NTT Data (TSE:9613), Tokyo-based leading systems integrator and a subsidiary of Japan’s largest telco, recently announced that it will hold the 5th edition of the company’s flagship global pitch competition next March. Prior to that, regional preliminary events to screen nominee startups for the competition will take place in London, Madrid, Barcelona, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore and Tel Aviv in February. Winners from each city will be invited to Tokyo to deliver a pitch at the finale event which is scheduled on March 15th. A complimentary round-trip to Tokyo plus 2-night hotel accommodations will be provided by the host for all regional winners.
NTT Data, Japan’s largest systems integrator under the umbrella of the country’s largest telco, announced today that it will hold the 5th edition of it’s flagship global pitch competition next March. Prior to that, regional preliminary events to screen nominee startups for the competition will take place in London, Madrid, Barcelona, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore and Tel Aviv in February. Winners from each city will be invited to Tokyo to deliver a pitch at the grand finals on March 15th. A complimentary round-trip to Tokyo plus 2-night hotel accommodations will be provided for all regional winners.
NTT Data will provide the top prize winner at the Tokyo finals with a complimentary assistance upon business expansion within Japan. The company is known as an IT engineering support provider for many industries in Japan. Some examples of this are IT infrastructure assets like the largest Japanese inter-bank network ZENGIN or inter-credit card company network CAFIS.
NTT Data had started the open innovation initiative in order to help clients find relevant partners from the startup community. As part of all this endeavor, the company has been working as well with Mizuho Bank, one of Japan’s leading financial institutions, to encourage collaborative business activities with prominent FinTech startups in Japan.
Award-winning startups at past events include Japan’s Money Forward (FinTech), Canada’s Syngrafii (e-signature technology) and Hong Kong’s MewMe (social networking platform for real estate industry). The application deadline for any regional preliminary event is December 19th, Japan Time (UTC+9hrs). For more details, visit the organizer’s website right here.
Tokyo-based C Channel, the Japanese startup offering a video-based digital fashion media for young women under the same name, announced today that it has acquired Jakarta-based startup PT Media Makmur for an undisclosed sum. Since its launch back in April of 2013 as a local subsidiary of Japanese blog marketing company Rich Media, PT Media Makmur has been running Kawaii Beauty Japan, a fashion and beauty-focused media outlet for female consumers in Indonesia. According to SimilarWeb, the Indonesian beauty site has acquired more than 350,000 monthly visitors as well as nearly 1 million likes on the site’s Facebook fan page for local users. C Channel has been massively expanding to several Asian markets by partnering with Chinese video sharing site Todou (for Chinese expansion), Taiwanese beauty media outlet Niusnews and Taiwanese online-to-offline media outlet Maker (for Taiwanese expansion) as well as Thai e-publication and UGC (user generated content) media site Oookbee (for Thai expansion). Hence, the latest announcement means the Japanese beauty site has expanded to the fourth Asian market outside its home turf. You’ll be able to find the C Channel logo on the top page of the acquired company’s website. You’ll see signs of the owner’s effort trying…
Tokyo-based C Channel, the Japanese startup offering a video-based digital fashion media for young women under the same name, announced today that it has acquired Jakarta-based startup PT Media Makmur for an undisclosed sum. Since its launch back in April of 2013 as a local subsidiary of Japanese blog marketing company Rich Media, PT Media Makmur has been running Kawaii Beauty Japan, a fashion and beauty-focused media outlet for female consumers in Indonesia.
According to SimilarWeb, the Indonesian beauty site has acquired more than 350,000 monthly visitors as well as nearly 1 million likes on the site’s Facebook fan page for local users.
C Channel has been massively expanding to several Asian markets by partnering with Chinese video sharing site Todou (for Chinese expansion), Taiwanese beauty media outlet Niusnews and Taiwanese online-to-offline media outlet Maker (for Taiwanese expansion) as well as Thai e-publication and UGC (user generated content) media site Oookbee (for Thai expansion). Hence, the latest announcement means the Japanese beauty site has expanded to the fourth Asian market outside its home turf.
You’ll be able to find the C Channel logo on the top page of the acquired company’s website. You’ll see signs of the owner’s effort trying to associate it with a Facebook fan page for C Channel’s Indonesian version but will be actually redirected to the Japanese fan page for now. We are still unsure whether both teams are trying to launch a new site under the C Channel brand, otherwise the Indonesian startup’s existing media site will be merged into the brand.
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Arcterus, providing educational services including a notebook-sharing app named Clear, on Tuesday announced that it has reached a capital and business alliance agreement with The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun (belonging to the major daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun Company’s group) publishing newspaper for students “Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun” and “Asahi Chukosei Shimbun” and also with the correspondence education major Z-kai. As a result, Arcterus has secured a total of 110 million yen (about $992,000) from the two companies in its series B round, subsequent to the 130 million yen (about $1 million at the exchange rate then) raised during its series A round last July. With this business alliance, Arcterus starts providing news commentary on hot topics or articles related to past exam problems on a constant basis in Clear with the support from The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun as per a trial this May, in addition to Z-kai’s educational materials in accordance with the adaptive learning method. Although Clear had been provided for free until now and been profiting only from advertisements displayed on the app, it will commence premium services under the subscriptions model which utilizes the two companies’ content on a revenue-sharing basis….
Japan’s Arcterus, providing educational services including a notebook-sharing app named Clear, on Tuesday announced that it has reached a capital and business alliance agreement with The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun (belonging to the major daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun Company’s group) publishing newspaper for students “Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun” and “Asahi Chukosei Shimbun” and also with the correspondence education major Z-kai. As a result, Arcterus has secured a total of 110 million yen (about $992,000) from the two companies in its series B round, subsequent to the 130 million yen (about $1 million at the exchange rate then) raised during its series A round last July.
With this business alliance, Arcterus starts providing news commentary on hot topics or articles related to past exam problems on a constant basis in Clear with the support from The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun as per a trial this May, in addition to Z-kai’s educational materials in accordance with the adaptive learning method. Although Clear had been provided for free until now and been profiting only from advertisements displayed on the app, it will commence premium services under the subscriptions model which utilizes the two companies’ content on a revenue-sharing basis.
Arcterus was founded in 2010 October by Goichiro Arai (CEO) who has held various posts including Resort Business Manager at Japanese resort development / management major Hoshino Resort together with Yoshiki Shiraishi (COO/CFO) who was Arai’s classmate at Keio Business School. Besides Clear, Arcterus is handling a teaching tool for tutor school named Caiz or a individual tutoring cram school in the residential area of Ota City, Tokyo named Shiki Gakuin. Although it is a rare business form for startups, Arai decided to establish and manage a tutorial school by themselves in order to understand the actual front-line of education and to reinforce services.
Clear, launched in December of 2013, allows notebooks sorted by subject or educational unit to be shared with other users and is available for Android, iOS and web. After three years from launch, the number of current users in Japan has reached 970,000 and is close to marking the one million figure. Considering that the number of Japanese high and junior high school students is about 7 million, one in seven students are using Clear. In addition, it has 250,000, 20,000 and 10,000 users in Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea, respectively.
Arai explains about marketing in Asian countries:
We make teams by hiring local university students as interns. In countries having a culture of helping each other by borrowing and lending notebooks when studying together, Clear tends to be widely accepted.
In the above-mentioned countries, Clear’s development model and the students’ information sharing style fit perfectly, and contributed to user acquisition going well. In other words, the app has hardly made a dent in countries where a competitive culture is strongly reflected upon education, as in Singapore. Although Arcterus showed a willingness to advance into North America last year, it altered its plan by prioritizing user acquisition within “Asian countries with a notebook-sharing culture” due to the same reason as to entering Singapore or markets where several competitors exist.
Coinciding with this agreement, the Clear app has been updated for two functions. It enabled easier search of registered notebooks out of the 120,000 found on Clear’s platform according to textbook publisher or educational unit. Additionally, a Q&A function between users was added, allowing them to cover points hard to understand just through the checking of notebooks.
Arcterus won the second prize at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014, while also being selected as a finalist at ASIABEAT 2016 in Xiamen, obtaining international spotlight. Global development in the EduTech field which easily reflects language or culture barriers is said to be difficult; however, the firm aims to acquire cross-border users by setting Clear as an educational platform.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
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. A year ago I wrote about French startup naming blunders and promised a follow up piece with constructive advice. I applaud non-English speaking entrepreneurs for bravely choosing international names when branding their companies and products. After all, English (or more specifically: broken English) is the most common business language globally. I do not mock language mistakes and have certainly committed my share of stumbles when operating outside of my native tongue. However, for entrepreneurs whose first language is not English, it’s foolish not to test your proposed startup brand first with a native English speaker. You can read some entertaining names of real-life startups in France that failed to heed this basic advice in my earlier post. In this one, I will explore some effective methods for choosing a company brand name which I have…
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.
A year ago I wrote about French startup naming blunders and promised a follow up piece with constructive advice. I applaud non-English speaking entrepreneurs for bravely choosing international names when branding their companies and products. After all, English (or more specifically: broken English) is the most common business language globally.
I do not mock language mistakes and have certainly committed my share of stumbles when operating outside of my native tongue. However, for entrepreneurs whose first language is not English, it’s foolish not to test your proposed startup brand first with a native English speaker.
You can read some entertaining names of real-life startups in France that failed to heed this basic advice in my earlier post. In this one, I will explore some effective methods for choosing a company brand name which I have witnessed in various portfolio companies over the years.
Marketing fundamentals
Before starting, nail down the marketing basics of your business: segmentation / targeting / positioning. Understand how you’ve defined your target market and positioning within it. Resist the temptation to premise your entire business on a cool name you thought of (Note: I did this myself in the mid-90s with the name Virtual Realty, a startup which would bring 360-degree virtual tours to real estate. The name was awesome, but my overlooking the marketing fundamentals ultimately resulted in a failed business).
Branding distinction
Decide if your company name is going to represent your public-facing brand, or rather simply your flagship product. Both methods work, however, I’ve witnessed startups that fumble this in failing to clarify it early on.
Descriptive vs. symbolic
Do you want to choose a name that describes (or implies something about) your business activity? Or do you prefer a symbolic name? Examples of the former include AirBnb, Facebook, and Microsoft; whereas Amazon, Apple, and Google are examples of the latter. I tend to be partial to symbolic names, because technology churns so quickly. Trends blossom and wither, and accordingly tech company must often evolve their business activities. However, a symbolic name generally requires a higher initial investment in marketing to build brand recognition.
Outside feedback
Don’t choose a name in your corner. Solicit the advice of your company stakeholders both upwards (board), downwards (employees), and laterally (customers, suppliers, partners). Then ask a diverse collection of people you trust outside your business network. Even consider asking a stranger or two. Incidentally, if you’re generally not in the habit of soliciting feedback from others, chances are your marketing instincts are off.
Me-too
Resist overused word components to better stand out from the crowd. For example, last I counted 12 fintech startups in France alone use the word ‘pay’ in their name. In Japan, founders have an affinity for the word ‘market’, or for “adverbing” words by appending ‘ly’ to the end.
Language check
And last but not least, consult a native speaker for each market in which you may aspire to conduct business (obviously!). That way you’ll avoid naming your company after a venereal disease.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based LifeRobotics, the Japanese startup behind the Coro robot, announced on Monday that it has closed its series B round, having raised about 1 billion yen (about $9 million). This follows its series A round which raised about 500 million yen (about $4.4 million at the exchange rate then) upon closing in March this year. The latest round means that the company has secured a total of about 1.5 billion yen (about $13.4 million) within almost one year since they began raising funds last November. Participating investors in this round were Global Brain, Mitsui Fudosan (TSE:8801), Japan’s leading industrial electronics manufacturer Koden Holdings, Mizuho Capital, Golden Asia Fund as well as other unnamed Japanese businesses. Golden Asia Fund is a joint venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Industrial Technology Investment Corporation (ITIC), the investment arm of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Among these investors, Global Brain, Koden Holdings and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital participated in the previous series A round too. The series B round at this time around was led by Global Brain. LifeRobotics was founded in December 2007 by Dr. Woo-Keun Yoon, who has been studying robot arms at Japan’s National…
Tokyo-based LifeRobotics, the Japanese startup behind the Coro robot, announced on Monday that it has closed its series B round, having raised about 1 billion yen (about $9 million). This follows its series A round which raised about 500 million yen (about $4.4 million at the exchange rate then) upon closing in March this year. The latest round means that the company has secured a total of about 1.5 billion yen (about $13.4 million) within almost one year since they began raising funds last November.
LifeRobotics was founded in December 2007 by Dr. Woo-Keun Yoon, who has been studying robot arms at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and other research institutions for over 15 years. His team has been developing robots that allow users to “teach” the robot how to move using a 3D mouse or a game pad without complex programming skills. The company is developing the “co-robot” Coro for small manufacturing spaces where conventional robots are difficult to be placed, in addition to improving people’s productivity and promoting manufacturing automation.
According to Life Robotics, the Coro co-robot has been adopted by big Japanese companies like Toyota Motors (TSE:7203) and Omron (TSE:6645) as well as restaurant chain businesses such as Yoshinoya (TSE:9861) and Royal (TSE:8179). The company claims that they will use the funds to enhance mass-production/sales of the co-robot and improve follow-up services for users.
See the original story in Japanese. (Photographs in this articles are provided by Doki Doki for the most part.) Sekai Camera, Tab, Telepathy… the apps and devices made by this man has always been novel. Establishing another startup called Doki Doki last year and raising funds from Skyland Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures and Umeda Startup Fund earlier this year, “this man” — Takahito Iguchi — seemed to have wanted to start something different. He implied as much upon commencing development of an app for voice-based information sharing at Samurai Island Expo ’16 (SIE ’16), but the details were not specified then. Doki Doki pre-launched voice-chat social app Baby in the US last month, and held the app’s first showcase event in Japan at MTRL Kyoto (pronounced “Material Kyoto”). The app is available for iOS or later, and currently only with English (but no restriction as to input language). You can download it only from US iTunes AppStore, so it is available for anyone who has an US iTunes AppStore account. Social app to chat, not to meet Baby is a social app which allows users to share five-second voice messages and lets them chat with a new friend. The voice messages…
Doki Doki CEO Takahito Iguchi is seated second from the left.
Doki Doki pre-launched voice-chat social app Baby in the US last month, and held the app’s first showcase event in Japan at MTRL Kyoto (pronounced “Material Kyoto”). The app is available for iOS or later, and currently only with English (but no restriction as to input language). You can download it only from US iTunes AppStore, so it is available for anyone who has an US iTunes AppStore account.
Social app to chat, not to meet
Baby is a social app which allows users to share five-second voice messages and lets them chat with a new friend. The voice messages (aptly-named “voice”) from other users who are located nearby him / her are run on a timeline (dubbed “parade”), and one may “ping” favorite messages by right flicking or “ban” undesirable messages by left flicking, as with Tinder. If users ping voices to each others, they become friends and are allowed to have private voice chat rather than via parade. Users can check ten messages from other users in the order of proximity from him / her at one loading.
Iguchi explains the concept of the Baby app:
By being nearby each other, several problems can be solved. First of all, language trouble. Even if it were a worldwide service, there is a high probability that users being nearby converse in a common language. Considering the places or events where the users are located, common topics could be found as well.
Typical social apps can be roughly classified into two types: ones that let users who already met offline to meet online (such as Facebook or Line) and ones that let users who have not met yet to meet online / offline. However, although the Baby app allows user to find new friends online in order to share values or topics, it does not expect an offline meeting to take place, as in the case of a “dating” social app. The development of the app is grounded in Iguchi’s experience.
Iguchi explains how the service originated:
In San Francisco where I frequently stayed, I always felt alone. Was happy just to talk with someone. Having said that, I do not have close relationships with all friends in Facebook to allow me to talk freely. It is not easy to find new friends, or will cost in various ways if I did have a new friend. Many of the communication apps including Tinder or Happen apparently aim to just help arrange direct datinG […]
We had another problem, seen in HangOut or Whatsapp as well. In real-time voice communication, it is difficult to adjust idle time for each other. Therefore, I came up with an idea of dividing the time into five seconds and sharing them as short voice messages […]
Baby is regarded as an intermediate service between the text chat and the telephone. You cannot express your emotion by text, right? It cannot provide satisfaction or any feeling provided upon conversing, and thus cannot solve loneliness or ease pain. Phone communication is troublesome, so I looked to solve the problem. I prepared both public chats (the parade function) and private chats, so users can share their feelings albeit asynchronously.
Baby’s roots are found in San Francisco and Kyoto
Sawako Ono, Business Development Manager/Market at Doki Doki, recording her voice into the Baby app
This spring, Sawako Ono joined the Doki Doki team as a marketer. By conducting repeated hearings on students at UC Berkeley and reflecting said results on the Baby app’s function, she played a central role in realizing a service with a high degree of user satisfaction.
Ono analyzes the needs for the app:
tudents are all busy. Although busy, they want to communicate with someone through participation in some kind of community or party. Baby just matched their purpose. Some students had used the Nearby function of Wechat, but it only attracts users with dating in mind.
As an aside, no showcase event for the app has not been held in Tokyo unlike launch events of typical apps or services. Moreover, the app is not available in JP AppStore, so that the team’s attitude toward media / users appears unfriendly even though it is an opportunity to appeal to the Japanese users. At first glance it was thought to perhaps be a new type of marketing strategy set by Iguchi, but it turned out to be happenstance.
Iguchi explains the reason for service limitations in Japan:
We started prototyping Baby last December. When brought the prototype to San Francisco this May, I got a pretty good feedback, especially from men. I also had fun. What Baby can provide and the conventional apps cannot is “new meeting” with opportunities to find real friends.
Will it be available in Japan too? Of course it is, if you download from the US AppStore. But you may not receive much voice on parade due to the limited number of users in Japan at this time. I plan to establish use cases in the US first, then bring them back to Japan when completed.
The character of Baby, with changes in facial expression to voice tones or pitches.
Through the development of the Baby app, Iguchi is also considering linking startups communities in Kyoto and San Francisco. Not only because of his background of having spent his school days in Kyoto (he majored in philosophy at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto), he explains the reason that this city has a similar atmosphere with San Francisco which he finds dear.
He said:
Some VC firms are headquartered in Kyoto and have started business therein. Besides, most of Japanese culture which attracts inbound tourists seemingly can be found concentrated in Kyoto. In a city rich in capital, culture and academia, I feel I can start something new.
There will be lots of San Francisco workers hoping to work in Kyoto. Conversely, there will be cases which Kyoto startups looking to use San Francisco as a gateway. Kyoto has the most art schools in Japan, in addition to many universities suited for research and development, not to mention having freaks like me around.
An interesting point of the app is that it does not cooperate with Facebook or Twitter as typical communication apps do, but is completely dependent upon the network effect among users for improved user inflow. This specification is not just a chance happening but was greatly influenced by Iguchi’s philosophy as well.
I thought that Japanese people should establish their own communication platform by themselves. Not a few Japanese startups use API provided by major services in Silicon Valley upon starting something toward the global market. They are too careless, following blindly after someone’s service, such as Facebook or Line.
I think that it is important for us not only to use “Silicon Valley APIs” (APIs provided by tech giants in Silicon Valley) but have a platform for ourselves too.
In the past, some startups were forced to withdraw from native app business for iOS due to being shut out from the iTunes AppStore. That news suggested that there is always a risk of unexpected business closing against one’s will as long as one is dependent upon app stores on a third-party platform.
Come to think of it, since it has become a convenient era, it may be important especially for startups intending to compete in the global market to become platformers themselves without using an API.
By not considering online meeting while using media of voice as an ultimate context, can it grow into a global communication platform? We can look forward to the day when the Baby app become readily available in Japan.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
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 
