Masaru started his career as a programmer/engineer, and previously co-founded several system integration companies and consulting firms. He’s been traveling around Silicon Valley and Asia exploring the IT industry, and he also curates event updates for the Tokyo edition of Startup Digest.
NTT Broadband Platform, an NTT Docomo subsidiary operating public wi-fi services, recently announced the launch of its complimentary wi-fi service for iOS, intended to serve international travelers to Japan. This service is called ‘Japan Connected-free Wi-Fi’ and was initially launched for Android users back in November. All you need to do is to install the app on your smartphone and sign up when you launch the app for the first time. It lists over 16,000 free wi-fi hotspots nationwide in Japan, including 7-Eleven stores, Denny’s restaurants, JR railway stations, and many other public places. Unfortunately when you’re offline, you can’t use the map to find the nearest location from where you are. But the app shows you several signs that designated internet accessible areas which you can probably find around town, so it will be relatively easy to get a connection. The service is available in English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, and Japanese. On a somewhat related note, our readers may recall the Tokyo Bureau of Transportation also started in-train and in-bus complimentary wi-fi service aboard their bus and subways, specifically intended for serving international travelers. [via Mobile & Apps]
NTT Broadband Platform, an NTT Docomo subsidiary operating public wi-fi services, recently announced the launch of its complimentary wi-fi service for iOS, intended to serve international travelers to Japan. This service is called ‘Japan Connected-free Wi-Fi’ and was initially launched for Android users back in November.
All you need to do is to install the app on your smartphone and sign up when you launch the app for the first time. It lists over 16,000 free wi-fi hotspots nationwide in Japan, including 7-Eleven stores, Denny’s restaurants, JR railway stations, and many other public places. Unfortunately when you’re offline, you can’t use the map to find the nearest location from where you are. But the app shows you several signs that designated internet accessible areas which you can probably find around town, so it will be relatively easy to get a connection. The service is available in English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, and Japanese.
On a somewhat related note, our readers may recall the Tokyo Bureau of Transportation also started in-train and in-bus complimentary wi-fi service aboard their bus and subways, specifically intended for serving international travelers.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Hatch is developing a hiring platform that uses machine learning and big data solutions. The company announced today that it has raised seed funding of 75 million yen (approximately $750,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Anri. They will use these funds to intensify development and marketing efforts for their hiring support platform, which will be called Talentio. The company was launched last August by Akihito Nihomiya (CEO), Ichiro Sadahira (COO and CFO), and Yoshinobu Kinugasa (CTO). They initially thought they would launch a business in the edutech space by analyzing behavior, but when they found it will take time to make that area monetizable, then shifted their target to exploring opportunities in hiring. They have been developing their platform for almost half an year in stealth mode. Growth hacking for hiring The issues that the company wants to address with the new platform can be summarized in two points: First, the process of managing applicants profiles is still being handled manually at most companies, often with profiles stored in an Excel file. It can be difficult to find out who among your colleagues interviewed an applicant or what kind of jobs the person…
Tokyo-based startup Hatch is developing a hiring platform that uses machine learning and big data solutions. The company announced today that it has raised seed funding of 75 million yen (approximately $750,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Anri. They will use these funds to intensify development and marketing efforts for their hiring support platform, which will be called Talentio.
The company was launched last August by Akihito Nihomiya (CEO), Ichiro Sadahira (COO and CFO), and Yoshinobu Kinugasa (CTO). They initially thought they would launch a business in the edutech space by analyzing behavior, but when they found it will take time to make that area monetizable, then shifted their target to exploring opportunities in hiring. They have been developing their platform for almost half an year in stealth mode.
Hatch management From the left: Akihito Ninoymiya (CEO), Ichiro Sadahira (COO and CFO), Yoshinobu Kinugasa (CTO)
Growth hacking for hiring
The issues that the company wants to address with the new platform can be summarized in two points:
First, the process of managing applicants profiles is still being handled manually at most companies, often with profiles stored in an Excel file. It can be difficult to find out who among your colleagues interviewed an applicant or what kind of jobs the person has experienced before.
Conversely, job seekers find it difficult to identify what kind of skills are needed or the amount of salary they can receive in a given industry.
We understand the company wants to implement a growth hack concept (often seen in the gaming industry these days) in the hiring and job seeking processes. They are planning to hold a ‘Secret Release Party’ soon, where they will showcase their products to selected potential users, so we encourage you to visit there if you want to check it out.
Companies have many options to streamline the hiring process using executive search provided by big companies and hiring support platforms operated by startups. And recruiting personnel are keen to find promising talent by making the most of such services. We’re told that Hatch doesn’t intend to compete with other operators or platform developers. As far as I can tell, their solution will be able to integrate with third-party hiring platforms, in the same way that many financial aggregation tools scrape updates from multiple online banking services. In this way, the platform lets you see information from multiple sources using a single interface.
While we’ve already seen Silicon Valley-based startup Jobvite in this space, Hatch is exploring global expansion opportunities from Asia, with initial plans to expand the business to Taiwan and Korea.
We’ve seen many Japanese services that try to help travelers enjoy travel plans or experiences that you can’t find at travel agencies. But most of them target short-term visitors. So what about solutions for international travelers who want to stay for longer periods, or even relocate to a new city? To meet that need, Tokyo-based Korean entrepreneur Yuna Kim recently launched a plan matching site called Locaruu. It helps users enjoy an unfamiliar city as locals do, by connecting them with locals over the platform. The concept for platform stems from Yuna’s own experience. She studied in Japan, and then graduated from the University of Toronto. Every time she moved to a new city, she really wanted to connect with locals, but she couldn’t find any easy way to do so. She explains the kind of demographic she wants to target with this service: Our service mainly targets people going abroad for study, especially Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean women in their 30s. As for how the platform actually works, it collects excursion plans from people from all around the world, and lets you pick one for your next visit. If you purchase a plan, you pay a transaction fee via…
We’ve seen many Japanese services that try to help travelers enjoy travel plans or experiences that you can’t find at travel agencies. But most of them target short-term visitors. So what about solutions for international travelers who want to stay for longer periods, or even relocate to a new city?
Yuna Kim, founder of Locaruu
To meet that need, Tokyo-based Korean entrepreneur Yuna Kim recently launched a plan matching site called Locaruu. It helps users enjoy an unfamiliar city as locals do, by connecting them with locals over the platform.
The concept for platform stems from Yuna’s own experience. She studied in Japan, and then graduated from the University of Toronto. Every time she moved to a new city, she really wanted to connect with locals, but she couldn’t find any easy way to do so. She explains the kind of demographic she wants to target with this service:
Our service mainly targets people going abroad for study, especially Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean women in their 30s.
As for how the platform actually works, it collects excursion plans from people from all around the world, and lets you pick one for your next visit. If you purchase a plan, you pay a transaction fee via PayPal, and Locaruu takes 20% as a commission fee before connecting you with the person who posted that plan. You can browse plans without user registration, but you are asked to log in when ordering.
In an effort to explore an additional monetization stream, they are in talks with several language learning schools that might be interested in using Locaruu as a marketing channel to attract student applicants from the aforementioned Asian countries.
Because many internet solutions let you keep working regardless of location, many people these days can live anywhere or even relocate. It will be interesting to see how Locaruu can help these people live better.
Tokyo-based system developer Asial announced today that it has launched a component generator for mobile app developers called Onsen CSS components. It’s available in English and Japanese. While HTML5 technology lets developers create for multiple platforms, it remains difficult to develop the kind of user experience found in native apps. To address this problem, their solution lets you to generate user interface components and download them for free. So you don’t need to develop a user interface from scratch when you develop a HTML5 app. The component generator has more than 20 design framework patterns, and you can choose your prefered color scheme for the interface, with an the inspection function that lets you inspect HTML and CSS code. You can migrate the interface to your app under development by simply copying the generated codes. Asial is perhaps best known for having created the mobile development environment Monaca, which won the second place in pitch competition at Global Brain’s showcase event last year.
Tokyo-based system developer Asial announced today that it has launched a component generator for mobile app developers called Onsen CSS components. It’s available in English and Japanese.
While HTML5 technology lets developers create for multiple platforms, it remains difficult to develop the kind of user experience found in native apps. To address this problem, their solution lets you to generate user interface components and download them for free. So you don’t need to develop a user interface from scratch when you develop a HTML5 app.
The component generator has more than 20 design framework patterns, and you can choose your prefered color scheme for the interface, with an the inspection function that lets you inspect HTML and CSS code. You can migrate the interface to your app under development by simply copying the generated codes.
Asial is perhaps best known for having created the mobile development environment Monaca, which won the second place in pitch competition at Global Brain’s showcase event last year.
Tokyo-based Crowd Cast is the developer a mobile app that helps business people complete expense reimbursement at their companies. In an effort to expand its business, the startup announced earlier this week that it has partnered with UK expense firm SpendVision. The company plans to integrate its solution with SpendVision’s platform that matches expense history with credit card billing and submits it to accounting for approval. Crowd Cast will also co-develop solutions with SpendVision and start global marketing expansion focused on Europe and Asia. Crowd Cast’s founder and CEO Takashi Hoshikawa explained: By tying up with a global company like SpendVision, we can even beat Concur, the leading company in this space. I believe financial technology is a space where Japanese startups can defeat US companies. Crowd Cast launched an expense reimbursement iOS app called BizNote Expense late last year, introducing an Android version last month. They are planning to establish an office in London later this year, primarily for the purpose of hiring talented people and learning about cutting edge trends from the global financial hub.
Tokyo-based Crowd Cast is the developer a mobile app that helps business people complete expense reimbursement at their companies. In an effort to expand its business, the startup announced earlier this week that it has partnered with UK expense firm SpendVision.
The company plans to integrate its solution with SpendVision’s platform that matches expense history with credit card billing and submits it to accounting for approval. Crowd Cast will also co-develop solutions with SpendVision and start global marketing expansion focused on Europe and Asia.
Crowd Cast’s founder and CEO Takashi Hoshikawa explained:
By tying up with a global company like SpendVision, we can even beat Concur, the leading company in this space. I believe financial technology is a space where Japanese startups can defeat US companies.
Crowd Cast launched an expense reimbursement iOS app called BizNote Expense late last year, introducing an Android version last month. They are planning to establish an office in London later this year, primarily for the purpose of hiring talented people and learning about cutting edge trends from the global financial hub.
Tokyo-based app developer Donuts announced yesterday that its mobile video community app MixChannel has surpassed 10 million monthly movie plays. The app allows you to record and edit a short 10-second movie, and then share it with other users on the platform. To differentiate from similar apps, it lets you to add audio after shooting, or you can create entirely new movies by mixing those posted by others. The iOS app was launched back in December and recently added an English-language interface with the goal of building the biggest movie-sharing platform in Asia. To help achieve this, they will launch an Android app this summer. (For Android users, a lite version is available in Japanese.) In this space, we’ve already seen Japanese movie app SlideStory which lets you to share a 32-second slideshow movie with others. Japanese startup Cinammon is also targeting the region with its picture-with-audio sharing mobile app. via Venture Now
Tokyo-based app developer Donuts announced yesterday that its mobile video community app MixChannel has surpassed 10 million monthly movie plays.
The app allows you to record and edit a short 10-second movie, and then share it with other users on the platform. To differentiate from similar apps, it lets you to add audio after shooting, or you can create entirely new movies by mixing those posted by others.
The iOS app was launched back in December and recently added an English-language interface with the goal of building the biggest movie-sharing platform in Asia. To help achieve this, they will launch an Android app this summer. (For Android users, a lite version is available in Japanese.)
In this space, we’ve already seen Japanese movie app SlideStory which lets you to share a 32-second slideshow movie with others. Japanese startup Cinammon is also targeting the region with its picture-with-audio sharing mobile app.
Tokyo-based Trietrue, the startup that operates location-based (Japanese) search engine Pathee, announced yesterday that it has raised 130 million yen (about $1.3 million) from Japanese digital marketing company Opt and Daiwa PI Partners. Pathee is a search engine focused on helping users obtain more relevant search results using the location detection technology. You may have sometimes seen such location-specific results when using search services like Google or Yahoo. For example, when you need to find a bathroom, you can simply enter ‘toilet’ in a search bar of the app, and it will navigate you to any of the bathrooms within a five-minute walk from where you are. What’s unique here is the result includes the locations of bathrooms in shopping complexes or other public premises, despite the fact that Google Maps can only show you a list of intentionally designated ‘public bathrooms’. The service currently is available only as a mobile web app, but an iOS app will be coming at the end of May. via TechCrunch Japan
Tokyo-based Trietrue, the startup that operates location-based (Japanese) search engine Pathee, announced yesterday that it has raised 130 million yen (about $1.3 million) from Japanese digital marketing company Opt and Daiwa PI Partners. Pathee is a search engine focused on helping users obtain more relevant search results using the location detection technology. You may have sometimes seen such location-specific results when using search services like Google or Yahoo.
For example, when you need to find a bathroom, you can simply enter ‘toilet’ in a search bar of the app, and it will navigate you to any of the bathrooms within a five-minute walk from where you are. What’s unique here is the result includes the locations of bathrooms in shopping complexes or other public premises, despite the fact that Google Maps can only show you a list of intentionally designated ‘public bathrooms’.
The service currently is available only as a mobile web app, but an iOS app will be coming at the end of May.
See the original story in Japanese. While startups and freelancers tend to be more agile and flexible, they might fall behind in task management if team members work at different locations or have communication issues. There are a wide range of business tools out there for messaging or knowledge sharing, but we still find ourselves taking notes or writing on post-its and sticking them around the office. Of course, you can’t share updates with team members efficiently in this way. To address this problem, a new task management tool emerged earlier this year, featuring a beautiful graphical interface and drag-and-drop operability. It’s called Jooto. The development team has been improving the app based on feedback from test users since its launch of its closed beta back in January. The official launch was earlier this month. While the app is unique in its own right, the team behind it is also worthy of mention. They have their design and operations team in Singapore, system development in Hanoi, but they have chosen to target the Japanese market only. Interestingly their marketing team is not based in Tokyo, but instead on the remote island of Ishigaki, at the south-western end of the Japanese…
While startups and freelancers tend to be more agile and flexible, they might fall behind in task management if team members work at different locations or have communication issues. There are a wide range of business tools out there for messaging or knowledge sharing, but we still find ourselves taking notes or writing on post-its and sticking them around the office. Of course, you can’t share updates with team members efficiently in this way.
To address this problem, a new task management tool emerged earlier this year, featuring a beautiful graphical interface and drag-and-drop operability. It’s called Jooto. The development team has been improving the app based on feedback from test users since its launch of its closed beta back in January. The official launch was earlier this month.
While the app is unique in its own right, the team behind it is also worthy of mention. They have their design and operations team in Singapore, system development in Hanoi, but they have chosen to target the Japanese market only. Interestingly their marketing team is not based in Tokyo, but instead on the remote island of Ishigaki, at the south-western end of the Japanese archipelago.
Tomoko Devidal, the head of Nano Marketing who manages the app’s marketing efforts, told us why they operate in this way:
Since our app Jooto is developed for multilingual use, our global expansion is not so challenging from an engineering perspective. But since every startup has limited resources, we have to narrow our marketing focus. The app was developed by Skipforward in Singapore, a place where we couldn’t see a huge market opportunity. That’s why we decided on Japan as our initial target.
Despite the fact that they’ve not yet localized it to languages other than Japanese and English, they received some attention from internet users in Korea because of the highly intuitive user experience.
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Coubic (pronounced ‘coo-bic’), which launched a cloud-based solution earlier this month, has raised 50 million yen (approximately $500,000) from DCM and GREE Ventures last week. Their app helps companies and retailers receive booking requests from their customers, as well as manage their schedules on any device. Some might say that using a simple web form would be an adequate way to collect booking requests from your customers. So how can Coubic can add value here? We had a chance to visit their new office in Shibuya to speak with the company’s co-founder and CEO Hiroshi Kuraoka to find out more. Over the last few years, many startups have launched cloud-based services to serve business’ back office operations. Some of them include: Freee, Money Forward (accounting) BizNote Expense by CrowdCast (expense reimbursement) MakeLeaps, Misoca (invoicing) What’s unique about these services is that users don’t require technical expertise, and time-consuming work can be done even on tablets or smartphones. So what about front office operations? When companies or retailers set up an online form to receive appointment requests from customers, they typically use a web form and sort received…
This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.
Tokyo-based startup Coubic (pronounced ‘coo-bic’), which launched a cloud-based solution earlier this month, has raised 50 million yen (approximately $500,000) from DCM and GREE Ventures last week. Their app helps companies and retailers receive booking requests from their customers, as well as manage their schedules on any device.
Some might say that using a simple web form would be an adequate way to collect booking requests from your customers. So how can Coubic can add value here? We had a chance to visit their new office in Shibuya to speak with the company’s co-founder and CEO Hiroshi Kuraoka to find out more.
Over the last few years, many startups have launched cloud-based services to serve business’ back office operations. Some of them include:
What’s unique about these services is that users don’t require technical expertise, and time-consuming work can be done even on tablets or smartphones. So what about front office operations? When companies or retailers set up an online form to receive appointment requests from customers, they typically use a web form and sort received requests using a tool like Excel, and import them to SalesForce or other enterprise systems for customer relationship management. As for marketing, it’s also difficult to find an easy-to-use solution.
So there isn’t really any stand-out cloud service that lets businesses complete all their front office operations. This space is a so-called red ocean because there are many ways to address the problem, but many of solutions are not technically easy to implement. So the company has developed a solution that focuses on appointment reception.
Their users include a variety of business, including hair salons, yoga studios, cooking schools, lawyers, and accountants. Customers can book appointments on your Coubic page, typically linked from your own web site. If you have the Coubic iOS app on your mobile, you will receive a push notification when a customer requests an appointment. When you launched the app, you can make a follow-up call to the customer and add the appointment to Google Calendar. Kuraoka explained:
Hiroshi Kuraoka
The app’s user interface delivers a responsive web design to customers, so that they can book appointments on smartphones or tablets as well as via desktop browser. The dashboard for businesses is also available on mobile. You can complete every task on mobile, from setting up a reception page to managing appointments.
Their dashboard lets you view appointments, with each appointment associated with the profile of the customer that made it. So you can easily learn how many times a customer has visited your shop, or how many months have passed since the last visit. In other words, it becomes a CRM (customer relationship management) asset.
Back office operations are essential for any companies regardless of scale. Front office operations can help make make your business more profitable, but things will work even without them.
Case studies
Compared to cloud-based back office services like accounting SaaS, our service is less essential for business and so we can’t charge so much. That’s why we have to take a big share of the market. Appointment booking is needed everywhere in the world. […] So I think global expansion would be relatively easy.
With that in mind, their platform was already available in English and Korean as well as Japanese at the time of launch. They are exploring the possibility of global expansion beginning with Asian countries.
In this space, we’ve already seen BookFresh a service acquired by mobile payments processor Square back in February. But I think Coubic has no direct competitors even in the global arena. The funds from DCM and GREE Ventures could certainly help with their global business expansion.
Tokyo-based Gunosy, the startup behind the news curation app of the same name, launched an iOS app for the UK market this week. This version lets you to curate updates and articles from about 500 publications including UK-based news resources, such as The Register, BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Telegraph. The company plans to launch an Android app for the UK market next month, and an app for the US market will follow soon. They aim to reach 80 million downloads in the global market three years from now. via TechCrunch Japan
Tokyo-based Gunosy, the startup behind the news curation app of the same name, launched an iOS app for the UK market this week. This version lets you to curate updates and articles from about 500 publications including UK-based news resources, such as The Register, BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Telegraph.
The company plans to launch an Android app for the UK market next month, and an app for the US market will follow soon. They aim to reach 80 million downloads in the global market three years from now.
