Tokyo-based Bonx, the Japanese startup developing a wearable walkie-talkie device under the same name, unveiled today its fundraising of 200 million yen (about $1.76 million) from Adways (TSE:2489), Keio Innovation Initiative and Japanese hearing aid manufacturer Rion (TSE:6823) as well as several unnamed individual investors.
With the latest funding, the company has raised a total of 5 million yen (about $4.4 million) to date. They will use the funds to set up a US subsidiary for North American expansion while exploring technological synergies with the investors participating this time around.
Bonx launched a crowdfunding campaign for its first market-ready product back in October of 2015, and subsequently unveiled the second generation called Bonx Grip in December of 2016. The new version sees many improvements in supporting usage environment such as water resistance and wearing comfort.
Given that a recent increased coverage of 3G/4G connectivity in ski resorts or snowy landscapes around the globe, CEO Takahiro Miyasaka expects that more foreign outdoor go-ers will start using the Bonx device to communicate with each others during their leisure and sporting activities.
Given the recent increased coverage of 3G/4G connectivity in ski resorts or snowy landscapes around the globe, CEO Takahiro Miyasaka expects that more foreign outdoor go-ers will start using the Bonx device to communicate with each others during their leisure and sporting activities.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Spectee, the Japanese startup behind the artificial intelligence(AI)-powered platform offering news materials based on social media analytics, revealed on Monday that they have filed for two patents applications for automated creation of straight news stories to the Japan Patent Office (JPO). Upon being granted the patents by JPO, the technologies related to the high precisioning / processing of image recognition and natural language analysis using deep learning, and collection of equivalents to the so-called Five Ws from an average of 4-5 social media posts make it possible to automatically generate straight news stories of about 300 characters. When incidents occur in urban areas and more than 10 posts are likely to be gathered in relation to it they can complete a sufficiently accurate article. See also: Japan’s social news aggregator for press Spectee announces Asian, US expansion In the field of AI-powered news writing, in 2016 the Associated Press started using Automated Insights’ WordSmith to create news articles on sports scores and made headlines. In Japan, Nagoya’s The Mid-Japan Economist, in collaboration with Datasection and Bit A, posted article created by AI; additionally, the Nikkei online edition worked together with the Institute of…
Tokyo-based Spectee, the Japanese startup behind the artificial intelligence(AI)-powered platform offering news materials based on social media analytics, revealed on Monday that they have filed for two patents applications for automated creation of straight news stories to the Japan Patent Office (JPO).
Upon being granted the patents by JPO, the technologies related to the high precisioning / processing of image recognition and natural language analysis using deep learning, and collection of equivalents to the so-called Five Ws from an average of 4-5 social media posts make it possible to automatically generate straight news stories of about 300 characters. When incidents occur in urban areas and more than 10 posts are likely to be gathered in relation to it they can complete a sufficiently accurate article.
In the field of AI-powered news writing, in 2016 the Associated Press started using Automated Insights’ WordSmith to create news articles on sports scores and
made headlines. In Japan, Nagoya’s The Mid-Japan Economist, in collaboration with Datasection and Bit A, posted article created by AI; additionally, the Nikkei online edition worked together with the Institute of Language Understanding and Professor Yutaka Matsuo of the University of Tokyo to begin a Financial Summary service written by news bots. Even among Japanese startups, teams have been emerging to tackle the theme of automatically creating articles using AI.
Spectee was founded in February of 2014 (previously Euclid Lab), and it graduated in October 2015 from the 11th batch of Open Network Lab’s incubation program. In July of 2016, they raised an undisclosed sum of funds in a series A round from Fuji Startup Ventures and a Japanese surveillance camera company, as well as Mizuho Capital. The Spectee platform, which obtains the rights to content collected from social media and provides it as news material to the mass media and companies, has been adopted by about 100 media companies and publishers across Japan.
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. A manufacturing startup from Nice, France and an Italian “diving computer” maker showcasing their products at an annual show targeting the diving market in Asia. Held at the Sunshine 60 Building in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward (from whence the current Tokyo Metropolitan Gov. Yuriko Koike hails), many overseas companies albeit mostly those involved in services such as resort operations took part in this event. The French firm Visit Seabed which at the last show announced its diver stability device last year (improved this year in terms of size and design) unveiled at the 2017 its new product – a world first – called Seabed Buggy which assists those divers exploring the shallower seabeds in a safer and stressless manner. Even those who may not have much stamina can now use this underwater vehicle to move about freely. According to the company, it took a few years to perfect this powered “board” since several designs were tried out and many patents required to realize those were filed. The final version enables divers to “scoot” near the seabed thanks to facilitated operations. As…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
A manufacturing startup from Nice, France and an Italian “diving computer” maker showcasing their products at an annual show targeting the diving market in Asia. Held at the Sunshine 60 Building in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward (from whence the current Tokyo Metropolitan Gov. Yuriko Koike hails), many overseas companies albeit mostly those involved in services such as resort operations took part in this event.
Visit Seabed CEO Frederic Castellanet on the left Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
The French firm Visit Seabed which at the last show announced its diver stability device last year (improved this year in terms of size and design) unveiled at the 2017 its new product – a world first – called Seabed Buggy which assists those divers exploring the shallower seabeds in a safer and stressless manner. Even those who may not have much stamina can now use this underwater vehicle to move about freely.
Image credit: “Tex” Pomeroy
According to the company, it took a few years to perfect this powered “board” since several designs were tried out and many patents required to realize those were filed. The final version enables divers to “scoot” near the seabed thanks to facilitated operations. As an aside, it is understood that there are more activities in the offing for French Polynesia, being one of the potential Visit Seabed user space, as the local government is pushing for more resort developments.
Image credit: Ratio Computers
This year, the Italian company Ratio Computers were also conspicuous at the diving confab. The computer in this case is not the ones used to access the Internet but those used by divers to ensure that they have a handle on their underwater activities related to the amount of gas left in the tank (which needs to take into account the time required upon surfacing since a sudden rise would result in the bends and other ailments), depth and other vital information. (Speaking of Italy, it has of late been a hotbed of startup activities.)
It is thought that with the further spread of interest in underwater leisure as well as business such as aquatic environment use like water use (one novel project is outlined by “waterpolitan.com” although currently its focus does not cover the oceanic environment yet), Japan and Asia promises to become a fertile ground [sic!] for expanded use of diving equipment and devices.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo VR Startups, the startup incubator focusing on VR (Virtual Reality) that is organized by Japanese mobile game developer Gumi (TSE:3903) of Japan, held last month a Demo Day for its 2nd batch in Tokyo. It became a big event with nine participant teams; four teams from the incubation 2nd batch, four teams from the Korean startup incubator Seoul VR Startups which has special ties with Tokyo VR Startups, and a team from The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) in which Gumi is also invested. In this article, I introduce in particular the four Japanese startup teams. See also: The Bridge’s guide to VR hotspots in Tokyo (2017 new year edition) Cover Tokyo-based Cover, which recently made a pitch regarding a VR game “Ping Pong League” at Tech Lab Paak 7th batch Demo Day, appeared this time with another product under the same name of Cover. It is the VR distribution platform enabling users to remake (“cover”) songs or dances attained with a combination of live distribution and animation. With this platform, users with head-mounted display can perform as getting into animation characters in the virtual space. Speaking of VR games, “Summer Lesson”…
Tokyo VR Startups, the startup incubator focusing on VR (Virtual Reality) that is organized by Japanese mobile game developer Gumi (TSE:3903) of Japan, held last month a Demo Day for its 2nd batch in Tokyo. It became a big event with nine participant teams; four teams from the incubation 2nd batch, four teams from the Korean startup incubator Seoul VR Startups which has special ties with Tokyo VR Startups, and a team from The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) in which Gumi is also invested.
In this article, I introduce in particular the four Japanese startup teams.
Tokyo-based Cover, which recently made a pitch regarding a VR game “Ping Pong League” at Tech Lab Paak 7th batch Demo Day, appeared this time with another product under the same name of Cover. It is the VR distribution platform enabling users to remake (“cover”) songs or dances attained with a combination of live distribution and animation. With this platform, users with head-mounted display can perform as getting into animation characters in the virtual space.
Speaking of VR games, “Summer Lesson” launched by Bandai Namco has been well received in Japan. In China, YY Music is focusing on live streaming services. The Cover team expects its business model in line with the subscriptions system from audiences as with Showroom provided by Japan’s DeNA, so that distributed videos are available to browse on PC or smartphone in addition to head-mounted display.
In the future, the team aims to add various functions, such as editing hair style or costume of animation characters, setting 360-degree video or photos photographed by users as the background image, or sharing captured images in the game streaming or the white boards.
In the days of the pager/beeper, people communicated using numbers, symbols and texts. As devices have evolved from the feature phone to the smartphone, communication methods have changed into a richer style, says Shunichi Takeshita who is CEO of Gatari and the first representative of the VR user society UT-virtual at the University of Tokyo. Gatari strives to create communication methods and devices in the MR (Mixed Reality) era, and aims to realize it in the VR world in advance.
Gatari images that send voice messages in actual spaces will become common by replacing today’s conventional text typing as a communication method in the VR, the AR (Augmented Reality) and the MR era. As a first step during this incubation term, the team completed technology development such as text input by voice recognition, translated output into the conversation partner’s language and keyword auto-extractor in conversation. In the future, the team aims to develop a view-sharing function with a communication partner.
HoloEyes
HoloEyes aims to make an information revolution in the medical field using VR. Its technology will be helpful for the medical world by sharing information of human bodies in 3DVR form. The medical VR database will be constructed through collection of CT scan data and forming 3D human body models, then accumulating these.
If a search on the terms “male, 60s, prostate cancer” is made, 3D images of matched cases will be output. Doctors can utilize them for diagnosis references of similar cases or training upon surgical operations. The team expects a business model providing VR viewers for hospitals and selling collected data after obtaining patients’ consent to medical colleges or pharmaceutical companies.
JollyGood
JollyGood was founded by Kensuke Joji, who had originally worked in the TV broadcaster industry and been involved in producing events such as Wearable Tech Expo held in Tokyo, and last year launched the VR solution named GuruVR Media Pro for the television program production industry. By 2019, simultaneous broadcasting in terrestrial network / Internet by television stations will be commenced in Japan and Joji expects that television will become a device to experience, not just to watch. On the other hand, there was no system to easily introduce VR content into television programs and that triggered him to develop this solution.
The business model of GuruVR Media Pro consists of the initial cost including installation and installation lecture charges and the running cost corresponding to quantities of content as well as downloads of CMS (Content Management System) which is required for VR content distribution. The team explains that VR content can be easily linked up with lands or spaces, and is compatible with local television stations. Viewers can handily try the content provided by television stations they are familiar with, and it will be differentiated by enabling them to have a “pseudo- experience” of various locations where common citizens are forbidden to enter.
In addition, JollyGood has been developing AI (Artificial Intelligence) services to determine automatically what is the image displayed in VR space. This February, the firm agreed to a business tie-up with UK-based Boris FX which develops Mocha, the post-production tool for VR content that prevents VR sickness. Collaborating Boris FX with a network of million VR engineers and the AI services developed by JollyGood, they plan to announce a launch of new services at the world’s biggest convention for visionary technologies, the NAB Show, held in Las Vegas on April 25th.
Incidentally, JollyGood had fundraised one million yen (about $900,000) from Gumi in August of 2016.
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
At Slush Tokyo 2017 held in Tokyo last month, Gumi announced that it will commence Nordic VR Startups through a joint venture with Nordic Film, while Gumi has currently been providing VR startup incubation through Tokyo VR Startups and Seoul VR Startups.
Denmark-based Nordic Film is running a business focused on movie production, movie theater management and PlayStation distribution in Northern Europe. Nordic VR Startups provides 100,000 euro at most to startups from the Northern European region and encourages prototyping of VR products, as well as providing technical assistance and business support.
Prior to this, Gumi had also announced a cooperation with the Belgium-based VR developer community EUVR this January. Tokyo VR Startups started accepting applications for its incubation program 3rd batch, and the application deadline is May 14th.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup POL, which operates a human resource database consisting of science students called LabBase, announced on Monday that they secured 50 million yen (about $452K US) in a seed round. This round was led by Beenext with participatin from CyberAgent Ventures, Draper Nexus, Beyond Next Ventures, and angel investors also participating. The company’s valuation, investment ratios, and names of the angel investors were not disclosed. POL will strive to strengthen their system development process with the funds received this round. POL was established in September of 2016 by Michiaki Kamo, a second year student of the University of Tokyo’s Natural Sciences II program. Kamo is a serial entrepreneur who was involved in launching the Bivie online diet service which was spearheaded by under the jurisdiction of Singapore-based Reapra Group’s HealthBank. Additionally, former Executive Vice President of Gulliver International (now IDOM) and outside director of FiNC Yukihiro Yoshida is part of the team which currently consists of 10 core members. POL is working on correcting imbalances in supply and demand for science students seeking employment and those looking to employ them. Nearly 80% of graduating students using the typical job hunting sites and attending…
L to R:Beenext Partner Hiro Maeda, POL CEO Michiaki Kamo, POL Senior Managing Director Yukihiro Yoshida, CyberAgent Ventures Takashi Kitao
Tokyo-based startup POL, which operates a human resource database consisting of science students called LabBase, announced on Monday that they secured 50 million yen (about $452K US) in a seed round. This round was led by Beenext with participatin from CyberAgent Ventures, Draper Nexus, Beyond Next Ventures, and angel investors also participating. The company’s valuation, investment ratios, and names of the angel investors were not disclosed. POL will strive to strengthen their system development process with the funds received this round.
POL was established in September of 2016 by Michiaki Kamo, a second year student of the University of Tokyo’s Natural Sciences II program. Kamo is a serial entrepreneur who was involved in launching the Bivie online diet service which was spearheaded by under the jurisdiction of Singapore-based Reapra Group’s HealthBank. Additionally, former Executive Vice President of Gulliver International (now IDOM) and outside director of FiNC Yukihiro Yoshida is part of the team which currently consists of 10 core members.
POL is working on correcting imbalances in supply and demand for science students seeking employment and those looking to employ them. Nearly 80% of graduating students using the typical job hunting sites and attending job fairs that make up the employment marketplace are from the humanities, while the remaining 20% hail from the sciences. There are a number of reason science students do not make the rounds.
They secure employment on the recommendation of their department or a professor before beginning the hunt for a job.
They are busy with research so it becomes hard to spare time for job hunting. There are also cases of laboratories banning students who also do internships.
Their knowledge of job hunting practices is low. (The idea that they know people who got jobs based on recommendations, so they’ll somehow manage….etc.)
On the other hand, it is not as if students of science are satisfied with current job hunting conditions. For them, the biggest problem is that even if they refine their expertise and skills, it is not easy to find a work environment that can make use of them. Despite not being satisfied, they must choose to take a job where they can get it, or if they cannot find fitting employment they may remain at university to continue their research, resulting in the postdoctoral researcher problem.
In order to solve such a problem, LabBase provides an environment where students can post profiles to the Accademia such as research portfolios, papers, presentation history at academic societies, contents of experiments, etc. and connect with companies. Pre-registration began for companies in December of last year with about 100 companies total signing up. Following the start of the official service this year, 20 of those companies are using the service for free.
Meanwhile, they have gathered about 550 student users so far, and about 70% are science students from the University of Tokyo and Tohoku University. If you add in users from Hokkaido University, the University of Tsukuba, Kyoto University, and Osaka University, 90% is accounted for. The company does not advertise or engage in marketing, but they do have a network of 50 ambassadors around Japan and thus have been able to accumulate such a number of core users. Ambassadors work free of charge, but in spite of no monetary incentive they are cooperating to help acquire new users and strengthen engagement because they sympathize with POL’s vision of a happy environment for science students seeking employment it is said.
In the same field sometimes labeled “Lab x Tech” or “Lab Tech”, Acaric is a competitor for POL in Japan, however the market share has not yet been wholly dominated. In the US there are lab tech startups like ResearchGate, Figshare, The Center for Open Science, Science Exchange, Instrumentl, and Quartzy, etc. and we can expect to see POL use them to benchmark trends in the future.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese UX/UI design agency Goodpatch, based out of Tokyo, Berlin and Taiwan, revealed on Wednesday that they have raised 400 million yen (about $3.6M US) from SBI Investment (through SBI FinTech Fund) and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Capital in a series C round. This is the third round of funding for the company following $1 million (series A round) raised in December of 2013 and $3.5 million (series B round) raised in February of 2016. In addition to receiving the funds from SBI Investment, Goodpatch announced along with the funds raised this round that they are undertaking of a project to improve the UX/UI design of SBI Investment’s SBI Securities. From this month, Goodpatch launched an in house UX/UI design team specialized in the area of FinTech, and they are planning to open a lab to dispatch and share useful design and development knowhow to both the FinTech and design industries in the future. Goodpatch’s UX/UI portfolio in the FinTech world includes Money Forward’s public release in May of 2014, MYDC’s public release in January of 2017, and the public release of Quick’s Shinkly in 2017 (only those that are disclosed). Goodpatch was founded in…
Japanese UX/UI design agency Goodpatch, based out of Tokyo, Berlin and Taiwan, revealed on Wednesday that they have raised 400 million yen (about $3.6M US) from SBI Investment (through SBI FinTech Fund) and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Capital in a series C round. This is the third round of funding for the company following $1 million (series A round) raised in December of 2013 and $3.5 million (series B round) raised in February of 2016.
In addition to receiving the funds from SBI Investment, Goodpatch announced along with the funds raised this round that they are undertaking of a project to improve the UX/UI design of SBI Investment’s SBI Securities. From this month, Goodpatch launched an in house UX/UI design team specialized in the area of FinTech, and they are planning to open a lab to dispatch and share useful design and development knowhow to both the FinTech and design industries in the future.
Goodpatch’s UX/UI portfolio in the FinTech world includes Money Forward’s public release in May of 2014, MYDC’s public release in January of 2017, and the public release of Quick’s Shinkly in 2017 (only those that are disclosed).
Goodpatch was founded in August of 2011. Prior to the company, CEO Naofumi Tsuchiya worked as an intern at San Francisco’s digital agency Btrax, and founded Goodpatch after returning home to Japan. The company’s name comes from the incubation space Dogpatch Labs in San Francisco. Their prototyping tool Prott, which was officially launched in October of 2014, has been introduced in major IT companies, startups, design farms, and so on.
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
