The Good Burger ordered at Jiyugaoka store, the Freshness Burger fast-food chain restaurant. Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Kumamoto-based Daiz, the Japanese startup developing plant-based substitutes for meat products, announced today that it is offering The Good Burger using the company’s proprietary meat alternative as a patty at all stores of the Freshness Burger fast-food restaurant chain all across Japan.
Freshness Burger, the fast-food brand operated by Japanese restaurant chain giant Colowide (TSE:7616), has 183 locations nationwide and is ranked in the sixth place in Japan by number of outlets. The new product will be available from September 1 through the end of the month exclusively to Freshness Burger app members, and will be available to all customers after October 1.
DAIZ adopts the patented Ochiai method in germinating soybeans, which activates enzymes and increases the amount of free amino acid contained by imparting stress such as lower oxygen level and higher temperature at the right timing of germination. This eventually contributes to bringing out the flavor of the raw ingredients and reproducing the meat-like texture without adding any additives.
In May, the company secured about $6 million US in a series A round, which brought the total sum of funding to date up to about $11.4 million US.
See the original story in Japanese. Fukuoka-based Medmain, the Japanese MedTech startup behind the PidPort telepathology solutions and the Medteria cloud for medical students, announced on Monday that it has secured 1.1 billion yen (about $10 million US) through the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) that Hike Ventures has set up for this round. The company has not mentioned the stage of the rounud but it’s believed as a series A round. The latest round follows the 100 million yen funding back in August 2018, and brought the total sum of funding to date up to 1.2 billion yen (about 11.3 million US). Participating investors in this round are Fukuoka Wajiro Hospital Group, IHW Group from International University of Health and Welfare (IUHW), QTnet, Hike Ventures, Innovations and Future Creation, Deepcore, Dogan Beta as well as unnamed angel investors. Deepcore and Dogan Beta participated in the previous round. SPVs have advantages for startups, including lowering the time and effort required to raise funds, and some of our readers may recall that Japanese HRTech startup SmartHR used this scheme for their Series B round. Medmain said it adopted the scheme this time to streamline raising a large sum of funding from multiple…
The Medmain team, CEO Osamu Iizuka stands on the center. Image credit: Medmain
Fukuoka-based Medmain, the Japanese MedTech startup behind the PidPort telepathology solutions and the Medteria cloud for medical students, announced on Monday that it has secured 1.1 billion yen (about $10 million US) through the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) that Hike Ventures has set up for this round. The company has not mentioned the stage of the rounud but it’s believed as a series A round. The latest round follows the 100 million yen funding back in August 2018, and brought the total sum of funding to date up to 1.2 billion yen (about 11.3 million US).
Participating investors in this round are Fukuoka Wajiro
Hospital Group, IHW Group from International University of Health and
Welfare (IUHW), QTnet, Hike Ventures, Innovations and Future Creation,
Deepcore, Dogan Beta as well as unnamed angel investors. Deepcore and
Dogan Beta participated in the previous round.
SPVs have advantages for startups, including lowering the time and effort required to raise funds, and some of our readers may recall that Japanese HRTech startup SmartHR used this scheme for their Series B round. Medmain said it adopted the scheme this time to streamline raising a large sum of funding from multiple investors including hospital managements.
The Fukuoka Wajiro Hospital Group has 24 medical institutions and seven medical education institutions in Japan, while the IHW Group from IUHW is made of medical, educational, and welfare groups with about 60 facilities nationwide. With the participation of these groups, the company intends to accelerate product development involving the clinical environment.
In partnership
with the Kyushu University School of Medicine and Kyushu University
Hospital, the company has been using supercomputers to conduct
high-speed learning for artificial intelligence (AI). Launching the
alpha version back in winter in 2018 followed by the official version in
February this year, it is conducting joint research with over 50
medical institutions in Japan.
Medical care and computer vision are considered to be a good match. Among many medical applications (e.g., radiological and endoscopic images), the company has chosen pathology as a focus because it believed this area was particularly behind in digitalization. In pathology, a doctor takes tissue samples from a patient’s body and a pathologist uses a microscope to check them. Medmain provides pathologists with an environment so that they can remotely complete this process by checking scanned images. In addition, the more images and learning data are collected, the more precise diagnosis the platform can provide. This may contribute to solving the delay in diagnosis due to the shortage of pathologists.
PidPort viewer’s image Image credit: Medmain
Because of the restrictions of medical-related laws, PidPort is used only on a research basis at this point in Japan, but it is used for actual medical diagnosis in other countries. In countries and regions where pathologists are scarce, pathologists in Japan have provided consultation and advice to a local doctor based on images of the latter’s patient’s tissue using the platform.
In addition, the spread of the novel coronavirus has restricted the movement people including even pathologists, but the platform allows pathologists to make diagnoses online without traveling multiple hospitals, which becomes a good opportunity to advance digital pathology.
Medmain plans to use the funds to enhance its AI algorithms, investing in image scanning equipment in addition to hiring talents for global business expansion effort. In Japan, the AI-powered diagnostic function is currently limited to research use due to legal restrictions, so the company will highlight the potential of remote pathological diagnosis leveraged by digital scanning and cloud storage functions for domestic sales.
Some of our readers may recall that Tokyo-based Atrae (TSE:6194) has introduced a mobile app called Yenta, an AI-powered professional matching app leveraging the Tinder-like Swipe UI (user interface). It was revealed today that the company has just launched the global edition ( iOS / Android ) and chosen India as the first destination of their global expansion effort. The app helps users connect with businesspersons upon widening their network through profile registration and repeated swipes on a screen. It recommends 10 persons the user may be interested in connecting with at noon daily. After choosing which persons the user wants to meet by swiping on it, the matching result with other users will be sent out later at 8pm on the same day. When both users confirm to meet (or e-meet) each other, they can start chatting via the app to make an appointment. The latest version of the app allows even Japanese users to have their English profile so that they can connect with Indian users. We have learned that the app has contributed to helping users build significant business relationships such as Japanese factoring startup Olta’s CEO having found his CSO as co-founder in addition to Japanese…
Some of our readers may recall that Tokyo-based Atrae (TSE:6194) has introduced a mobile app called Yenta, an AI-powered professional matching app leveraging the Tinder-like Swipe UI (user interface). It was revealed today that the company has just launched the global edition ( iOS / Android ) and chosen India as the first destination of their global expansion effort.
The app helps users connect with businesspersons upon widening their network through profile registration and repeated swipes on a screen. It recommends 10 persons the user may be interested in connecting with at noon daily. After choosing which persons the user wants to meet by swiping on it, the matching result with other users will be sent out later at 8pm on the same day. When both users confirm to meet (or e-meet) each other, they can start chatting via the app to make an appointment.
The latest version of the app allows even Japanese users to have their English profile so that they can connect with Indian users. We have learned that the app has contributed to helping users build significant business relationships such as Japanese factoring startup Olta’s CEO having found his CSO as co-founder in addition to Japanese satellite antenna-sharing startup Infostellar having succeeded in finding a new seed investor through it.
Since its launch back in 2016, the Yenta has not disclosed the size of its user base but it is estimated about hundreds of thousand of users in Japan. The company revealed that it has connected users each other over 3 million times to date.
To promote the India expansion, Atrae announced that it is hosting a data analysis competition in partnership with Tokyo-based DataGateway which boasts a local community of more than 20,000 data scientists in India. Based on the Open Innovation approach, the competition is aimed to encourage them to invent a new algorithm to create better matchmaking experience in the app. The competition winner can get 10,000 US dollars as a prize.
As for business matching apps with the Tinder-like swipe UI in the English-speaking market, New York/Paris-based Shapr, launched by a French entrepreneur, has secured US$16.5 million through a total of four rounds with over 2.5 million users as of May 2019 (according to The Independent’s sponsored article). In 2018, Tinder’s founders launched an app called Ripple with the back of the dating app’s parent company Match Group, but it is believed to be already in the deadpool given various situation.
Bangkok-based TalentEx, offering recruitment-focused online media and SaaS (software as a service) for human resource affairs, unveiled on Sunday that its Russian subsidiary has launched an online school business called CyberSamurai (КиберСамурае in Russian). The monthly subscription-based class is intended for Russian-speaking IT developers and engineers, helping them keep updated with IT industry and technology updates as well as business practices from Japan. It may also aim to allow them to enjoy commentary on Japanese anime and subculture in addition to giving them opportunities to e-meet up with CTOs from Japanese companies. TalentEx was launched back in 2013 by Yojiro Koshi who previously worked for Japanese ad network startup Nobot (Nobot was acquired by Japanese telco giant KDDI’s subsdiary Mediba in 2011). The company has several core businesses: the Wakuwaku online and offline recruiting service to find Japanese-speaking talents in Thailand, community management at the Monstar Hub Bangkok co-working space, and sales and marketing of the Michiru RPA software for Japanese companies in Thailand. See also: Meet Japanese entrepreneur trying to disrupt Thai recruitment market In July of 2018, the company founded a local subsidiary in Russia for a new project supplying Russian IT engineers to Japanese companies. After a…
Anatoli Kolbinov (left up), Dasha An (right up), and Ryosei Suginaka (left down) speak during the opening event on Sunday. All these TalentEx members can speak more than two languages including Japanese and Russian.
Bangkok-based TalentEx, offering recruitment-focused online media and SaaS (software as a service) for human resource affairs, unveiled on Sunday that its Russian subsidiary has launched an online school business called CyberSamurai (КиберСамурае in Russian). The monthly subscription-based class is intended for Russian-speaking IT developers and engineers, helping them keep updated with IT industry and technology updates as well as business practices from Japan. It may also aim to allow them to enjoy commentary on Japanese anime and subculture in addition to giving them opportunities to e-meet up with CTOs from Japanese companies.
TalentEx was launched back in 2013 by Yojiro Koshi who previously worked for Japanese ad network startup Nobot (Nobot was acquired by Japanese telco giant KDDI’s subsdiary Mediba in 2011). The company has several core businesses: the Wakuwaku online and offline recruiting service to find Japanese-speaking talents in Thailand, community management at the Monstar Hub Bangkok co-working space, and sales and marketing of the Michiru RPA software for Japanese companies in Thailand.
In July of 2018, the company founded a local subsidiary in Russia for a new project supplying Russian IT engineers to Japanese companies. After a little more than a year after its launch, the Russian business had been outpacing other businesses in Thailand in terms of revenue, but the recent coronavirus pandemic has halted it. After several months of their efforts to keep the Russian operation alive leveraging the sales from their Thai business, their Russian team of young members decided to launch a new business called CyberSamurai at this time.
The service’s mascot looks like a fox but they told us it is modeled after Masaru, renowned Russian figure skater Alina Zagitova’s Japanese dog. Image credit: TalentEx
Many startup businesses use a model that makes money by bridging the gap between the two sides of the transaction, such as information asymmetry and arbitrage. That’s something TalentEx is good at because of having presence in four markets – Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Russia. Coming up with moving talent from market to market, we may think the biggest challenge is language gap. According to Koshi, however, he turned to recognize that’s not true while work from home is more common in a huge country like Russia in addition to the fact that such a working style is becoming the global norm due to the pandemic.
When a Japanese company hires a Russian engineer, language gap is certainly a concern at first. Recently, however, these companies have been forced to shift to work from home, job instructions and other communication among colleagues are now often done through Slack and other online tools.
Koshi continued.
With more communication using tools than face-to-face meetings, the language barrier has been lowered for foreigners than in the past. In fact, we need to more focus on the cultural gap that cannot be fully verbalized but is often seen in business practices and work processes, which is more important when working with a Japanese company.
CyberSamurai’s Telegram group
Many of my foreign friends have
learned the Japanese language as a result of watching Japanese TV drama
series and anime titles in their country. Japanese anime was also a
source of inspiration for Hong Kong Democracy Movement stalwart Agnes
Chow to learn Japanese. Perhaps what makes her so popular in Japan may
be our perception that she deeply understands Japanese culture and
social customs rather than just her ability speaking the language.
That’s
why the service is not just about language learning but rather giving
opportunities to learn industry trends and subculture commentary which
are not directly related to business operations or professional
activities. The company charges membership fee but it may be hard for
them to see significant revenue with the new business alone compared to
their past human resources business in Russia. Perhaps the company sees
the member base as kinda talent pool for the time when the demand of
Japanese companies hiring Russian engineers recovers after the pandemic
settle down.
Run by TalentEx’s team of a few young Japanese and
Russian members in Russia, the service is wow focused on community
building using Telegram which is one of the most popular messaging apps
in the country. Going forward, they are expanding into other
Russian-speaking markets including former CIS countries.
See the original story in Japanese. 17 Media Japan, the local operating company of mobile livestreaming app 17 Live or ‘Ichinana’ also known as Livit in the English-speaking countries, announced today that Hirofumi Ono was appointed as Global CEO of its parent company M17 Entertainment Limited (M17). Focused on the Japanese market, M17 will be continually responsible for service operations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, and other Asian countries. Former M17 CEO Joesph Phua will step down as CEO to become a non-executive chairman. Ono will also continue to serve 17 Media japan as its president. The Japanese operations of the livestreaming app was launched back in 2017 by Ono who has been backing M17 as one of investors – Co-founder & Managing Partner of Infinity Venture Partners. The app now has become an outstanding platform where singers and entertainers perform their live shows. It has acquired 45 million registrants as of November of 2019. Along with this, Ono announced that he will be stepping down from his role as managing director at Infinity Ventures in September. He was involved in launching the VC firm back in 2008 together with Akio Tanaka and Masashi Kobayashi. See also: Infinity Venture…
M17 Entertainment’s new Global CEO Hirofumi Ono Image credit: M17 Entertainment
17 Media Japan, the local operating company of mobile livestreaming app 17 Live or ‘Ichinana’ also known as Livit in the English-speaking countries, announced today that Hirofumi Ono was appointed as Global CEO of its parent company M17 Entertainment Limited (M17). Focused on the Japanese market, M17 will be continually responsible for service operations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, and other Asian countries. Former M17 CEO Joesph Phua will step down as CEO to become a non-executive chairman. Ono will also continue to serve 17 Media japan as its president.
The Japanese operations of the livestreaming app was launched back in 2017 by Ono who has been backing M17 as one of investors – Co-founder & Managing Partner of Infinity Venture Partners. The app now has become an outstanding platform where singers and entertainers perform their live shows. It has acquired 45 million registrants as of November of 2019.
Along with this, Ono announced that he will be stepping down from his role as managing director at Infinity Ventures in September. He was involved in launching the VC firm back in 2008 together with Akio Tanaka and Masashi Kobayashi.
In addition to investing in ventures in Japan and the Greater China region, Ono has contributed to the growth of startups with his unique style of entrepreneurial involvement as a founding member of them. The startups he was involved in managing include Rekoo Japan (the company behind Sunshine Ranch), Jmty.jp (Japanese classifieds site), Groupon Japan, Farfetch Japan, and of course 17 Media Japan. He has also made a significant impact on the startup ecosystem as an investor, hosting Infinity Ventures Summit (IVS), one of the largest venture conferences in Japan, for 12 years.
Below is his open letter on his Facebook timeline. (sic)
It is my pleasure to announce that I will be graduating from Infinity Ventures(IV), which I have led with Akio since 2008, this September.
And I will be taking on the role of Global CEO at M17 Entertainment, Ltd(M17). that is portfolio company of IV and is the parent company of 17 Media Japan where I have been acting as CEO over 3 years.
After launching 17 Media Japan from zero and leading its growth to No. 1 in Japan, there was a strong request from Joseph Phua, Co-Founder of M17 Global and Chairman, for me to take over the global CEO position, and after discussions with Akio and Joseph Huang internally in IV. I decided that the best way for me is to graduate from IV and commit to M17 as CEO so that I can contribute to those who helped me a lot during my time in IV by leading M17 to further growth stage.
In the 12 years since launching IV from scratch, I have had the great opportunity to not only invest but also run many companies on my own like Rekoo Japan (Sunshine Farm), Groupon Japan, Jimoty, Farfetch Japan, and 17 Media Japan. And fortunately most of them made great success to be leading companies in that industries and brought successful exit.
I am particularly pleased that Jimoty that I had built literally from scratch completely on my own went public this year.
I have also been able to get involved in some of the big exits for IVP’s fund, such as Soracom, freee and some of great investment like Wealth Navi and YeahKa (listed in HK and worth over 3billion USD now).
M17 is now expanding widely in Japan, Taiwan, India, HK, the US and the Middle East, and I will continue to grow the company so that we can expand our live streaming business even further around the world.
I am looking forward to a longer relationship with you as a serial entrepreneur.
As for IV, IVS President Toshiaki Shimakawa has successfully hosted more than 1,000 guests in the first online IVS, and the IV Japan team will continue to strengthen its operations with keeping investing in Japan and leading IVS.
Also, I will continue to contribute to IVS LaunchPad as an advisor to the development of our startups.
Sorry for that long message.
I would like to have opportunity to say hello to you individually if I could.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Styler, the Japanese startup offering an O2O (offline to online) support service for fashion and apparel stores called Facy, announced in late July that it has partnered with Tencent Cloud, the cloud service division of Chinese tech giant Tencent. Styler had been running the Facy app as a way to drive potential customers from online to offline fashion retailers. However, the company recognized that the expanding pandemic will significantly influence consumer purchasing behavior and decided to evolve the business into supporting Online merges with Offline (OMO) effort where retailers can seemly integrate user experience at their e-commerce site and brick-and-mortar stores. Pandemic accelerates fashion retailers’ shift to digital operations While fashion e-commerce represents a large proportion of the overall e-commerce market (around 20% of the total in terms of market size), it is yet difficult to completely take over all real store sales. Similar to what tech conferences and events are challenging amid the pandemic, one of the problems here is how to give consumers serendipity on online shopping. Unlike giving users recommendations using a collaborative filtering-based engine, it may be difficult for online platforms to give users a chance meeting with the…
Tokyo-based Styler, the Japanese startup offering an O2O (offline to online) support service for fashion and apparel stores called Facy, announced in late July that it has partnered with Tencent Cloud, the cloud service division of Chinese tech giant Tencent.
Styler had
been running the Facy app as a way to drive potential customers from
online to offline fashion retailers. However, the company recognized
that the expanding pandemic will significantly influence consumer
purchasing behavior and decided to evolve the business into supporting
Online merges with Offline (OMO) effort where retailers can seemly
integrate user experience at their e-commerce site and brick-and-mortar
stores.
Pandemic accelerates fashion retailers’ shift to digital operations
While
fashion e-commerce represents a large proportion of the overall
e-commerce market (around 20% of the total in terms of market size), it
is yet difficult to completely take over all real store sales. Similar
to what tech conferences and events are challenging amid the pandemic,
one of the problems here is how to give consumers serendipity on online
shopping.
Unlike giving users recommendations using a collaborative filtering-based engine, it may be difficult for online platforms to give users a chance meeting with the brands they have never met before while sales associates at real stores can do it.
Image credit: Alibaba
In
China in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, we saw many sales associates at
fashion stores setting up lights and tripods to to introduce and sell
their products via live video streaming. For fashion brands, it would be
difficult to integrate a typical live commerce app with their own
customer-facing app while Tencent Cloud’s solutions apparently makes it
easier.
Tencent Cloud’s solutions allow stores and customers to
interact with each other while seeing each other’s faces through
mobiles. The same technology has been adopted to Telelive, CyberAgent
subsidiary Cyber Pal’s platform for holding fan meetings online, as well
as Ignis’s dating service’s video call app.
Styler plans to introduce Tencent Cloud’s solutions to fashion brands, aiming to help them better implement the OMO into their environment. These solutions allow brands not only offer seamlessly their front-end customer experience online and offline but also to support back-end operations such as integrated inventory management of online and offline sales as well as optimized inventory operations across multiple real stores.
Image credit: Tencent Cloud
In
the ever-changing fashion industry, fashion stores often come and go at
shopping malls thanks to the
growing prominence of direct-to-consumer(D2C) brands. Tencent Cloud’s
solutions allow shopping malls to keep their store directory signage
updated at all times simply by importing CAD data indicating tenant
locations within the mall building. To ensure the practicality of the
solution, Styler plans to conduct Proof of Concept trials with Tokyu
Land Corporation (TSE:3289) which is known for operating a number of
shopping malls in Tokyo.
More D2C brands focusing on online sales are expected to enter the market in the future. In view of having a lot of ups and downs, their real stores’ character don’t fit a typical long-term lease contract for shopping malls. Even in such a tough environment, keeping offering retention opportunities at real stores to brands is a big challenge for shopping malls.
Styler CEO Tsubasa Koseki explained in a recent interview with Bridge.
Leveraging
Tencent Cloud’s solution, Styler is being focused on helping brands
make their communication and inventory management available in a digital manner. As there is
no significant player in Japan with knowledge that straddles between
online and offline sales, I think Styler can take an overwhelming lead
in this area.
Facy wants to be lifestyle-focused super app
Image credit: Styler
In addition to offering the OMO solutions to fashion brands, Styler is working on upgrading their own flagship Facy app so that brands can easily catch up with the OMO trend. The completely newer version is expected to be out this fall.
We are currently benchmarking super apps like Southeast Asia’s Grab (turned from a ride-hailing app), China’s Meituan (previously known as a restaurant discovery/group buying site), and Columbia-born Rapii
Koseki continued:
Unlike these apps targeted at commodity consumers, Facy wants to be a lifesytle-focused OMO app serving those looking at mid-range priced products. We’re moving forward under the strategy symbolized by two keywords: New Retail and Luxury. Going forward, we’ll be also expanding into other categories like cosmetics and furniture.
In Japan, I think that tech giants like
Line and Rakuten as well as other payments apps are probably trying to
be a super app, but they have yet less variety in service offerings like
what Grab, Meituan, and Rappi are doing. Hence, the Facy app has the potential
to dominate this market in Japan if they can succeed in expanding their service
offerings.
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
