As reported earlier this morning, Tokyo-based Dely, the Japanese video-centric culinary media startup offering recipe discovery portal Kurashiru, will announce today that it has secured a 3 billion yen funding (about $27 million) round.
Participating investors are Jafco (TSE:8595), YJ Capital (the investment arm of Yahoo Japan), Gumi Ventures (the investment arm of Japanese major game developer Gumi) and Das Capital as well as individual investors including FreakOut CEO Yusuke Sato. Das Capital is an investment fund run by Japanese serial entrepreneur/investor Shinji Kimura.
Financial terms have not yet been disclosed. With this funding, no announcement has yet been made regarding the possible change of their management structure. The company claims that the funds will be used to push forward the video recipe business in Japan while developing new businesses and acquiring other companies.
The latest round follows their $4.5 million funding back in November of 2016, which is just less than half a year away from the previous one. Dely was established in April of 2014. In September of the same year they received funding from Anri and began a food delivery business as their inaugural service. However, after judging the outlook for such services difficult, they pivoted to video curation media last year, which became the model for their current business.
See the original story in Japanese. “Raise your foot up a bit more, good, keep it up” – some of you who ever had played sports, was a runner or been into fitness may have been given this type of admonition. However, words are always subjective and ambiguous. If there is any detailed reference or scoring which is completely precise for everyone, conversations upon training may change dramatically. Japan’s Leomo has unveiled a device just for this. Leomo, developing IoT devices for sports use, launched this month a wearable device called Type-R. It provides useful data using sensors and display device, supporting athletes to maximize their training performances. With this device, athletes can optimize their playing forms or power efficiencies, as well as preventing injuries and for rehabilitation. According to Kunihiko Kaji, co-founder / CEO of Leomo, the firm plans to sell the device to invited users only for a while and aims to commence general sales by around this May. Leomo was founded in 2012 and subsequently launched a logging app for fitness use called Lemonade (it was also the initial company name) in 2013. Fundraising $5.8 million from the Foxconn Group and others in August of 2015, the…
Leomo was unveiled at a track for cycling race in the US.
“Raise your foot up a bit more, good, keep it up” – some of you who ever had played sports, was a runner or been into fitness may have been given this type of admonition.
However, words are always subjective and ambiguous. If there is any detailed reference or scoring which is completely precise for everyone, conversations upon training may change dramatically. Japan’s Leomo has unveiled a device just for this.
Leomo, developing IoT devices for sports use, launched this month a wearable device called Type-R. It provides useful data using sensors and display device, supporting athletes to maximize their training performances. With this device, athletes can optimize their playing forms or power efficiencies, as well as preventing injuries and for rehabilitation.
Type-R can be attached to a bicycle in a way like doing with a cycling computer.
According to Kunihiko Kaji, co-founder / CEO of Leomo, the firm plans to sell the device to invited users only for a while and aims to commence general sales by around this May.
Leomo was founded in 2012 and subsequently launched a logging app for fitness use called Lemonade (it was also the initial company name) in 2013. Fundraising $5.8 million from the Foxconn Group and others in August of 2015, the firm has been developing this device since then. It has 28 staffers, with offices in Tokyo and San Diego in the US.
Motion capturing may be one of the well-known methods for digitalization of the human motion. Putting markers on a person’s body, it digitalizes his motion by a fixed-point observation with cameras set in a specialized studio. The greatest feature of Type-R is that these motion sensors can be taken outdoors.
Kaji spoke about the limitations of conventional motion capturing:
Conventional motion capturing requires an operator and costs tens of thousands of dollars. Moreover, the observation location was limited due to the need for cameras upon calibration.
Type-R enables athletes or coaches to collect motion data under the same condition as the general training environment. For example, a coach can confirm whether his advice was conveyed to an athlete accurately when he is trying out a new form.
Kaji explains the need for motion capturing upon training:
Actually, people cannot easily move their body precisely as they intend. Although you may think yourself that you are just straightening out, that may not be the reality. This gap between the brain and the body cannot be verbalized yet. Therefore, it is difficult to make someone realize things that cannot be conveyed in words.
Five motion sensors attached to the body
Type-R digitalizes the body motion by measuring pedal speed, vertical motion or tilting angle of the pelvis with five sensors attached to his / her body. Since these collected data will be uploaded to the cloud via Wi-Fi and can be analyzed anywhere, users can also receive remote instructions.
Digitalization of the “beautiful form”
After the demo, a feedback could be heard: Type-R tells us what to do and why we should do so. Once we know the “precise” reference, coaches can suggest the best plan for improving the athletes’ performances.
For example, even the form of a bike racer holding an excellent record is not always beautiful. How is the “beautiful form” defined?
To clarify the evaluation criteria between coaches and athletes, Leomo announced the establishment of a think-tank named IMA (Institute of Motion Analysis) consisting of global sports experts including sports scientists, exercise physiologists, coaches, physical therapists and professional bicycle fitters.
The mission of IMA is to evaluate the sports science being used at the top of the sports world based on objective data, in order to cultivate the field where motion capturing can be utilized more effectively.
Many experts such as sports scientist or athletes participate in Leomo’s project
It may be easier to understand the vision by imaging a scoring method like Tabe-log (Japan’s restaurant/diner scoring portal) in the sports world; the total score of a top athlete’s form is 4.5 and mine is 3.0 – what is the difference between him and me? Leomo visualizes such kind of motion differences utilizing data and offers a common understanding.
If it is realized, one can explain what is the motion with least possibility of injuries or which balance is the most ideal for running fast. Kaji explains Leomo’s future:
The perfect circle is beautiful, isn’t it? But no one can draw it free hand. I think professional athletes are people who can draw a circle close to the perfect one. We aim to create evaluation criteria as to the best motion for drawing a beautiful circle for each user.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. It’s not the first time a product inspired by anime has been brought to life in the real world. However, this product is sure to attract more international Japanese anime fans than ever. Japan startup Cerevo, which has invented a number of smart home electronics and IoT products, announced an eighth-factor model of the multi-legged tank Tachikoma, a popular character from the animated series Ghost in the Shell S.A.C. They have begun accepting pre-orders on their website. The price is $1,799 and shipment is scheduled for June of this year. The eighth-scale model was born from Cerevo’s project “S2R (From the screen to the real world)”, which seeks to reproduce objects in the real world as closely as possible to how they appear in movies using smart home electronics technology. This product follows their production of Dominator from the animation Psycho-pass. Tachikoma is equipped with speech recognition, so when a user poses a question it answers in the voice of Sakiko Tamagawa, the original voice. Tachikoma’s object and speech recognition functions are very interesting. For example, when a user shows an apple to Tachikoma (a camera is installed in the image sensor), and says,…
It’s not the first time a product inspired by anime has been brought to life in the real world. However, this product is sure to attract more international Japanese anime fans than ever.
Japan startup Cerevo, which has invented a number of smart home electronics and IoT products, announced an eighth-factor model of the multi-legged tank Tachikoma, a popular character from the animated series Ghost in the Shell S.A.C. They have begun accepting pre-orders on their website. The price is $1,799 and shipment is scheduled for June of this year.
The eighth-scale model was born from Cerevo’s project “S2R (From the screen to the real world)”, which seeks to reproduce objects in the real world as closely as possible to how they appear in movies using smart home electronics technology. This product follows their production of Dominator from the animation Psycho-pass. Tachikoma is equipped with speech recognition, so when a user poses a question it answers in the voice of Sakiko Tamagawa, the original voice.
The mobile app display that controls Tachikoma (under development) Image credit: Cerevo
Tachikoma’s object and speech recognition functions are very interesting. For example, when a user shows an apple to Tachikoma (a camera is installed in the image sensor), and says, “apples are sweet,” the information that “apples are sweet” is uploaded to the cloud and shared among all of Tachikomas owned by other users. As users increase and time goes by, Tachikomas gradually becomes smarter, which is somewhat reminiscent of the world presented in the Ghost in the Shell movie.
Cerevo exhibited the eighth-scale model at their booth at Sensors Ignition 2017, a digital media showcase event held at the Toranomon Hills building complex in Tokyo this week. Due to the noisiness of the exhibition hall and the tendency of the Wi-Fi to be overcrowded, it was too much to ask of Tachikoma to demonstrate the user speech recognition and response via the cloud. Restrictions on space at the exhibition also meant a fixed display area confined to their booth, but Tachikoma’s joints and legs are equipped with 21 motors, and by issuing command movements from a smartphone it is possible to enter the world of anime by playing the role of Tachikoma.
Cerevo will also prepare and release a limited supply of a “Special Edition” Tachikoma’s ⅛ model, with a metallic body created with aluminum scrapings on the bumper and the cover of the gun barrel. The price is set at $1,999 and pre-orders began along with the original version this week.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. Dr. Jingsong Wang (王劲松), CEO of Harbour BioMed (和铂医药) which was started up in Shanghai last December, spoke at a luncheon at BIOAsia 2017 in Tokyo. Dr. Wang spoke of how his company was conducting research in Europe (in cooperation with Erasmus University in the Netherlands) while being at the U.S. biopharmaceutical business frontline in Massachusetts regarding immuno-oncology platforms. The company holds proprietary transgenetic mouse patents aimed at human cancer therapeutics. Biotechnology Innovation Organization‘s annual biomed-focused confab has been held in Tokyo at the Grand Hyatt in recent years, bringing together many companies from the Asia-Pacific regions. Investment Banking Vice President Oded Spindel of the New York firm Rodman & Renshaw was the interviewer for this year’s luncheon session, the highlight of the American industrial association’s premiere Asia event, organized with help from Japan Bioindustry Association (which will be holding its own event this fall). It was noted by the Chinese medical doctor who also worked at multinational pharma Bristol-Myers Squibb that his startup already had some 30 clients garnered over the past several months, and had obtained backing from…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
Dr. Jingsong Wang speaks at BIOAsia 2017. Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
Dr. Jingsong Wang (王劲松), CEO of Harbour BioMed (和铂医药) which was started up in Shanghai last December, spoke at a luncheon at BIOAsia 2017 in Tokyo. Dr. Wang spoke of how his company was conducting research in Europe (in cooperation with Erasmus University in the Netherlands) while being at the U.S. biopharmaceutical business frontline in Massachusetts regarding immuno-oncology platforms. The company holds proprietary transgenetic mouse patents aimed at human cancer therapeutics.
Biotechnology Innovation Organization‘s annual biomed-focused confab has been held in Tokyo at the Grand Hyatt in recent years, bringing together many companies from the Asia-Pacific regions. Investment Banking Vice President Oded Spindel of the New York firm Rodman & Renshaw was the interviewer for this year’s luncheon session, the highlight of the American industrial association’s premiere Asia event, organized with help from Japan Bioindustry Association (which will be holding its own event this fall).
Dr. Jingsong Wang speaks at BIOAsia 2017. Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
It was noted by the Chinese medical doctor who also worked at multinational pharma Bristol-Myers Squibb that his startup already had some 30 clients garnered over the past several months, and had obtained backing from Boston-based VC firm Atlas Venture. Dr. Wang noted as well that the R&D networking from his days at Sanofi was being leveraged fully. Chinese VC firms Advantech Capital, affiliated with Japan’s New Horizon Capital, and Legend Capital Partners (君联资本), a subsidiary of Legend Holdings (of Lenovo fame / 联想控股), backed Harbour BioMed’s launch and expansion last year.
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. The Japanese/Asian edition of AG/SUM, also known as “Harvest” in the US where it originated, is an agriculture-centered “summit” particularly highlighting agricultural technology. A pitch competition for potential startups was held in February in Japan, a country which now faces such problems as aging farmer population and dwindling agricultural operations. Japan’s Nikkei News group backed the Tokyo competition. Technology has today become a mainstay in the agricultural sector, including genetic manipulations and cloning, some twenty years after Dolly the sheep dominated the world headlines. There will be a main AG/SUM meeting again in Tokyo this May and eight startup candidates won the pitch. Among the eight was PPAP (Passionate Productive Agriculture with Pecan-nut) of University of Tokyo, but more on this team later. The requirements for giving the pitch held at the Toranomon Hills meeting room in Minato City were that the teams had to offer tech-related solutions to farming issues and that operations had not been started up at competition time. Interestingly, there were in addition to half a dozen winning pitches covering standard agriculture (including the University of…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
Image credit: AG/SUM
The Japanese/Asian edition of AG/SUM, also known as “Harvest” in the US where it originated, is an agriculture-centered “summit” particularly highlighting agricultural technology. A pitch competition for potential startups was held in February in Japan, a country which now faces such problems as aging farmer population and dwindling agricultural operations. Japan’s Nikkei News group backed the Tokyo competition.
Technology has today become a mainstay in the agricultural sector, including genetic manipulations and cloning, some twenty years after Dolly the sheep dominated the world headlines. There will be a main AG/SUM meeting again in Tokyo this May and eight startup candidates won the pitch. Among the eight was PPAP (Passionate Productive Agriculture with Pecan-nut) of University of Tokyo, but more on this team later.
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
The requirements for giving the pitch held at the Toranomon Hills meeting room in Minato City were that the teams had to offer tech-related solutions to farming issues and that operations had not been started up at competition time. Interestingly, there were in addition to half a dozen winning pitches covering standard agriculture (including the University of Tokyo Faculty of Agriculture team).
One pitch was focused on insect ranching for human consumption, by Musshine, and another on fisheries to keep down wasted aquatic ‘harvests’ (as termed at a Japanese agriculture ministry-affiliated research institute), by Tail. However, not all the others were pitching from conventional farming-oriented angles like plantation and soil conditioning, one of the six offering an AR-based farming experience while one more availed a soil-minimal approach with their fintech-applied agrobusiness funding presentation.
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
Regarding the latest in tech trends, IoT use was offered by Hackerfarm. Yet, most fascinating was the agronomically-soundness and science-based PPAP team effort led by Dr. Hiroyoshi Iwata, looking to use novel technologies to stimulate and make profitable the nut industry in Japan by expanding pecan-nut production. As it happened, coinciding with FOODEX confab in mid-March, an International Symposium on Food Production Technology centered on the now-lucrative cash crop… nuts… was held at the institution where Dr. Iwata is attached to.
The University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Sciences hosted the symposium which brought leading-edge researchers like Dr. G. Barton Beuler and Dr. Jennifer Randall (New Mexico State University) among others. In particular, focus on use of high-tech farming techniques and genetics to realize a profitable and sustainable agrobusiness grounded in the nutritious yield. The scientific basis for promoting production of the versatile foodstuff was even more convincing upon hearing from experts and makes it worth waiting until the for-public May presentation.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Moneytree, the Japanese startup offering an asset managing app / cloud-based accounting soutions, announced on Tuesday that it has raised a total of 1 billion yen (nearly $9 million US) in their latest funding round. This round was led by SBI Investment with participation from Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Fukuoka Technology Partners, Hiroshima Venture Capital, Senshu Ikeda Capital, and the UK’s leading asset management company Baillie Gifford. This round follows that of the company’s series A round held in October of 2015. With the funds raised this time, Moneytree plans to roll out new functions for their personal asset management app “Moneytree”, their “Moneytree Work Keihi Seisan (Expense Reimbursement)” that allows users to easily determine their expenses, as well as their “Moneytree Work Houjin Kouza (Corporate Accounts)” that lets users browse their corporate accounts and calculate expenses in mobile. In addition, the cloud-based account management service MT Link, which connects financial institutions with corporations and individuals, and has been in service for more than two years now, has been adopted by 20 companies including megabanks, regional banks, and accounting software industries. Together with this funding, Moneytree has also renewed the…
Tokyo-based Moneytree, the Japanese startup offering an asset managing app / cloud-based accounting soutions, announced on Tuesday that it has raised a total of 1 billion yen (nearly $9 million US) in their latest funding round. This round was led by SBI Investment with participation from Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Fukuoka Technology Partners, Hiroshima Venture Capital, Senshu Ikeda Capital, and the UK’s leading asset management company Baillie Gifford. This round follows that of the company’s series A round held in October of 2015.
With the funds raised this time, Moneytree plans to roll out new functions for their personal asset management app “Moneytree”, their “Moneytree Work KeihiSeisan (Expense Reimbursement)” that allows users to easily determine their expenses, as well as their “Moneytree Work Houjin Kouza (Corporate Accounts)” that lets users browse their corporate accounts and calculate expenses in mobile.
In addition, the cloud-based account management service MT Link, which connects financial institutions with corporations and individuals, and has been in service for more than two years now, has been adopted by 20 companies including megabanks, regional banks, and accounting software industries. Together with this funding, Moneytree has also renewed the MT Link website, and is aiming to further expand and accelerate the business.
The following is a comment by Moneytree Founder and CEO Paul Chapman.
Thanks to this funding we are pleased Moneytree will be moving on to the next stage of growth. In both Japan and abroad the FinTech industry has significantly expanded. More than ever, we will focus on maintaining the security of our services, protecting privacy, and transparency of information.
In addition, while supporting the conversion of the financial industry to digital banking, and while contributing to the foundation of the accounting industry’s cloud accounting system, we will continue to devote our efforts to constructing an industry-wide ecosystem based on users. Furthermore, we have set our sights on the globalization of our services through deploying Japanese technology overseas.
Takeshi Hirano
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
