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.
This is a guest post by Naokuni Yoshida. He is a Japanese consultant at Tokyo-based Global Innovations, trying to promote aerospace-related firms including drone startups in the US enter Asian markets. On February 28, 2017 SPACETIDE Association of Japan, with support from the National Space Policy Secretariat of the Japanese Cabinet Office in addition to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as well as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, not to mention the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), held at Keio University’s Fujiwara Hiroshi Hall in Hiyoshi, near Yokohama, its second Private-sector-focused Space Seminar, two years since its first gathering. After the opening speech by the head of SPACETIDE Association Masayasu Ishida, who is also Principal of consulting firm A.T. Kearney, several discussion sessions followed (although unfortunately Spire Global‘s representative was unable to make it for the “global space business” panel). Space startups raised significant funding and made important business alliances in 2016, as this sector has grown in prominence on the global stage. The first and second panel discussions this day are of particular interest to The Bridge readers as it introduced a number of existing and new players from Japanese space startups or…
This is a guest post by Naokuni Yoshida. He is a Japanese consultant at Tokyo-based Global Innovations, trying to promote aerospace-related firms including drone startups in the US enter Asian markets.
Image credit: Spacetide Committee
On February 28, 2017 SPACETIDE Association of Japan, with support from the National Space Policy Secretariat of the Japanese Cabinet Office in addition to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as well as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, not to mention the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), held at Keio University’s Fujiwara Hiroshi Hall in Hiyoshi, near Yokohama, its second Private-sector-focused Space Seminar, two years since its first gathering. After the opening speech by the head of SPACETIDE Association Masayasu Ishida, who is also Principal of consulting firm A.T. Kearney, several discussion sessions followed (although unfortunately Spire Global‘s representative was unable to make it for the “global space business” panel).
Space startups raised significant funding and made important business alliances in 2016, as this sector has grown in prominence on the global stage. The first and second panel discussions this day are of particular interest to The Bridge readers as it introduced a number of existing and new players from Japanese space startups or those working closely with such companies, with the second focused on the role of space as an “enabling” factor upon expanding business opportunities widely. The panelists discussed skill sets and team skills plus the mindsets that are essential for launching and managing a space business. The third was on global space business overall and the last session centered on bigger enterprise activities.
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
The first panel comprised Dr. Lena Okajima (CEO and Founder, ALE) working to realize “asteroid” art, Shuji Ogawa (CEO and CTO of PD AeroSpace) who was trained in aerospace engineering at Tohoku University, Naruo Kanemoto (CEO of satellite kit provider Space Shift of Japan and Director of Elysium Space in the U.S., which offers memorial space flights), and Yuya Nakamura (President and CEO, Axelspace) running the Japanese microsatellite startup; it was moderated by Nomura Research Institute Senior Consultant Masashi Sato who is a member of the “Committee of Space by ICT” at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication.
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
The Space as an Enabler session, introduced the forefront of innovation created by space with other industry and discussed the possibility of utilizing space as an enabler. The value of space for enterprises was also discussed by the panelist Kenji Oda who is
Creative Director and Chief of Dentsu Space Lab, Dentsu (TSE:4324) taking the “Space for Everyone” approach (recent work includes award-winning solutions such as an experiment where employees work in Space-like conditions, “kibo360” smartphone app simulating an astronaut life on the International Space Station, and the Google/JAXA “Space Hangout” collaboration where people on earth can video chat with an astronaut in the ISS).
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
Other panelists of the second session were Satoru Konishi who is Assistant Chief Engineer, Magellan Systems Japan, currently working on the development of the new GNSS receiver with centi-meter accuracy supporting the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System which is to be fully operational around 2018; Managing Director Ken Fujiwara of Umitron, which he co-founded as a data service company for aquaculture including satellite remote sensing; and, Dr. Keiichi Masuya who is Director of biotech startup PeptiDream which is using the microgravity environment in space for new treatment agents development. The session moderator was Japanese VC firm Global Brain‘s Venture Partner Hidetaka Aoki, the “space business evangelist” which is his trademark.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Triple W Japan, the Japanese startup developing developer of urination predictor device DFree, announced last week that it was selected by NEDO for the corporate alliance program for R&D-focused startups, and will receive a subsidy of up to 70 million yen (about $610K US). The target for the subsidy is joint research with large companies in relation to DFree’s small size and high performance, and since the expenses required for research will be paid up to the maximum amount, it is possible to obtain the full subsidy. The contents of collaborative research with each of five major companies are as follows: Accenture…Collaborative research on nursing care packages combining various sensors and nursing care record data, joint development of algorithms and software, support for overseas development centered on Europe, etc. Itochu Chemical Frontier…Development of a high precision ultrasonic sensor, high accuracy coupled with algorithm development, etc. Itochu Techno Solutions…Feasibility studies, joint development of software, etc. Paramount Head…Improve accuracy through the combination with various sensors, joint solution development, etc. Revamp…Feasibility study at nursing care facilities, sales support, etc. Among these companies, Revamp also participated in the series A funding round that Triple W Japan…
Tokyo-based Triple W Japan, the Japanese startup developing developer of urination predictor device DFree, announced last week that it was selected by NEDO for the corporate alliance program for R&D-focused startups, and will receive a subsidy of up to 70 million yen (about $610K US). The target for the subsidy is joint research with large companies in relation to DFree’s small size and high performance, and since the expenses required for research will be paid up to the maximum amount, it is possible to obtain the full subsidy.
The contents of collaborative research with each of five major companies are as follows:
Accenture…Collaborative research on nursing care packages combining various sensors and nursing care record data, joint development of algorithms and software, support for overseas development centered on Europe, etc.
Itochu Chemical Frontier…Development of a high precision ultrasonic sensor, high accuracy coupled with algorithm development, etc.
Itochu Techno Solutions…Feasibility studies, joint development of software, etc.
Paramount Head…Improve accuracy through the combination with various sensors, joint solution development, etc.
Revamp…Feasibility study at nursing care facilities, sales support, etc.
Among these companies, Revamp also participated in the series A funding round that Triple W Japan conducted last July. Also, in February of last year, the company acquired a subsidy of up to 70 million yen from NEDO’s another R&D venture support project (commonly known as the STS grant project).
DFree’s mobile app for nursing care facilities Image credit: Triple W Japan
Recently, Triple W Japan won Grand Prize at the “Japan Healthcare Business Contest” conducted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on March 3rd. Interest from Europe is also high, and it seems that DFree was exhibited as a use case of Soracom, an IoT-focused mobile network service from Japan, which announced its advance into Europe at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona earlier this month. They are also scheduled to represent Japan in the Netherlands’ startup conference competition Get in the Ring (which timing-wise overlaps with Tech in Asia Singapore 2017…) from May 17th to the 19th. Moreover, in Kawasaki city, DFree is certified as the Kawasaki Innovation Standard with the city subsidizing expenses for its use in nursing care facilities, which is expected to spur introduction.
Triple W Japan’s CEO Atsushi Nakanishi had the following to say about the future of DFree:
I’d like to work with Kawasaki city to see it implemented for in-home nursing care and rehabilitation. In particular, most patients who have suffered from a stroke undergo a rehabilitation process where they’re forced to wear a catheter after surgery (to compensate for difficulty urinating), which they then have removed and wear diapers, finally graduating from those, in order to fully rehabilitate into society. DFree would be useful in the process of removing the diaper.
Nakanishi continued:
DFree has already begun to be used in French nursing home care facilities, and we will promote trials for full-scale introduction. We’re also in the process of contracting with a German company. We are collaborating in Europe since the structure of nursing care is well established. Regarding areas where nursing care is not easy, I’d like to consider making rehabilitation models and home care support tools and packages. I’d like to partner with insurance companies.
At the beginning of the project, DFree had set a goal of predicting bowel movements, but recently seems to be shifting its focus to urination control. On this, Nakanishi said that the technological development of urination prediction is the priority because urination is more frequent than bowel movements, making it easier to develop data and algorithms; also, throughout the world there are more people who are in need of support for urination rather than defecation. It appears that once they have answered the demand for urination prediction, they will once again return to the development of a solution for defecation prediction.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru IKeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Ookami, the Japanese startup developing the “Player!” sports entertainment app, announced on Friday that the company raised an undisclosed amount from IMJ Investment Partners (IMJ-IP), Gree Ventures, The Asahi Shimbun, and a number of confidential individual investors in a Series A round. For Ookami, this follows an undisclosed amount raised in a seed round from Gree Ventures last May, making this Gree Venture’s second investment in the company. Prior to the seed round, Ookami held angel rounds in June of 2014 and March of 2015, in which they raised a total of 30 million yen (around $260K US) from athlete Dai Tamesue, Uzabase, Uzabase CEO Yusuke Umeda, Tomohito Ebine (founder of OPT Holdings), and Toshiaki Komatsu (Co-founder of Photocreate), but according to information from the stakeholders the total amount raised this time in the Series A round is expected to be on a scale of several hundred million yen (or several million US dollars). Ookami was founded in April of 2014. In April 2015 they released the mobile app “Player!” for iOS, and pivoted from a sports news distribution platform to the one that reports sports games live, with a social network function…
Tokyo-based Ookami, the Japanese startup developing the “Player!” sports entertainment app, announced on Friday that the company raised an undisclosed amount from IMJ Investment Partners (IMJ-IP), Gree Ventures, The Asahi Shimbun, and a number of confidential individual investors in a Series A round. For Ookami, this follows an undisclosed amount raised in a seed round from Gree Ventures last May, making this Gree Venture’s second investment in the company.
Prior to the seed round, Ookami held angel rounds in June of 2014 and March of 2015, in which they raised a total of 30 million yen (around $260K US) from athlete Dai Tamesue, Uzabase, Uzabase CEO Yusuke Umeda, Tomohito Ebine (founder of OPT Holdings), and Toshiaki Komatsu (Co-founder of Photocreate), but according to information from the stakeholders the total amount raised this time in the Series A round is expected to be on a scale of several hundred million yen (or several million US dollars).
Ookami was founded in April of 2014. In April 2015 they released the mobile app “Player!” for iOS, and pivoted from a sports news distribution platform to the one that reports sports games live, with a social network function that allows users to share their reactions in real-time with other users watching the progress and results of the same game. In December 2015 it was labeled the “App Store Best of 2015”, and in 2016 it won the “Good Design Award.”
Ookami revealed plans to strengthen the news distribution functions of Player! In addition to revamping the news functions, they will partner with a major data stadium for the broadcasting of sports scores, and information regarding both J-league football and B-league basketball games in Japan will be offered in real time. Additionally, their information can be further enriched through their partnership with the Asahi Shimbun, a company that participates in some 180 sports events in Japan yearly.
The Asahi Shumbun, participants in this round, released the following comments in excerpt.
We believe that through multiplying various sports businesses and contents with Ookami’s Player!, a new way of enjoying sports, and communicating about sports, separate from a newspaper, becomes possible; so we entered into the partnership.
GREE Ventures, who participated in the latest investment round along with IMJ-IP, appears to make a pure money injection. The following is an excerpt from comments by IMJ-IP.
With the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, the field of sports is expected to experience great growth in Japan. As a part of this, we recognize the fact that Player! is a new medium that makes live sports content possible and offers the optimal smart-phone customer experience, and judge that their management team is one of high executive power, so we have made the decision to support them.
Image credit: ookami
Although Ookami created the above figure (and therefore it is not necessarily an objective interpretation), the digital distribution of sports content is definitely bustling, even with profitable and not so profitable players.
To illustrate other digital sports startups in Japan, there is Spotomo and Spotomo GC, which offer online lesson services, with investors like Docomo Ventures, DeNA (TSE: 2432), Sirius Partners, and ABC Dream Ventures. Link Sports, which runs the amateur sports score and competition management service TeamHub, raised about 60 million yen (around $523K US) in financing from Venture United and debt from the Japan Policy Finance Corporation.
In Japan, DAZN (pronounced dazon) and Softbank’s Suponavi Live are advancing, challenging each other over Internet and mobile distribution, leading to a rise in broadcasting fees. However, they alone cannot consume all the video distribution, and it seems there is a development in which they discount and resell (sublicense) the broadcasting rights to other satellite broadcasters and cable television broadcasting companies. Overseas, Twitter contributes $10 million US to streamcast NFL games worldwide, and Amazon is moving to acquire broadcasting rights for sports.
For Ookami, Player! is not a distributor of sports video content, but instead focuses on score information related to games as well as SNS, thereby leaving them unaffected by these big players. Instead, through the benefit of sublicensing, etc., in the future it will be possible to deliver videos by revenue sharing with the broadcasting rights holder.
Ookami CEO Taiyo Ogata says:
I think it is possible to create a flexible operation if you can watch and listen to programs on a game-by-game basis (not on a per-channel basis), or if the price is changed when you watch from the second half.
60% of Player!’s users are under 35, a demographic that existing sports broadcasters are not reaching. In terms of being able to distribute video to this demographic, I think that it will be possible for major platformers to merge with Ookami.
Ogata also revealed that they are preparing several other user experiences only possible through Player! I look forward to a number of big announcements this year which can be expected in connection to this.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
Masaru Ikeda
