Tokyo-based One Visa, the Japanese startup that helps companies streamline visa management for their foreign employees, announced today that it has secured about 450 million yen (about $4.2 million US) in the latest round. Participating investors are Zenhoren (Japanese rental guarantee obligation company), Seven Bank (a bank by Seven-Eleven convenience store chain), Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank, Canal Ventures (investment arm of Japanese system integration company Nihon Unisys), CyberAgent, and Anri. The figures include loans from Japanese Finance Corporation.
Prior to this round, One Visa has secured secured 36 million yen (about $324,000 US) from Primal Capital and Skyland Ventures back in June of 2017 followed by 50 million funding from Anri back in November of 2017. That latest funding brings their funding sum to about 540 million yen. The company says they will use the funds at this time to accelerate advertising and hiring people to strengthen sales and marketing efforts.
Regarding business partnership with the companies participating in the round, One Visa will explore collaboration potential with Zenhoren through the latter’s rental guarantee business while establishing the scheme allowing foreigners to create their banking account in partnership with Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank by means of doing so with Seven Bank since December. Gifu Prefecture where Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank is headquartered is also known for having many foreign residents working for automobile factories located in the area.
One Visa was initially launched as a service helping companies streamline visa acquisition and management for their immigrant employees. With the expansion of its service lineup to include education (One Visa Education), employment referral (One Visa Work), One Visa (visa acquisition and management), and One Visa Connect (living support), it will become possible to provide extensive support for foreign workers, from working to living or other every aspect of their whole lives.
Okamura himself has worked for the Tokyo Immigration Bureau in Shinagawa, Tokyo and had a hand in issuing visas for some 30,000 foreigners. More than 400 companies have introduced it since the beta launch in June 2017. The company graduated from the 4th batch of Recruit’s Tech Lab Paak accelerator, and came in 4th place at IVS 2017 Spring Kobe’s LaunchPad.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based WAmazing, the Japanese startup offering free SIM cards and tourism services to foreign visitors to Japan, announced today that it has secured 930 million yen (about $8.5 million US) in a series B round funding. This round was led by Tokyo-based private railway operator Tokyu Corporation (TSE:9005) with participation from JR West Innovations (corporate venture capital of the Japanese railway company covering western part of Japan), JR East Startup (the one covering eastern part of Japan), Yamaguchi Capital, Pola Orbis Holdings (TSE:4927), Nihon Unisys’ investment arm Canal Ventures as well as several unnamed angel investors. For WAmazing, this follows their previous $9.2 million funding back in September of 2017 (it’s supposed to be a series A round, and the amount includes loans from financial institutions). WAmazing distributes free SIM cards to foreigners visiting Japan and provides tourism information via a mobile app. Foreign tourists register their personal information on the WAmazing website before embarking on their trip and then can pick up the SIM card upon arrival at 20 international airports in Japan (covering 90% of overseas tourist inflow routes). WAmazing directs tourists to activity providers and in doing so takes a 10%-15%…
WAmazing exhibits a booth at International Travel Fair in Kaohsiung, Taiwan last week, in partnership with Tokyu Corporation’s resort hotel promotion. Image credit: WAmazing
Tokyo-based WAmazing, the Japanese startup offering free SIM cards and tourism services to foreign visitors to Japan, announced today that it has secured 930 million yen (about $8.5 million US) in a series B round funding. This round was led by Tokyo-based private railway operator Tokyu Corporation (TSE:9005) with participation from JR West Innovations (corporate venture capital of the Japanese railway company covering western part of Japan), JR East Startup (the one covering eastern part of Japan), Yamaguchi Capital, Pola Orbis Holdings (TSE:4927), Nihon Unisys’ investment arm Canal Ventures as well as several unnamed angel investors. For WAmazing, this follows their previous $9.2 million funding back in September of 2017 (it’s supposed to be a series A round, and the amount includes loans from financial institutions).
WAmazing distributes free SIM cards to foreigners visiting Japan and provides tourism information via a mobile app. Foreign tourists register their personal information on the WAmazing website before embarking on their trip and then can pick up the SIM card upon arrival at 20 international airports in Japan (covering 90% of overseas tourist inflow routes). WAmazing directs tourists to activity providers and in doing so takes a 10%-15% sales commission.
In two years and more since the service launched the app has been installed 240,000 times, mainly in Taiwan and Hong Kong Users are also expanding in China and Southeast Asia. The startup has made excellent results at many startup showcase events, such as winning B Dash Camp 2017 Spring in Fukuoka, the Tokyu Prize (equivalent of First Prize) at Tokyu Corporation’s 3rd accelerator batch Demo Day, Morning Pitch’s 2019 year-beginning edition, and JR East’s 1st accelerator batch Demo Day.
In contrast with their series A round backed by VC firms mainly, business companies including railway operators participate in the series B round at this time. Since these companies are strengthening their inbound and regional revitalization businesses all across Japan, WAmazing recognizes they can share the same marketing strategy and aim to work collaboratively.
Tokyo-based Base Food, developing nutritionally complete food products capable of becoming staple foods named Base Pasta and Base Bread, announced on Monday that it has secured 400 million yen (about $3.7 million US) in a series A round. Participating investors in this round are Rakuten Ventures, XTech Ventures, Global Brain, and several unnamed angel investors. This follows their previous seed round funding from Global Brain back in November of 2017. With this funding, the startup expects to expand their business globally in partnership with Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, the parent of Rakuten Ventures. We were told that this effort targets the US market in particular, where two-thirds of their adults and one-third of children overweight or obese and are trying to be more conscious about nutrition and health management. Base Food is the food-tech startup founded in April of 2016 by Shun Hashimoto, formerly engaged in the autonomous driving business at DeNA and other activities. The company targets those who do not know which nutrients to take, as a complete nutritious food allowing intake of 31 kinds of nutrients just in a single meal. It does not only have functional immediacy, but also provides satisfaction with its delicious taste and…
Image credit: Base Food
Tokyo-based Base Food, developing nutritionally complete food products capable of becoming staple foods named Base Pasta and Base Bread, announced on Monday that it has secured 400 million yen (about $3.7 million US) in a series A round. Participating investors in this round are Rakuten Ventures, XTech Ventures, Global Brain, and several unnamed angel investors. This follows their previous seed round funding from Global Brain back in November of 2017.
With this funding, the startup expects to expand their business globally in partnership with Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, the parent of Rakuten Ventures. We were told that this effort targets the US market in particular, where two-thirds of their adults and one-third of children overweight or obese and are trying to be more conscious about nutrition and health management.
Base Food is the food-tech startup founded in April of 2016 by Shun Hashimoto, formerly engaged in the autonomous driving business at DeNA and other activities. The company targets those who do not know which nutrients to take, as a complete nutritious food allowing intake of 31 kinds of nutrients just in a single meal. It does not only have functional immediacy, but also provides satisfaction with its delicious taste and can become a staple food.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Pixie Dust Technologies, the Japanese startup developing digital fabrication and AI-based solutions, announced on Thursday that it has secured series B round funding. Participating investors in this round include INCJ, SBI Investment, Toppan Printing, SMBC Venture Capital, CSV Venture Fund (managed by NEC Capital Solution and Venture Labo Investment), Mizuho Capital, KDDI Open Innovation Fund (managed by Global Brain), K4 Ventures, Dai-ichi Life Insuarance, and Dentsu. In addition to raising 3.85 billion yen ($35.1 million US) from these investors, the company has secured a loan commitment worth up to 1 billion yen ($9.1 million US) from Shoko Chukin Bank. When altogether, the company can make the most of up to 4.85 billion yen ($44.3 million US) financing. Pixie Dust Technologies will use the funds to hire people, strengthen R&D facilitates, invest in IP strategies as well as enhance technology portfolio to promote co-development of solutions centered on Hagen, the company’s proprietary ultrasonic phased array system, Founded back in May of 2017, the company was led by two CEO Yoichi Ochiai, Associate Professor at University of Tsukuba, and COO Taiichiro Murakami who previously worked at a strategy consulting firm. Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based Pixie Dust Technologies, the Japanese startup developing digital fabrication and AI-based solutions, announced on Thursday that it has secured series B round funding.
Participating investors in this round include INCJ, SBI Investment, Toppan Printing, SMBC Venture Capital, CSV Venture Fund (managed by NEC Capital Solution and Venture Labo Investment), Mizuho Capital, KDDI Open Innovation Fund (managed by Global Brain), K4 Ventures, Dai-ichi Life Insuarance, and Dentsu.
In addition to raising 3.85 billion yen ($35.1 million US) from these investors, the company has secured a loan commitment worth up to 1 billion yen ($9.1 million US) from Shoko Chukin Bank. When altogether, the company can make the most of up to 4.85 billion yen ($44.3 million US) financing.
Pixie Dust Technologies will use the funds to hire people, strengthen R&D facilitates, invest in IP strategies as well as enhance technology portfolio to promote co-development of solutions centered on Hagen, the company’s proprietary ultrasonic phased array system,
Founded back in May of 2017, the company was led by two CEO Yoichi Ochiai, Associate Professor at University of Tsukuba, and COO Taiichiro Murakami who previously worked at a strategy consulting firm.
This is a guest post by Sushi Suzuki, Founder and Lead Organizer of Kyoto Startup Summer School. Sushi is a specially appointed associate professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology and KYOTO Design Lab where he teaches Design Thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is responsible for ME310/SUGAR, a nine-month innovation program that originated in Stanford University and expanded globally. Previously, Sushi co-founded Paris Est d.school while teaching design innovation at École des Ponts ParisTech and was the Executive Director of the ME310 program at Stanford University. he also set up an innovation team for Panasonic Europe, was one of the co-founding members of i-kimono.com, a Japanese start-up company that handles antique kimono and accessories online. Sushi was born in Kyoto, Japan but spent over fifteen years in the US and over five in Europe and has traveled to over sixty countries. He holds a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A. in Studio Arts from Rice University. Kyoto Startup Summer School is a two-week entrepreneurship program hosted by the KYOTO Design Lab (D-Lab) at the Kyoto Institute of Technology. The program, conducted entirely in English, brings together over sixty participants, workshop facilitators,…
Sushi is a specially appointed associate professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology and KYOTO Design Lab where he teaches Design Thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is responsible for ME310/SUGAR, a nine-month innovation program that originated in Stanford University and expanded globally.
Previously, Sushi co-founded Paris Est d.school while teaching design innovation at École des Ponts ParisTech and was the Executive Director of the ME310 program at Stanford University. he also set up an innovation team for Panasonic Europe, was one of the co-founding members of i-kimono.com, a Japanese start-up company that handles antique kimono and accessories online.
Sushi was born in Kyoto, Japan but spent over fifteen years in the US and over five in Europe and has traveled to over sixty countries. He holds a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A. in Studio Arts from Rice University.
Kyoto Startup Summer School is a two-week entrepreneurship program hosted by the KYOTO Design Lab (D-Lab) at the Kyoto Institute of Technology. The program, conducted entirely in English, brings together over sixty participants, workshop facilitators, and lecturers from around the world.
Why a Startup Summer School?
A scene from Kyoto Startup Summer School Image credit: Sushi Suzuki
Back in 2014, I was moonlighting with a German startup company called Yocondo that was working on creating a semantic product search engine to be used as a personal shopping assistant. The team was four brilliant engineers and me, a concept developer with mechanical engineering and Design Thinking backgrounds. Bootstrapping, we worked hard to develop proprietary technology and a product that would be useful to people. While the product was rapidly improving, we didn’t quite reach the explosive uptick in usage or meetings with investors for funding. After the unemployment pay for some of the team members ran out, the team disbanded. Another funny-named company in the startup graveyard.
Through this experience, I got to attend both Web Summit in Dublin and Slush in Helsinki, both world class startup events. Trying to network with investors and get attention from the media, we quickly realized that there was so much we didn’t know about the startup world. Engineers and designers have this mistaken belief that “if you build something good, users will come.” While we did read books and articles on startups, it didn’t quite sink in with us. I realized that being good at making things doesn’t necessarily make you a good entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship and startups are buzzing around the world now, and more and more young people want to start companies. However, there is so much more one needs to learn than what is available in most universities. Going to engineering, design, business school will only give you a piece of the whole puzzle. This is why Kyoto Startup Summer School (KS3) was created, to give a comprehensive overview of entrepreneurship.
How is Kyoto Startup Summer School structured?
Participants discussing during the workshop Image credit: Sushi Suzuki
There are a lot of entrepreneurship programs and courses out there modeled after the Lean Launchpad model. Participants get together on day 1 with their ideas and form teams. After successive user interviews, mentoring sessions, and pitches over several weeks to months, the teams ultimately deliver a startup idea with a strong product-market fit. KS3 purposefully avoids this model and focuses more on a variety of content that entrepreneurs should know before founding. These are organized in modules of different lengths, taught by active entrepreneurs, professionals, and academics in the field.
At the core of KS3 are two multi-day workshops of Design Thinking and Lean Startup. The Design Thinking module focuses on the mindset of innovation, of being collaborative, user-centered, and experimental through rapid prototyping. For the last two years, we’ve been fortunate to have Anja Nabergoj, lecturer at the Stanford d.school teach this workshop. The Lean Startup module is about developing your idea to make sure you achieve good product-market fit through micro-experiments. Too many entrepreneurs keep making the wrong product with a misguided notion of what the customer wants, and both Design Thinking and Lean Startup help prevent this.
After the two big workshops, there are many smaller lecture and workshop modules. These modules could include sessions on investors-entrepreneur relations by the head of 500 Startups Japan, crowdfunding by the head of design and technology at Kickstarter, or “how to work with accelerators” by the managing director of Plug and Play Center Japan. One popular session from 2018 was focusing on corporate culture at startups by a researcher who did his Ph.D. on this topic. I teach a session on startup pitches utilizing my experience as the pitch coach for Slush Tokyo.
Meetup session with local entrepreneurs Image credit: Sushi Suzuki
The smaller workshops focus on introductions to more skill-based topics such as mechatronics prototyping with Arduino, introduction to software development or CAD, and storytelling for marketing. The goal of these modules isn’t to make the participants into experts in any single field but to provide foundational knowledge into many different fields that is important for creating startups. By getting a strong introduction, the participants will know what they have to learn in order to be successful when they take that leap into entrepreneurship.
In addition, throughout the two weeks, there are more fun events such as meetups with local entrepreneurs, visits to startups in the region, and morning yoga and meditation sessions. KS3 finishes with 54 hours of Startup Weekend where participants can flex their muscles and apply everything they’ve learnt. This session is co-organized with the SW Kyoto community and brings in local members as well.
Who comes to Kyoto Startup Summer School?
KS3 started in 2016 as a two-day beta test with four lecturers and a dozen participants. Most of the participants were local as we only advertised the program a month in advance. In 2017, we expanded the program to two weeks and spread the word to all corners of the world. I remember thinking: “will people really come to Japan for a two-week program on entrepreneurship?” Sure enough, we had 199 applicants from 51 countries that year from which we selected 35 people, and people really did come from around the world. 2018 was just as popular. Some participants came from Brazil, Chile, and Egypt, places very far from Japan. We even had a candidate from Iraq but he was not able to get a visa.
On the other hand, we don’t get nearly as many applications from Japanese students. Originally, we thought the applicant pool may be 40-50% Japanese, but in the last two years, it’s been about 3-5%. We knew the language barrier will scare off a lot of people, but we’re starting to realize that there isn’t much of a summer school culture in Japan. Getting more Japanese participants is definitely a challenge for the future.
Countries where everyone involved in KS3 have come from Image credit: Sushi Suzuki
In 2018, we also opened up the first week of the program to corporate participants. The two core workshops on Design Thinking and Lean Startup are actually applicable for companies and employees trying to develop new products, services, and businesses. We had several companies send their employees to be trained in these methodologies and we hope to expand this in the future.
One of the greatest satisfactions we’ve gained from running KS3 has been the community we’ve been able to form every year. Every year we create a Facebook group with all the participants and we see that many of them continue to interact after the summer school. Many people come from countries where the startup movement is still in its infancy and connecting with like-minded passionate people around the world is empowering. We’ve also been getting a lot of great feedback, both positive and constructive. We’re continuing to improve every aspect of KS3 and looking forward to those who will join us thisyear!
Tokyo-based Sansan, the company that operates the business card-based CRM (customer relationship management) solutions, announced today that IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on June 19. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting. Since its launch back in 2007, the company has been developing and offering two key products: Sansan and Eight. The Sansan platform is designed for enterprises or medium-businesses, provides a combined solution for business card scanning, data entry, and contact management, so that you can easily share the profiles of your clients with your colleagues. It serves 5,700 clients as of Q3 2019 in May. Meanwhile, the Eight platform is more optimized for individual use where our contacts will be automatically imported and connected by linking your Eight account with your social media presences like Facebook. It boasts 2.35 million users as of Q3 2019 in May. According to the consolidated statement as of May of 2018, they posted a revenue of 7.32 billion yen (about $66.8 million) with an ordinary loss of 3.08 billion yen ($28.1 million) and a net loss of 3.09 billion yen ($28.2 million). Led by Sansan CEO and…
Sansan
Tokyo-based Sansan, the company that operates the business card-based CRM (customer relationship management) solutions, announced today that IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on June 19. Nomura Securities will lead the underwriting.
Since its launch back in 2007, the company has been developing and offering two key products: Sansan and Eight.
Sansan CEO Chika Terada
The Sansan platform is designed for enterprises or medium-businesses, provides a combined solution for business card scanning, data entry, and contact management, so that you can easily share the profiles of your clients with your colleagues. It serves 5,700 clients as of Q3 2019 in May.
Meanwhile, the Eight platform is more optimized for individual use where our contacts will be automatically imported and connected by linking your Eight account with your social media presences like Facebook. It boasts 2.35 million users as of Q3 2019 in May.
According to the consolidated statement as of May of 2018, they posted a revenue of 7.32 billion yen (about $66.8 million) with an ordinary loss of 3.08 billion yen ($28.1 million) and a net loss of 3.09 billion yen ($28.2 million).
Led by Sansan CEO and co-founder Chika Terada, its major share holders include DCM Ventures (6.90%), INCJ (5.91%), SMBC (5.81%), Sansan’s employee stock ownership (4.99%), GS Growth Investment (4.42%), A-Fund (4.35%), Sansan Director and co-founder Kei Tomioka (3.57%), Nissay Capital (3.06%), and EEI Cleantech Limited Partnership by Environmental Energy Investment (2.34%).
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
Takeshi Hirano
