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Yahoo Japan to launch online ticket sales service, poised to shake up $10B market

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Japan’s Nikkei reports that Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) will launch an online ticket sales service that will allow users to join live events by presenting e-tickets on their smartphone screen at the event venue [1]. So far in this space, convenience store chain Lawson, Sony-backed Entertainment Plus, and 7-Eleven-backed Pia already have a head start, and Yahoo Japan will to be the fourth major player. The ticket sales market in Japan is said to be worth about 1 trillion yen (or about $10 billion). Yahoo Japan is expected to launch its box office service, to be called Pass Market, in a couple of days. All Yahoo Japan users will have access to the service, and when you buy a ticket it will be deducted from your bank account according to the information in your registered user profile. The ticket will be sent to the user’s smartphone in the form of a unique QR code. After presenting the code to a ticket checker at the event venue, they can scan it using a smartphone camera to confirm its validity. With conventional ticket sales platforms, an event organizer usually pays several thousand dollars to starting selling tickets, as well as a 10% commission…

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Japan’s Nikkei reports that Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) will launch an online ticket sales service that will allow users to join live events by presenting e-tickets on their smartphone screen at the event venue [1]. So far in this space, convenience store chain Lawson, Sony-backed Entertainment Plus, and 7-Eleven-backed Pia already have a head start, and Yahoo Japan will to be the fourth major player. The ticket sales market in Japan is said to be worth about 1 trillion yen (or about $10 billion).

Yahoo Japan is expected to launch its box office service, to be called Pass Market, in a couple of days. All Yahoo Japan users will have access to the service, and when you buy a ticket it will be deducted from your bank account according to the information in your registered user profile. The ticket will be sent to the user’s smartphone in the form of a unique QR code. After presenting the code to a ticket checker at the event venue, they can scan it using a smartphone camera to confirm its validity.

With conventional ticket sales platforms, an event organizer usually pays several thousand dollars to starting selling tickets, as well as a 10% commission on the ticket sales. But Yahoo Japan will take no set-up fee, and only a 5% commission charge of the ticket sales.

As Japan’s largest internet portal, with more than 27 million user accounts, this new service should represent a significant revenue stream for event organizers – and for Yahoo Japan too, of course.

On a related note, there are also many startups that provide simple ticket sales services for meetups and events, including Peatix, Tixee, Zussar, EventRegist, Everevo, and Atnd.

Our readers may recall that Yahoo Japan has recently acquired on-demand cinema service DreamPass last month.


  1. The Nikkei report can be found here, although it’s paywalled.  ↩

KDDI to migrate its music service to Kkbox, joining Asia’s largest music network

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Japan’s second largest telco KDDI (TYO:9433) announced today that it would rebrand Lismo, its subscription mobile music service, to the ‘Kkbox’ effective in June. KDDI subsidized Taiwan-based Kkbox in December of 2010, and has been using the platform for its existing flat-rate music subscription services, Lismo unlmited and Utapass. For those not familiar with it, Kkbox is an on-demand music subscription service, founded in 2004 in Taiwan. KDDI acquired a majority share of its outstanding stock in 2010, and Taiwanese handset maker HTC took a 11.1% stake in 2011. The service is now operating in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, and has acquired more than 10 million users in those countries. More than 10 million songs are available for play, either using desktops, laptops, smartphones, or tablets. One of its more remarkable features is ‘Listen With,’ which allows you to share what you’re listening to with other users. With the rebranding, KDDI joins Asia’s largest music distribution network, providing more music titles not just to KDDI customers but also to mobile users on rival carriers NTT Docomo and Softbank Mobile. Competition is starting to heat up in the online music distribution space in Japan. DeNA launched Groovy a couple…

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Japan’s second largest telco KDDI (TYO:9433) announced today that it would rebrand Lismo, its subscription mobile music service, to the ‘Kkbox’ effective in June.

KDDI subsidized Taiwan-based Kkbox in December of 2010, and has been using the platform for its existing flat-rate music subscription services, Lismo unlmited and Utapass. For those not familiar with it, Kkbox is an on-demand music subscription service, founded in 2004 in Taiwan. KDDI acquired a majority share of its outstanding stock in 2010, and Taiwanese handset maker HTC took a 11.1% stake in 2011.

The service is now operating in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, and has acquired more than 10 million users in those countries. More than 10 million songs are available for play, either using desktops, laptops, smartphones, or tablets. One of its more remarkable features is ‘Listen With,’ which allows you to share what you’re listening to with other users.

With the rebranding, KDDI joins Asia’s largest music distribution network, providing more music titles not just to KDDI customers but also to mobile users on rival carriers NTT Docomo and Softbank Mobile.

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Kkbox app

Competition is starting to heat up in the online music distribution space in Japan. DeNA launched Groovy a couple of weeks ago, and Music Unlimited, Sony’s online music subscription service available in 18 countries worldwide, also recently reduced its subscription rate to 980 yen a month, the same price as Kkbox.

Global player Spotify is expected to launch in the Japanese market soon, as they have begun hiring in Tokyo. There are also other newcomers like Mironi as well.

Kyodo reports today that Japan has just surpassed the US as the biggest recorded music market in the world, with $4.3 billion in sales of CDs and music downloads. Interestingly, 80% of that figure was non-downloadable items like CDs and records, so there’s a lot of money just waiting to shift to the online space.

It will be interesting to see which of companies above can best position itself to capitalize on Japan’s love of music.

Co-work: A new corporate communication tool from Tokyo-based GaiaX

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See the original story in Japanese Tokyo-based web solution provider GaiaX has introduced a new tool called Co-work. It’s specifically designed for communication and knowledge sharing among colleagues at your company. GaiaX has been developing a social networking platform for specific purposes like following up with students before hiring, or keeping in touch with employees paternity or maternity-leaves. During this development process, the company recognized the need for a corporate communication platform that could improving operational efficiency in business. To sign up for an account with the new service, you’ll need a corporate email address. No free e-mail addresses are allowed. Its features are still very limited, with basic file sharing, as well as a mention feature that allows you to ask other colleagues if a requested task was completed. There’s also timeline feature called ‘company’ which allows you to check out what’s happening in other sections or departments. With this function, the app encourages you to share knowledge with colleagues beyond your immediate projects. The company’s communication manager Takashi Sabetto says that there’s still more room to develop in the ICT market, not only for startups but also for big companies. They are planning to add optimization for smartphone…

See the original story in Japanese

Tokyo-based web solution provider GaiaX has introduced a new tool called Co-work. It’s specifically designed for communication and knowledge sharing among colleagues at your company.

GaiaX has been developing a social networking platform for specific purposes like following up with students before hiring, or keeping in touch with employees paternity or maternity-leaves. During this development process, the company recognized the need for a corporate communication platform that could improving operational efficiency in business.

co-work.gaiax.com
co-work.gaiax.com

To sign up for an account with the new service, you’ll need a corporate email address. No free e-mail addresses are allowed. Its features are still very limited, with basic file sharing, as well as a mention feature that allows you to ask other colleagues if a requested task was completed. There’s also timeline feature called ‘company’ which allows you to check out what’s happening in other sections or departments. With this function, the app encourages you to share knowledge with colleagues beyond your immediate projects.

The company’s communication manager Takashi Sabetto says that there’s still more room to develop in the ICT market, not only for startups but also for big companies. They are planning to add optimization for smartphone browsing, as well as Chinese and Korean versions. Currently Co-work is available in Japanese and English.

The corporate chat space is getting noisy

These days most of us are forced to use an assortment of communication channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or e-mail. It often troubles me to think which channel is the best way to get in touch with someone, or even worse is the dilemma of trying to recall which tools I’ve used in the past to exchange messages with someone. I hope this congested environment can sort itself out some day soon.

In addition to this the Co-work app, Osaka-based startup Chatwork has also developed a corporate communication tool. They have acquired more than 150,000 users and are now looking to expand to North America and other Asian regions. Cybozu Live, another key player in this space, has surpassed 3,000 corporate accounts. US-based project management tool Asana is also seeing good numbers in its business user acquisition in Japan.

Japanese chat app Line is making a fortune from stamps — But who’s buying?

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Line chat app users can now enjoy unique stamps from world famous modern artist Takashi Murakami. The stamps were created to commemorate the release of the movie Mememe-no-kurage, a film which saw Murakami assume the role of director for the very first time. As I’ve written in a past article, stamps are often cited to as the reason behind chat apps’ huge success to date, especially in Asia. Silicon Valley’s Path released original stickers within its app at beginning of March, a move that makes sense given that the company is eager to expand to the Japanese market (having also hired a business development person here). Line provides both free stamps and premium stamps which cost about 170 yen (about $1.80) for a set of 40. The platform sells over 300 million yen (about $3,126,000) worth of stamps per month. That works out to about about 60,000 downloads of premium stamps a day. So who is actually buying these stamps? According to a survey conducted by Ceres, its people in their 30s who are the most frequent buyers with one in four people purchasing stamps. This is followed by users in their 20s at 21.8%. Only 10% of teenagers and…

Line-stamps

Line chat app users can now enjoy unique stamps from world famous modern artist Takashi Murakami. The stamps were created to commemorate the release of the movie Mememe-no-kurage, a film which saw Murakami assume the role of director for the very first time.

As I’ve written in a past article, stamps are often cited to as the reason behind chat apps’ huge success to date, especially in Asia. Silicon Valley’s Path released original stickers within its app at beginning of March, a move that makes sense given that the company is eager to expand to the Japanese market (having also hired a business development person here).

Line provides both free stamps and premium stamps which cost about 170 yen (about $1.80) for a set of 40. The platform sells over 300 million yen (about $3,126,000) worth of stamps per month. That works out to about about 60,000 downloads of premium stamps a day.

So who is actually buying these stamps? According to a survey conducted by Ceres, its people in their 30s who are the most frequent buyers with one in four people purchasing stamps. This is followed by users in their 20s at 21.8%. Only 10% of teenagers and people over the age of 50 are paying for stamps.

The survey also revealed that official character stamps by corporate brands are very popular with 61% of respondents saying they have downloaded such stamps. On April 2nd, Line kicked off its new campaign where stamps could be redeemed for free after buying certain products. The very first product on board is a Japanese blend tea by Coca Cola Japan. The company worked in collaboration with a major publisher with its hit comic series as GTO and Moteki.

For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

Tokyo Otaku Mode announces syndication deal with 13 news sites

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Tokyo-based startup Tokyo Otaku Mode, which curates and shares content and news about Japanese anime and manga culture, recently announced a syndication deal with 13 internet news sites in Japan and around the world. The international partners are as follows: Cheezburger (Cheezburger Inc., USA) Bahamut (a video game review site from Oneup Network Corporation, Taiwan) anime.mx (an anime news site in Mexico) RetornoAnime (Anime news for Mexico) Some of the notable Japanese media partners added to Tokyo Otaku Mode’s repertoire of syndication sources from which it translates news are: Anime.excite Anime Anime Netlab Kai-You.net Fashion Headline Now with over 11 million Facebook fans, many people wondered how Tokyo Otaku Mode might monetize its rapidly growing fan base. When I spoke to the startups co-founder Nao Kodaka back in February, he explained that one way would be try to funnel its Facebook traffic onto its main website (otakumode.com) which could then be monetized with advertising. So now with more quality incoming content, and with an extended reach thanks to syndication deals, TOM has made positive steps towards this goal. The company says in its announcement that it hopes to translate articles into more languages in the future, and ostensibly Spanish is…

Tokyo-based startup Tokyo Otaku Mode, which curates and shares content and news about Japanese anime and manga culture, recently announced a syndication deal with 13 internet news sites in Japan and around the world. The international partners are as follows:

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Some of the notable Japanese media partners added to Tokyo Otaku Mode’s repertoire of syndication sources from which it translates news are:

Now with over 11 million Facebook fans, many people wondered how Tokyo Otaku Mode might monetize its rapidly growing fan base. When I spoke to the startups co-founder Nao Kodaka back in February, he explained that one way would be try to funnel its Facebook traffic onto its main website (otakumode.com) which could then be monetized with advertising. So now with more quality incoming content, and with an extended reach thanks to syndication deals, TOM has made positive steps towards this goal.

The company says in its announcement that it hopes to translate articles into more languages in the future, and ostensibly Spanish is a priority given the deals with Mexican publishers noted above.

The startup also recently partnered with convenience store chain Lawson to help promote aware of the store’s brand around Asia and the rest of the world. They have established a special promotion page featuring characters that introduce Lawson’s products.

Stay tuned for more from Otaku Mode, as an e-commerce channel is expected to be just around the corner for the startup. If you’d like to sign up to be notified when it opens, head over to otakumode.com/shop.

In mid-Febraury the startup announced that it had raised additional funds from three VC firms, including YJ Capital (the investment arm of Yahoo Japan), Itochu Technology Ventures, and DG Incubation (of Digital Garage). (Via RBB Today)

tokyo-otaku-mode

Japanese social restaurant finder app Retty teams up with major portals on booking deal

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Retty, a Tokyo-based startup providing social restaurant recommendations, has announced a partnership with three Japanese major restaurant guides and reservation sites: restaurant.ikyu.com (operated by Ikyu, TSE:2450), Gurunavi (TSE:2440), and Akiran.jp. Retty users can find the best restaurants according to their social contacts. With the agreement users will gain instant access to book restaurants via the partnering services, with integration set to start on April 8th. The deal’s scope is far-reaching too, covering more than 600,000 restaurants in Japan. Retty initially started its journey backed by CyberAgent Ventures back in November of 2010. The startup raised 100 million yen (or about 1 million dollars) from GREE Ventures, NTT Investment Partners, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital last October in order to drive international expansion to the US and Singapore. However, we’ve not yet confirmed the company’s presence in those markets yet. Most likely Retty is still building business strategies so they can take on competitors such as Yelp or Singtel’s HungryGoWhere. Partnering with these Japanese restaurant portals that have online booking capabilities could be a great shortcut to monetization. Money can be made by driving user traffic businesses without the need to make agreements with every single establishment in the local restaurant market. In…

retty_gurunavi_ikyu_logo

Retty, a Tokyo-based startup providing social restaurant recommendations, has announced a partnership with three Japanese major restaurant guides and reservation sites: restaurant.ikyu.com (operated by Ikyu, TSE:2450), Gurunavi (TSE:2440), and Akiran.jp.

Retty users can find the best restaurants according to their social contacts. With the agreement users will gain instant access to book restaurants via the partnering services, with integration set to start on April 8th. The deal’s scope is far-reaching too, covering more than 600,000 restaurants in Japan.

Retty initially started its journey backed by CyberAgent Ventures back in November of 2010. The startup raised 100 million yen (or about 1 million dollars) from GREE Ventures, NTT Investment Partners, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital last October in order to drive international expansion to the US and Singapore. However, we’ve not yet confirmed the company’s presence in those markets yet. Most likely Retty is still building business strategies so they can take on competitors such as Yelp or Singtel’s HungryGoWhere.

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Still under development, and the new feature will go live on April 8th.

Partnering with these Japanese restaurant portals that have online booking capabilities could be a great shortcut to monetization. Money can be made by driving user traffic businesses without the need to make agreements with every single establishment in the local restaurant market.

In my view, Ikyu or Gurunavi are likely to take over the startup in the near future. Both companies are listed on the TSE stock market, have sound financial foundations, and are interested in launching restaurant-related information businesses in Asia and the rest of the world. But they are struggling to find new business models for further expansion and development.

Can a small startup help a Japanese convenience store giant promote itself abroad?

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Japanese convenience store chain Lawson has partnered with up-and-coming startup Tokyo Otaku Mode (TOM) to establish a special promotion page to increase the store’s brand awareness in Asia and the rest of the world. Lawson has more than 10,000 stores in Japan, but it also has presences in China, Indonesia, and Hawaii. With plans to penetrate South East Asian markets it is launching more than 50 stores in Thailand by the end of this year. In the Asia region, people seem to have a deep affinity for Japanese anime and comics, so the convenience store chain decided to ask Tokyo Otaku Mode (which has more than 11 million of such geeky fans on its Facebook page) to help out with its promotion campaign. On the promo page (located at otakumode.com/sp/lawson) there are many posts of certain characters introducing what you can buy at the convenience store. Fans can like the posts, which should give Lawson increased visibility even in regions where it doesn’t yet have a presence. In addition to 11 million likes on Facebook, the startup’s Otaku Camera app has seen 2.5 downloads in five months since its launch. With the funds raised from three major VC firms last month,…

tom_and_lawson

Japanese convenience store chain Lawson has partnered with up-and-coming startup Tokyo Otaku Mode (TOM) to establish a special promotion page to increase the store’s brand awareness in Asia and the rest of the world.

Lawson has more than 10,000 stores in Japan, but it also has presences in China, Indonesia, and Hawaii. With plans to penetrate South East Asian markets it is launching more than 50 stores in Thailand by the end of this year. In the Asia region, people seem to have a deep affinity for Japanese anime and comics, so the convenience store chain decided to ask Tokyo Otaku Mode (which has more than 11 million of such geeky fans on its Facebook page) to help out with its promotion campaign.

On the promo page (located at otakumode.com/sp/lawson) there are many posts of certain characters introducing what you can buy at the convenience store. Fans can like the posts, which should give Lawson increased visibility even in regions where it doesn’t yet have a presence.

In addition to 11 million likes on Facebook, the startup’s Otaku Camera app has seen 2.5 downloads in five months since its launch. With the funds raised from three major VC firms last month, the company is preparing to launch an e-commerce channel which could be its first significant revenue stream. But with partnerships such as this one with Lawson, the startup could also bring in some revenue by tying up with big Japanese companies struggling to get attention from global audiences.

To learn more about TOM, please see our exclusive feature interview from last month.

Yahoo Japan to bolster search results with NHN Japan’s Naver Matome

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Today Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) and NHN Japan held a joint press conference to announce that the two internet giants would be working together to integrate NHN’s Naver Matome curated content into Yahoo Japan’s search results. The intention is to bring a human element into Yahoo Japan’s search, thus creating a sort of hybrid search experience. For those of you not familiar with Naver Matome, which began back in 2009, my colleague Yukari gave a wonderful overview of the curated service earlier in the month as part of our ‘Japanese internet in depth’ series. Yahoo Japan will also set up a specifically designed search engine for curated Naver Matome results. That engine will also be deployed to Naver Matome in order to provide a better search experience. Work on this project will begin in April. As you can see in the chart below, Matome’s growth has staggering, currently with 41 million visitors a month and over 1.2 billion page views per month. It’s growth over the course of 2012, in terms of monthly visitors, has out-paced even Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, today’s deal ensures that the platform still has some growing left to do.

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Yahoo Japan president Manabu Miyasaka, NHN Japan president Akira Morikawa

Today Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) and NHN Japan held a joint press conference to announce that the two internet giants would be working together to integrate NHN’s Naver Matome curated content into Yahoo Japan’s search results. The intention is to bring a human element into Yahoo Japan’s search, thus creating a sort of hybrid search experience.

For those of you not familiar with Naver Matome, which began back in 2009, my colleague Yukari gave a wonderful overview of the curated service earlier in the month as part of our ‘Japanese internet in depth’ series.

Yahoo Japan will also set up a specifically designed search engine for curated Naver Matome results. That engine will also be deployed to Naver Matome in order to provide a better search experience. Work on this project will begin in April.

As you can see in the chart below, Matome’s growth has staggering, currently with 41 million visitors a month and over 1.2 billion page views per month. It’s growth over the course of 2012, in terms of monthly visitors, has out-paced even Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, today’s deal ensures that the platform still has some growing left to do.

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Monthly visitors of Naver Matome, Facebook and Twitter.
(comparison of November of 2011 and November of 2012, in unit of 1,000 visitors)

naver-matome-growth
Monthly pageviews of Naver Matome (in unit of 100 million pageviews)

Animation effects startup Cybernoids raises $557K for global expansion

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Cybernoids, a Tokyo-based startup developing two-dimensional animation technology, announced on Monday it has raised 52.4 million yen (approximately $557,000) from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Seibu Shinkin Capital, and visual-effects developer Qtec. The funds are to be used to intensifying the company’s business expansion overseas. The startup has developed a new image rendering technology called Live 2D, which makes it easier to add motions or expression changes to characters animated in 2D. The company’s CEO Tetsuya Nakajo explains the global market potential of their flagship technology: The overseas animation industry has no similar technology because they’ve been developing only 3-dimensional animation titles. Cybernoids was founded in July of 2006, and the Live 2D technology was chosen as one of the year’s finalists for Mitou, a bi-annual software engineering promotion program run by a governmental IT promotional agency of Japan. The company’s Flash-based technology helps smartphone game developers easily create animated character motion, and it has been deployed to more than 40 game titles including Konami’s virtual dating game for females, Tokimeki Restaurant. The company is exhibiting the latest version of its Live 2D technology at the Game Developers Conference 2013, which is currently underway in San Francisco. Check out the following video from…

cybernoids_logoCybernoids, a Tokyo-based startup developing two-dimensional animation technology, announced on Monday it has raised 52.4 million yen (approximately $557,000) from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Seibu Shinkin Capital, and visual-effects developer Qtec. The funds are to be used to intensifying the company’s business expansion overseas.

The startup has developed a new image rendering technology called Live 2D, which makes it easier to add motions or expression changes to characters animated in 2D. The company’s CEO Tetsuya Nakajo explains the global market potential of their flagship technology:

The overseas animation industry has no similar technology because they’ve been developing only 3-dimensional animation titles.

live2d_screenshot

Cybernoids was founded in July of 2006, and the Live 2D technology was chosen as one of the year’s finalists for Mitou, a bi-annual software engineering promotion program run by a governmental IT promotional agency of Japan. The company’s Flash-based technology helps smartphone game developers easily create animated character motion, and it has been deployed to more than 40 game titles including Konami’s virtual dating game for females, Tokimeki Restaurant.

The company is exhibiting the latest version of its Live 2D technology at the Game Developers Conference 2013, which is currently underway in San Francisco. Check out the following video from the folks at Diginfo News for more information on how the technology works.

Japanese auction price comparison site Aucfan approved for IPO in April

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Aucfan, a Tokyo-based startup featuring price comparisons and quotes for items from several auction sites, was approved to IPO on Friday and is expected to be listed on the TSE Mothers stock exchange, a market for emerging companies. Aucfan started out way back in September of 2000 as a part of Defacto Standard, a company known for operating Brandear, an online pawn shop and luxury second-hand e-commerce site. It was spun off in 2009. Aucfan curates price quotes from major auction sites including Yahoo Auction, Moba Oku (Mobile Auction by DeNA), Rakuten Auction, and even some international sites such as eBay and Taobao. The service suggests the best bidding price for the item that you want, which is a handy feature for shoppers on the lookout for the best deals. Aucfan has acquired more than 240,000 users (as of September of 2012), and approximately 30,000 of them subscribe to premium services. Most paid users are probably avid auction traders who need to be conscious about prices, as many of them can get revenue from taking advantage of price gaps, buying items at an auction site and selling them at another one. The company’s major shareholders include the company’s founder Shuichi…

aucfan_logoAucfan, a Tokyo-based startup featuring price comparisons and quotes for items from several auction sites, was approved to IPO on Friday and is expected to be listed on the TSE Mothers stock exchange, a market for emerging companies.

Aucfan started out way back in September of 2000 as a part of Defacto Standard, a company known for operating Brandear, an online pawn shop and luxury second-hand e-commerce site. It was spun off in 2009.

Aucfan curates price quotes from major auction sites including Yahoo Auction, Moba Oku (Mobile Auction by DeNA), Rakuten Auction, and even some international sites such as eBay and Taobao. The service suggests the best bidding price for the item that you want, which is a handy feature for shoppers on the lookout for the best deals. Aucfan has acquired more than 240,000 users (as of September of 2012), and approximately 30,000 of them subscribe to premium services. Most paid users are probably avid auction traders who need to be conscious about prices, as many of them can get revenue from taking advantage of price gaps, buying items at an auction site and selling them at another one.

The company’s major shareholders include the company’s founder Shuichi Takenaga, Globis Capital Partners, Digital Garage, NetPrice.com, Gree, and Kyoto University’s startup fund. In the last fiscal period ending September of 2012, they achieved about 620 million yen ($6.5million) in net sales with 201 million yen ($2.1million) in operating income.

aucfan_screenshot