Japanese. TECH LAB PAAK in Shibuya, Tokyo is a community space only for member IT creators, established by Recruit Holdings (TSE:6098, hereinafter called Recruit) in November of 2014. The facility is managed by Recruit’s R&D headquarters, and works as an incubator to support tenant startups. The tenant teams are roughly classified into ‘community members’ and ‘project members’ according to maturity of their developing services. Last week, a Demo Day was held for eight teams from community member and four teams (except one absent) from project members to exhibit a half year’s outcome since they moved in. Below, we introduce what kind of services were or are going to be born out from TECH LAB PAAK, with a focus on prize winners. The following are judges for the pitch competition in the event. Ken Nishimura, Editor-in-Chief, TechCrunch Japan Shinichiro Isago, Evangelist, Microsoft Japan Hiroaki Yasutake, former Executive Managing Director of Rakuten Takahiro Iwakami, Founder and CEO, LIG International Yoichi Aso, Head of Media Technology Labs, Recruit Holdings TECH LAB PAAK award winner: Styly by Psychic VR Lab Supplemental prize: Matsuzaka beef for BBQ Psychic VR Lab has developed an virtual reality-based online shopping mall named Styly,…

See the original story in Japanese.

TECH LAB PAAK in Shibuya, Tokyo is a community space only for member IT creators, established by Recruit Holdings (TSE:6098, hereinafter called Recruit) in November of 2014. The facility is managed by Recruit’s R&D headquarters, and works as an incubator to support tenant startups.

The tenant teams are roughly classified into ‘community members’ and ‘project members’ according to maturity of their developing services. Last week, a Demo Day was held for eight teams from community member and four teams (except one absent) from project members to exhibit a half year’s outcome since they moved in.

Below, we introduce what kind of services were or are going to be born out from TECH LAB PAAK, with a focus on prize winners. The following are judges for the pitch competition in the event.

Ken Nishimura, Editor-in-Chief, TechCrunch Japan
Shinichiro Isago, Evangelist, Microsoft Japan
Hiroaki Yasutake, former Executive Managing Director of Rakuten
Takahiro Iwakami, Founder and CEO, LIG International
Yoichi Aso, Head of Media Technology Labs, Recruit Holdings

TECH LAB PAAK award winner: Styly by Psychic VR Lab

Supplemental prize: Matsuzaka beef for BBQ

Psychic VR Lab has developed an virtual reality-based online shopping mall named Styly, focusing on fashion items. By expressing the concept of fashion brands leveraging VR, it conveys the appeal of products and increases the customers’ buying motives.

It is not easy for fashion brands to implement this service due to labor or cost for creating 3D model data of products or shop design. In order to solve this problem, the team had developed a 3D scanner especially for apparel products or a shop builder function on Styly for easy 3D shop creation. Also the team had been involved in hosting a startup event for fashion-related startups at Fashion Tech Summit this March.

During the three months from July, the team plans a trial operation for about 30 fashion brands. Also for general users, an event for trial use will be held and details will be announced at a later date.

Mentors’ special award winner: Residence

Supplemental prize: a pair meal ticket for the Azure 45 restaurant at Ritz Carlton Tokyo

Alberto Okamura, who was born in Peru, once encountered a scene where his friend was forcibly deported to Peru due to irregularities upon acquiring his visa, and that motivated Okamura to solve the problem of visa acquisition. Since Japan’s immigration inspectors are just public employees who basically only speak Japanese and the application documents are written in Japanese, it is difficult for foreigners who cannot understand Japanese to communicate using this language.

Okamura had himself worked for Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, and been involved in visa-issuance work. Leveraging the experience obtained there, he developed Residence. The service displays questions that are required for terms utilized upon visa acquisition in the users’ native language, and outputs them as a form written in Japanese. In addition, it supports identify verification completed by Skype, proxy application by administrative scriveners and delivery of the issued visa to the users’ address for just 3,000 yen (about $29) but only document creation is free of charge.

Currently, 700 individual and 35 corporate users are registered. Six years hence, in 2022, it is said that one in 30 workers in Japan in his / her prime will be a foreigner. The team aims to provide additional services based on information obtained when acquiring the visa, such as job introduction in Japan, credit service for bank loans or visa acquisition in countries other than Japan.

TechCrunch award winner: in app translation

Supplemental prize: Amazon gift cards worth 30,000 yen

‘in app translation‘ supports iOS app developers to easily construct a multi-language environment for apps. By controlling menu contents on apps by web-based dashboard, it saves on the labor involved in rebuilding apps for passing the screening by Apple. If errors in translation are found after the launch of apps, developers can smoothly handle corrections thereof.

Moreover, it enables analytics of language needs or receiving feedbacks on translation corrections from users via the dashboard, so that app developers can use them as reference upon deciding language priorities for multi-language development of the apps.

Microsoft award winner: FlickFit

Supplemental prizes: Apple Store gift cards worth 30,000 yen

FlickFit is an online virtual fitting service of shoes (especially focusing on shoes like pumps at this time). After registering the foot shapes as 3D data in advance, and users can confirm the fit feel prior to purchase by matching 3D data of feet and shoes.

3D data of shoes are acquired by templating with foaming material, not by the wooden last. The team has been developing the matching algorithm for 3D data of feet and shoes jointly with Chiba University, and currently improving it by joint experimentation with two third-party companies. Since a specialized scanner is used for 3D data acquisition of foot shapes, users have to go to certain scanning points for data registration, but the team is also developing another app for easy foot-shape data acquisition just by image photographing. The team expects needs from Omni-channel retailing, and explores the possibility of global expansion.

LIG award winner: embot

Supplemental prize: a pair ticket for Tokyo Vingt-et-un Cruise, twilight gold course

The name of Embot comes from ‘emotional robot.’ Inspired from the fact that no matter how smartphones have become widespread, there are still wall clocks or wall calendars in the world, so the team developed a ‘tangible’ robot which can be easily made from cardboard.

Through use-case investigation, the team has been developing embot for students as educational material at this time. As programming education system for junior high / high school students was enforced by Japan’s Ministry of Education, the team has been receiving inquiries from private schools and aims to construct a B2B (business-to-business) service which satisfies educational needs. Since operation log is accumulated on the server, it enables grasping of the learning progress status, and is also preparing a platform to provide customized learning contents for each student.

Audience award winner: Residence / in app translation

Supplemental prize: membership of TECH LAB PAAK as project members (tenant right for half a year)

(Explanation of both products omitted since it has already been provided above.)

TECH LAB PAAK has started accepting the 5th batch of tenants, and will start recruiting the 6th membership batch soon. From the 6th batch, new incubation courses focusing on VR will be established through cooperation with media, funds and manufacturers. In commemoration of this, a panel discussion was held during the Demo Day, having Hironao Kunimitsu (founder and CEO of Gumi), Minoru Hirota (Editor-in-Chief, Panora Virtual Reality Japan) and Kenji Takahashi (founder of ‘Ouka-Ichimon,’ Oculus-focused information website).

One can apply to the 6th batch regardless of whether a corporation or an individual, and presence / absence of products as well as the previous batch. Check out the details at the TECH LAB PAAK website.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s curated news app SmartNews secures $38 million in series D round

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I’m bullish on Fintech investment in Japan. So are a bunch of CVCs.

Agribuddy, financial app for rural farmers in Cambodia, wins Nikkei FinTech competition

Agribuddy: financial management support app for farmers in Cambodia