THE BRIDGE

Business

Sega Networks invests in and partners with Japanese mobile app developer MyNet

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Tokyo-based mobile game developer MyNet recently announced it has raised an undisclosed sum of investment from Japanese gaming giant Sega Networks. The two companies say they will join forces to develop more gaming apps. Since its launch back in July of 2006, MyNet had been providing customer relationship management solutions to restaurants and retailers. However, they sold their CRM solutions to Yahoo Japan and changed their focus to social games development early last year. Their recent mobile game Emblem of Falkyrie has been performing well these days, especially in the Asia region. Coinciding with this announcement, MyNet has introduced an iOS version of this game. Sega Networks is a subsidiary of Sega Sammy Group, known for having developed the popular mobile puzzle RPG Puyo Puyo Quest.

seganetworks-mynet_logos

Tokyo-based mobile game developer MyNet recently announced it has raised an undisclosed sum of investment from Japanese gaming giant Sega Networks. The two companies say they will join forces to develop more gaming apps.

Since its launch back in July of 2006, MyNet had been providing customer relationship management solutions to restaurants and retailers. However, they sold their CRM solutions to Yahoo Japan and changed their focus to social games development early last year. Their recent mobile game Emblem of Falkyrie has been performing well these days, especially in the Asia region. Coinciding with this announcement, MyNet has introduced an iOS version of this game.

Sega Networks is a subsidiary of Sega Sammy Group, known for having developed the popular mobile puzzle RPG Puyo Puyo Quest.

Emblem of Falkyrie
Emblem of Falkyrie

Japanese entertainment company partners with Line to promote its artists

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Avex Entertainment Inc. [1], a music and video production company based in Tokyo, has announced a partnership with Line Corporation based around mobile content related to Avex’s artists, which include music superstar Ayumi Hamasaki. Avex has already provided Line stamps for Hamasaki (see below) and other artists, and they also create rooms in Line Play where fans can interact. The new partnership will see Avex continue to use Line and its many services as a platform, ostensibly in a more formalized manner moving forward. It will be interesting to see how many more entertainment companies follow suit. Avex Group via Venture Now A subsidiary of Avex Group.  ↩

Avex Entertainment Inc. [1], a music and video production company based in Tokyo, has announced a partnership with Line Corporation based around mobile content related to Avex’s artists, which include music superstar Ayumi Hamasaki. Avex has already provided Line stamps for Hamasaki (see below) and other artists, and they also create rooms in Line Play where fans can interact.

The new partnership will see Avex continue to use Line and its many services as a platform, ostensibly in a more formalized manner moving forward. It will be interesting to see how many more entertainment companies follow suit.

Avex Group via Venture Now

ayumi-hamasaki-stamps


  1. A subsidiary of Avex Group.  ↩

Japanese deli delivery service officially launches after closed beta period

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Back in December we told you about delivery service for Japanese deli foods called ‘Office Okan’, which at that time was kicking off in closed beta for corporate customers. After that initial period, the company announced the service’s official release yesterday, serving Tokyo’s Shibuya district in 2014, and gradually expanding beyond that in the future. More details can be found on our Japanese site.

office-okan

Back in December we told you about delivery service for Japanese deli foods called ‘Office Okan’, which at that time was kicking off in closed beta for corporate customers. After that initial period, the company announced the service’s official release yesterday, serving Tokyo’s Shibuya district in 2014, and gradually expanding beyond that in the future.

More details can be found on our Japanese site.

Snaptee’s new partner program lets third party apps create custom apparel

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Hong Kong-based Snaptee, a startup that lets you to design and sell custom apparel via its mobile app, has just announced an new partnership program enabling third-party app’s to place Snaptee orders. And the first application to take advantage of this opportunity will be Japan’s Manga Camera app, a popular service that transforms your picture into manga-style art. In their announcement, Snaptee CEO WaiLun Hong remarked on the tie-up: We are big fans of Manga Camera and were thrilled when they recognized this partnership as a unique opportunity to tap into a new revenue stream and extend their users’ connection to their brand. Now, with a tap of a button, all Manga Camera comics can be taken by their creators into the Snaptee app and turned into wearable art. I’ve not yet used Snaptee, but in the past I have made a T-shirt with a picture of my own face on it, looking upwards, giving myself a thumbs-up [1]. So I like the creative potential behind a platform like Snaptee, and that potential will only get better as they add more apps to their list of partners, tapping into the user bases of other services, and giving those apps a…

partners-flow-press

Hong Kong-based Snaptee, a startup that lets you to design and sell custom apparel via its mobile app, has just announced an new partnership program enabling third-party app’s to place Snaptee orders. And the first application to take advantage of this opportunity will be Japan’s Manga Camera app, a popular service that transforms your picture into manga-style art.

In their announcement, Snaptee CEO WaiLun Hong remarked on the tie-up:

We are big fans of Manga Camera and were thrilled when they recognized this partnership as a unique opportunity to tap into a new revenue stream and extend their users’ connection to their brand. Now, with a tap of a button, all Manga Camera comics can be taken by their creators into the Snaptee app and turned into wearable art.

I’ve not yet used Snaptee, but in the past I have made a T-shirt with a picture of my own face on it, looking upwards, giving myself a thumbs-up [1]. So I like the creative potential behind a platform like Snaptee, and that potential will only get better as they add more apps to their list of partners, tapping into the user bases of other services, and giving those apps a new means of monetizing.

Snaptee also announced today that their platform has surpassed the 1 million designs milestone. While the company declined to tell us how many orders they’ve shipped, we’re told that about half of the designs come from the US, followed by China and Japan. Interestingly, Japan has about three times the conversion rate as the US, reflecting the country’s relative comfort with buying on mobile.

Snaptee-s-1-Million-Designs


  1. Everyone needs a shirt like this, in my opinion.  ↩

Japanese fashion commerce site Zozotown begins same day delivery service

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Start Today, the Japanese company that operates internet fashion commerce site Zozotown, announced today that it will be able to handle same-day deliveries for items ordered before 9am in the greater Tokyo area, with deliveries arriving that evening. Orders between 9am and 9pm will come on the following morning, and orders after 9pm will arrive the following evening. On a related note, the company’s new fashion coordination app, Wear (wear.jp), which recently surpassed a million downloads, has unveiled a series of fun commercials this past week. You can check them out in their entirety over on the Wear YouTube channel. Here’s one of them below:

Start Today, the Japanese company that operates internet fashion commerce site Zozotown, announced today that it will be able to handle same-day deliveries for items ordered before 9am in the greater Tokyo area, with deliveries arriving that evening. Orders between 9am and 9pm will come on the following morning, and orders after 9pm will arrive the following evening.

On a related note, the company’s new fashion coordination app, Wear (wear.jp), which recently surpassed a million downloads, has unveiled a series of fun commercials this past week. You can check them out in their entirety over on the Wear YouTube channel. Here’s one of them below:

Japanese travel log platform raises funds Incubate Fund, Recruit

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See the original article in Japanese Wunderlust, the startup behind the travel log platform Compathy, has allocated shares to Incubate Fund and Recruit. The amount of shares was not disclosed, but it expected that Companthy has raised tens of millions of yen (or hundreds of thousands of dollars). Compathy lets users upload their travel photos to a page (or pages) telling their travel story. They can easily create the online album pages by sorting uploaded photos based location and date information, arranging them in chronological order. The service was released at the end of last year, and within in three months about 1200 users have posted travel records, and 8,000 comments have been posted on the site. The team will use the new funds for app development. Kentaro Horie, the CEO of Wunderlust, told us: After we released the service, we found out some users felt awkward about uploading their photos. One reason for this is that many users couldn’t choose the best photos out of so many shots. Another reason is that because the average quality of photos posted by travelers is quite high, many other users lack confidence and feel awkward sharing in public. Horie says that the…

compathyトップページ01

See the original article in Japanese

Wunderlust, the startup behind the travel log platform Compathy, has allocated shares to Incubate Fund and Recruit. The amount of shares was not disclosed, but it expected that Companthy has raised tens of millions of yen (or hundreds of thousands of dollars).

Compathy lets users upload their travel photos to a page (or pages) telling their travel story. They can easily create the online album pages by sorting uploaded photos based location and date information, arranging them in chronological order. The service was released at the end of last year, and within in three months about 1200 users have posted travel records, and 8,000 comments have been posted on the site.

compathy 口コミ

The team will use the new funds for app development. Kentaro Horie, the CEO of Wunderlust, told us:

After we released the service, we found out some users felt awkward about uploading their photos. One reason for this is that many users couldn’t choose the best photos out of so many shots. Another reason is that because the average quality of photos posted by travelers is quite high, many other users lack confidence and feel awkward sharing in public.

Horie says that the team is going to develop an app that will try to break such a psychological barrier, thus increasing the amount of mobile users.

We aim to make it easier to upload photos from mobile devices, and we want to let users to apply enhancing effects to photos in the app. By overcoming this psychological barrier, we can motivate users to share travel records and add more comments about travel destinations.

They plan to develop an iOS app, with a launch planned for this summer. Compathy is also starting a marketing campaign by tying up with Airbnb Japan, offering a discount in Airbnb fees for users who register for Compahy before the end of May. The startup is willing to actively collaborate with other travel-related services like this in the future.

key_airbnb

Japan’s Tabelog has no problems feeding paid memberships to users

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Japan’s Kakaku.com, the company that operates food review portal Tabelog, has announced that its premium membership (which costs 315 yen per month [1]) has now reached 350,000 subscribers as of March 16. The last time we checked in on these figures was last August, when it had 250,000 members. So we can say that growth since that time has been very impressive, especially in the face of challenges from new startups in the food space here in Japan. Tabelog’s premium service offers high discount coupons (ranging from 20% to 100% off), and mobile apps with advanced sorting/filtering preferences. This premium service began back in September of 2010. According to Kakaku.com, there are over 760,000 restaurants currently registered on Tabelog, with 5 million reviews, and 53 million monthly users split (almost evenly) among PC and smartphones. Or just over $3.  ↩

Japan’s Kakaku.com, the company that operates food review portal Tabelog, has announced that its premium membership (which costs 315 yen per month [1]) has now reached 350,000 subscribers as of March 16. The last time we checked in on these figures was last August, when it had 250,000 members. So we can say that growth since that time has been very impressive, especially in the face of challenges from new startups in the food space here in Japan.

Tabelog’s premium service offers high discount coupons (ranging from 20% to 100% off), and mobile apps with advanced sorting/filtering preferences. This premium service began back in September of 2010.

According to Kakaku.com, there are over 760,000 restaurants currently registered on Tabelog, with 5 million reviews, and 53 million monthly users split (almost evenly) among PC and smartphones.

tabelog-paid-memberships


  1. Or just over $3.  ↩

Au’s SmartPass now has 10M paid subscribers in Japan

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KDDI has announced that its au SmartPass a-la-carte app service has surpassed 10 million paid subscribers (as of March 17th), which is double its total subscriber base from around this time a year ago. It initially launched two years back in March of 2012. The monthly subscription service charges a fee of 390 yen per month, giving users access to hundreds of mobile applications, as well as other services like coupons, storage, security, and backup. KDDI/au had a total mobile subscriber base of about 40 million users in total in Japan in February. Via BCN

KDDI has announced that its au SmartPass a-la-carte app service has surpassed 10 million paid subscribers (as of March 17th), which is double its total subscriber base from around this time a year ago. It initially launched two years back in March of 2012. The monthly subscription service charges a fee of 390 yen per month, giving users access to hundreds of mobile applications, as well as other services like coupons, storage, security, and backup.

KDDI/au had a total mobile subscriber base of about 40 million users in total in Japan in February.

Via BCN

Indonesia’s Touchten Games closes Series B funding from Japanese investors

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Based on the original article in Japanese Touchten Games is a Jakarta-based game studio which raised Series B financing from Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures back in November 2013. And the games startup most recently announced that it has completed its Series B round, by raising funds from Japanese animation studio Tms Entertainment, Singapore’s UOB Venture Management, and Indonesian incubator Ideosource. The amount(s) of funds were not disclosed. Early this year, Tms Entertainment invested in Blina, an Indonesian E-commerce site for baby products. We hope to take a more detailed look at Tms’s involvement with Indonesian startups in the near future. Touchten, a startup that just celebrated its fifth year in business this March, is now focusing on developing its online-to-offline Touchten Platform (see above). Incorporating a gamification approach, the launch of this platform actually helped a lot as they were trying to complete their Series B round. On this platform, users can acquire points based on the result of the games they played. Those points can be exchanged for items at partnering retail stores, who then also benefit when those users enter the shops. Touchten Platform will be implemented in a new Touchten game to be released this month for the…

touchten-platform_screenshot

Based on the original article in Japanese

Touchten Games is a Jakarta-based game studio which raised Series B financing from Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures back in November 2013. And the games startup most recently announced that it has completed its Series B round, by raising funds from Japanese animation studio Tms Entertainment, Singapore’s UOB Venture Management, and Indonesian incubator Ideosource. The amount(s) of funds were not disclosed.

Early this year, Tms Entertainment invested in Blina, an Indonesian E-commerce site for baby products. We hope to take a more detailed look at Tms’s involvement with Indonesian startups in the near future.

Touchten, a startup that just celebrated its fifth year in business this March, is now focusing on developing its online-to-offline Touchten Platform (see above). Incorporating a gamification approach, the launch of this platform actually helped a lot as they were trying to complete their Series B round.

On this platform, users can acquire points based on the result of the games they played. Those points can be exchanged for items at partnering retail stores, who then also benefit when those users enter the shops.

Touchten Platform will be implemented in a new Touchten game to be released this month for the Indonesian market. We understand that the acquired points can be used in some of Indonesia’s biggest convenience stores, certain restaurants, karaoke cafes, or movie theaters. They plan to expand the platform in Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam by the end of this year, and are also now looking for potential partner companies in the Philippines and Malaysia.

Home design marketplace Suvaco raises $1.2 million

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Tokyo-based Suvaco, a home design marketplace startup, announced yesterday that it has raised $120 million yen (or about $1.18 million) from Fuji Startup Ventures and Mobile Internet Capital. [1] Since their launch back in July, Suvaco has been providing a market place focused on home designs, where you can easily find interior or exterior designers by browsing their portfolio photos. Through a partnership with 200 home construction companies, to date the marketplace has acquired more than 8,000 examples of home renovation. Fuji Startup Ventures’s sister company is media entity Fusosha. Coinciding with these funds, Suvaco has partnered with this publishing company to jointly launch a website that lists home renovation examples and connects potential customers with partnering construction companies. Suvaco will charge the construction companies on a monthly or sales performance basis. Fuji Startup Ventures is the investment arm of Japan’s leading private broadcaster Fuji TV. Mobile Internet Capital is an investment firm founded by former Intel Japan CEO Ikuo Nishioka. ↩

suvaco_featuredimage

Tokyo-based Suvaco, a home design marketplace startup, announced yesterday that it has raised $120 million yen (or about $1.18 million) from Fuji Startup Ventures and Mobile Internet Capital. [1]

Since their launch back in July, Suvaco has been providing a market place focused on home designs, where you can easily find interior or exterior designers by browsing their portfolio photos. Through a partnership with 200 home construction companies, to date the marketplace has acquired more than 8,000 examples of home renovation.

Fuji Startup Ventures’s sister company is media entity Fusosha. Coinciding with these funds, Suvaco has partnered with this publishing company to jointly launch a website that lists home renovation examples and connects potential customers with partnering construction companies. Suvaco will charge the construction companies on a monthly or sales performance basis.


  1. Fuji Startup Ventures is the investment arm of Japan’s leading private broadcaster Fuji TV. Mobile Internet Capital is an investment firm founded by former Intel Japan CEO Ikuo Nishioka.