THE BRIDGE

Mobile

Japan’s Joooy, mobile app for soccer fans, helps players and teams better engage

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup 7th heaven&Co. officially released a new mobile app for fans of Japanese League (J. League) soccer teams called Joooy (pronounced simply ‘Joy’). The app is available for iOS for free on the iTunes App Store. Joooy’s features include news curated from over 3,000 media sources in Japan specialized for the teams you support, chat rooms where people who are fans of the same teams can communicate, and and a friend request system to connect fans to one another. Until now, team supporters typically would gather at bars or diners near the stadiums in real life while they were dispersed and disconnected from each other online because their communication channel is not centralized but rather varied, such as Facebook or popular mobile chat app Line. By constructing Joooy as a place where the opinions of Japanese soccer fans and those of actual team managers can interact, 7th heaven&Co. wants to be the de facto presence in the field. By getting involved with Japan’s soccer clubs, we can also expect there will be interaction between participating players and fans in the future. 7th heaven&Co. was co-founded by CEO Hiroki Tenjo and managing director Yoshitaka…

joooy_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup 7th heaven&Co. officially released a new mobile app for fans of Japanese League (J. League) soccer teams called Joooy (pronounced simply ‘Joy’). The app is available for iOS for free on the iTunes App Store.

Joooy’s features include news curated from over 3,000 media sources in Japan specialized for the teams you support, chat rooms where people who are fans of the same teams can communicate, and and a friend request system to connect fans to one another.

Until now, team supporters typically would gather at bars or diners near the stadiums in real life while they were dispersed and disconnected from each other online because their communication channel is not centralized but rather varied, such as Facebook or popular mobile chat app Line. By constructing Joooy as a place where the opinions of Japanese soccer fans and those of actual team managers can interact, 7th heaven&Co. wants to be the de facto presence in the field. By getting involved with Japan’s soccer clubs, we can also expect there will be interaction between participating players and fans in the future.

joooy_snapshots

7th heaven&Co. was co-founded by CEO Hiroki Tenjo and managing director Yoshitaka Nomoto.

Tenjo played soccer from elementary school through high school with dreams of playing professionally in Japan. After graduating from high school, he then decided he wanted to be a musician and made his debut as the frontman of a band. His band toured in China and Taiwan, even managing to draw a crowd of 40,000 in Taiwan as one of the most popular punk bands from Japan. Nomoto, who also has participated in Japan’s inter‐high school competition as a soccer player, has been a radio DJ, and has also been involved in producing TV shows and events. Most recently he has been involved in planning the establishment of Ponpare, a group-buying site by Japanese internet company Recruit.

What the two have in common is their experience as young boys engrossed in soccer, and the hope to add even more excitement to the Japanese pro soccer league.

Hiroki Tenjo explains in a press release:

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Hiroki Tenjo

With the Premier League and other leagues that open at the same time as the J. League, the business scale and level of excitement that vastly exceeds the J. League is something that is often boasted about. We think that this fact isn’t derived just from the culture gap or the market potential for soccer business between the the UK, the Mecca of soccer, and Japan. We think that the cause of this is the weak relations between supporters and club teams (indirectly localized marketing). […] We’ve created a place where, based on the state of soccer in Japan, clubs and supporters can get connected and form closer bonds, and fans can openly express their feelings and thoughts about soccer. We’ve begun offering our ‘lifestyle communication app’ for fans with our future mission to build foundation of regional support through soccer.

Joooy is being offered as a free app, however they are currently considering ten or more different monetizations methods, including ad placement on each different club’s news feed. As for hardcore fans, touring from stadium to stadium in support of your team can be costly, but it’s possible that, through Joooy, something like a ‘sharing economy service’ between fans could be created.

7th heaven&Co. is aiming to have two million app downloads for Joooy within a year from now.

Translated by Connor Kirk

NES cartridge-like device Picocassette to offer novel gaming experiences on mobile

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See the original story in Japanese. Surely there are more than a few men in their 30s whose hearts won’t skip three beats upon espying this device. Its design reminds one of the Nintendo NES, the home video game released by the Japanese game maker in July of 1983. However, this is a new smartphone-use game device called Picocasette, jointly developed by Japan’s Sirok and U.S.-incorporated Beatrobo. One can play the game inside by inserting the device into the earphone plug of a smartphone. Tokyo-based Sirok is in charge of app development while Beatrobo of San Francisco, with its wholly-owned subsidiary in Japan, is charged with hardware development. Apart from this, Beatrobo also develops and sells an instant media gadget using the earphone plug called PlugAir, which adopts the same technologies as those in Picocassette. See also: Beatrobo raises $1.1M, has ambitions to replace the CD The two firms have tied up with video game developers who had created famous titles in the past and will provide such games through the Picocassette device. Sirok will engage in development of Picocassette as a new challenge, although it is to continue app developments for businesses as its core business. Meanwhile Beatrobo aims…

picocasette_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Surely there are more than a few men in their 30s whose hearts won’t skip three beats upon espying this device. Its design reminds one of the Nintendo NES, the home video game released by the Japanese game maker in July of 1983.

However, this is a new smartphone-use game device called Picocasette, jointly developed by Japan’s Sirok and U.S.-incorporated Beatrobo. One can play the game inside by inserting the device into the earphone plug of a smartphone.

Tokyo-based Sirok is in charge of app development while Beatrobo of San Francisco, with its wholly-owned subsidiary in Japan, is charged with hardware development. Apart from this, Beatrobo also develops and sells an instant media gadget using the earphone plug called PlugAir, which adopts the same technologies as those in Picocassette.

See also:

The two firms have tied up with video game developers who had created famous titles in the past and will provide such games through the Picocassette device. Sirok will engage in development of Picocassette as a new challenge, although it is to continue app developments for businesses as its core business. Meanwhile Beatrobo aims to nurture this into its mainline business.

hiroshi-asaeda-takahiro-ishiyama
From the left: Beatrobo CEO Hiroshi Asaeda, Sirok CCO Takahiro Ishiyama

Sirok CCO Takahiro Ishiyama comments:

Once license management of a game has been permitted, Sirok optimizes the property for playing with smartphones. By adopting touch operation or swiping, we can fine tune the product offerings from the game feature perspective. Development of original games is also planned for the future.

While some “old favorite” game remakes for smartphones tend to be avoided by game geeks due to differences in the operation feel, their optimization may reduce mismatches in platform porting.

Beatrobo CEO Hiroshi Asaeda outlines the vision of Picocassette:

To provide games as smartphone apps, we need to have users search them from among a million titles on App Store or Google Play. Being limited to this market alone is too restrictive. Picocassette enables game sales at a variety of locations. It can also be used as a premium for making a certain purchase so the purchasers for play it on a trial basis. I foresee future use of Picocassette as a sales promotion tool too.

Asaeda added that it would be interesting if games within Picocassette can be sold at events like Comiket (“flea markets” for comics buffs in Japan); it could possibly be handled like CD-Rs of yore.

Today, when just a smartphone and apps are needed to play games, the Picocassette approach of aiming to develop a game software device may appear irrational. Yet, the goal set by Asaeda and Ishiyama appears to be the redesign of the “game purchase” experience itself. Godspeed!

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Open8, female-targeted mobile video ad network, secures $6.6 million

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This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based Open8, the Japanese startup behind a women-targeted video ad network for smartphone users called Videotap, announced on Tuesday that it has fundraised about 800 million yen (about $6.6 million) from Jafco, TBS Innovation Partners, iStyle and Excite Japan. [1] The exact details of the funding were not disclosed but the company wants to use the latest funds to strengthen human resources. See also: 3 Japanese internet companies to launch mobile video ad network targeting females Open8 is an ad network platform specifically focused on the F1 layer in Japan, women aged from 25 to 34, now reaching 40 million unique users on a monthly basis, leveraging existing user bases from iStyle and Excite Japan. Coinciding with the latest funding, the company announced that it is developing new businesses based on video ads, mail-order and video media in association with Tokyo Broadcasting System, the parent company of TBS Innovation Partners. As the first attempt at these efforts, Open8 is trying to integrate their mobile video ad platform with TV spot commercials. In addition, Open8 will launch a native video ad scheme on @Cosme and Women Excite in late November. @Cosme…

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This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Open8, the Japanese startup behind a women-targeted video ad network for smartphone users called Videotap, announced on Tuesday that it has fundraised about 800 million yen (about $6.6 million) from Jafco, TBS Innovation Partners, iStyle and Excite Japan. [1] The exact details of the funding were not disclosed but the company wants to use the latest funds to strengthen human resources.

See also:

Open8 is an ad network platform specifically focused on the F1 layer in Japan, women aged from 25 to 34, now reaching 40 million unique users on a monthly basis, leveraging existing user bases from iStyle and Excite Japan.

Coinciding with the latest funding, the company announced that it is developing new businesses based on video ads, mail-order and video media in association with Tokyo Broadcasting System, the parent company of TBS Innovation Partners. As the first attempt at these efforts, Open8 is trying to integrate their mobile video ad platform with TV spot commercials.

In addition, Open8 will launch a native video ad scheme on @Cosme and Women Excite in late November. @Cosme is a Japan’s leading cosmetic portal site by iStyle while Woman Excite is a women-focused portal site by Excite Japan. Based on the scheme of these partnerships, Open8 will explore partnerships with other online media sites.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy


  1. Jafco is a leading Japanese VC firm. TBS Innovation Partners is the investment arm of Tokyo Broadcasting System.

Meet Pocket Programming, mobile app by Japanese duo for budding programming learners

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese app developer duo Ffab0 (pronounced “fab zero”) recently launched the English edition of a mobile learning app focused on Ruby and Ruby on Rails, called Pocket Programming. Prior to this, the team released the Japanese version of the app in late August. I had a chance to speak with Keisuke Hoshino and Yuto Kitakuni, the duo behind the app, who are currently working based out of Berlin for three months from early October. Pocket Programing is an Android app designed for budding learners of Ruby and Ruby on Rails. For users, the app will give you ten questions in the four-choice-quiz format every day while the app has a reservoir of questions for four weeks. It will tell you a percentage of correct answers every day and allow you to review what was wrong with supplemental explanation. According to Kitakuni, the app is designed for people who start feeling programming is enjoyable after learning through use of tutorial video clips. So it seems like a supplemental method for learning besides other main learning materials. Carefully designed for budding learners This app is focused on budding learners of Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Hoshino…

pocketprogramming01

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese app developer duo Ffab0 (pronounced “fab zero”) recently launched the English edition of a mobile learning app focused on Ruby and Ruby on Rails, called Pocket Programming. Prior to this, the team released the Japanese version of the app in late August.

I had a chance to speak with Keisuke Hoshino and Yuto Kitakuni, the duo behind the app, who are currently working based out of Berlin for three months from early October.

Pocket Programing is an Android app designed for budding learners of Ruby and Ruby on Rails. For users, the app will give you ten questions in the four-choice-quiz format every day while the app has a reservoir of questions for four weeks. It will tell you a percentage of correct answers every day and allow you to review what was wrong with supplemental explanation.

According to Kitakuni, the app is designed for people who start feeling programming is enjoyable after learning through use of tutorial video clips. So it seems like a supplemental method for learning besides other main learning materials.

Carefully designed for budding learners

This app is focused on budding learners of Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Hoshino and Kitakuni told The Bridge why they are focused on targeting learners.

Hoshino explained:

Both of us have learned programming from scratch so we understand how beginners feel. Two or three technical terms in English are usually popped up to explain a single thing, such as instances and objects. These occasionally makes us confused and prevent us from grabbing the essence of the meaning. In addition, after the tutorial, we may not understand how to solve the problem when our own programming code exhibits an error.

Kitakuni added:

Kitakuni: From my experience giving a lecture at a cram school, teachers have to teach anything while thinking about what is being looked for. But in the IT engineering industry, many teachers want to use difficult terms, which makes a high obstacle for beginners. Having a beginner’s perspective in our mind, we have developed this app so that it can motivate them to learn more.

Considering how to allow users to learn leveraging pockets of time and help them to review their learning results while even standing, the duo has developed the mobile app in the four-choice-quiz format.

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Partnerships with other learning platforms

With the launch of the English edition, the team is aiming to expand the service globally. In response to our question about their geographical focus in marketing, Kitakuni told us that they have no specific geographical focus and plan the future strategy after seeing how users respond.

I think that online programming learning tools are fiercely competitive on the global market rather than the Japanese market. However, in view of focus on post-tutorial review and a quiz-format app for Ruby and Ruby on Rails, the Pocket Programming app may earn a unique
position.

They actually received partnership inquiries from teams developing learning tools for other programming languages. So they want to explore partnerships with other learning tools in other styles or for other programming languages.

ffab0-yuto-kitakuni-keisuke-hoshino
From the left: Ffab0’s Yuto Kitakuni (in charge of design) and Keisuke Hoshino (in charge of programming)

The app is still available on Android because of global targeting. However, they are planning to develop an iOS version for the Japanese and US markets. Furthermore, in view of many learners starting with mobile app programming, the team is expanding its language scope to Swift and Java as well.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Yappli drag-and-drop tool for building mobile apps snags $2.7 million funding

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Fastmedia, the Japanese startup that provides a smartphone app development platform called Yappli, announced today that it has fundraised 330 million yen ($2.7 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Salesforce, YJ Capital, and DeNA co-founder Shogo Kawada. [1] Coinciding with the funds, Fastmedia announced that Kawada and Takao Ozawa, head of Shopping Company at Yahoo Japan, have joined the company’s advisory board. The Yappli platform is designed for non-engineers such as marketing representatives who typically have no programming skills, allowing them to develop and maintain a mobile app for iOS or Android by choosing templates, functions, and design components via drag-and-drop operations. Users can also ask Yappli to submit their app to the app store for review. The app development platform supports a series of features for mobile apps, such as normal and geo-based push notifications, distributing online coupons, and other features which marketing representative typically want for mobile apps. Fastmedia CEO Yasufumi Ihara told The Bridge that the company has acquired more than 5,000 corporate users including about 30 major brands. From a business category perspective, the platform is the most popular in the apparel industry, followed by maker companies distributing their catalog…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Fastmedia, the Japanese startup that provides a smartphone app development platform called Yappli, announced today that it has fundraised 330 million yen ($2.7 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Salesforce, YJ Capital, and DeNA co-founder Shogo Kawada. [1] Coinciding with the funds, Fastmedia announced that Kawada and Takao Ozawa, head of Shopping Company at Yahoo Japan, have joined the company’s advisory board.

The Yappli platform is designed for non-engineers such as marketing representatives who typically have no programming skills, allowing them to develop and maintain a mobile app for iOS or Android by choosing templates, functions, and design components via drag-and-drop operations. Users can also ask Yappli to submit their app to the app store for review.

The app development platform supports a series of features for mobile apps, such as normal and geo-based push notifications, distributing online coupons, and other features which marketing representative typically want for mobile apps. Fastmedia CEO Yasufumi Ihara told The Bridge that the company has acquired more than 5,000 corporate users including about 30 major brands. From a business category perspective, the platform is the most popular in the apparel industry, followed by maker companies distributing their catalog or online content to customers.

yappli-apps-_screenshots

Fastmedia’s business model takes a build-up approach, which is easier to make a solid revenue stream but also easier to see their ceiling of sales. To address this issue, Ihara is expecting sales from a revenue-share model that started in April, a stream from in-app purchases via their users’ apps developed on the Yappli platform.

For example, looking at the conversion rate of premium video content on a mobile app provided by Tokyo-based private broadcaster TBS, it has been hitting a high number of 10% despite the fact that similar services provided in the feature phone era was as little as 1%.

Fastmedia has introduced a revenue sharing model for content holders, where the company secures the sales from selling premium content through these holders’ mobile apps while the company undertakes the initial development of these apps for reasonable cost. Hence, the more premium content providers the company can attract, the more revenue will be generated and contributed to the growth of the company.

Fastmedia’s competitors include Strikingly, however, it seems that many users recognize the ease of use in the Yappli platform because of better fitting local market needs. With all this in mind, the company plans to strengthen user support using the latest funds.

fastmedia-executive-team
From the left: Masafumi Sano (managing director), Yasufumi Ihara (CEO), Masumi Kuroda (managing director)

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson


  1. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan.

Mobile rewards startup Yoyo Holdings partners with Philippines’ largest telco PLDT/Smart

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See the original story in Japanese. Yoyo Holdings, the startup behind PopSlide, a rewards platform for smartphone users in Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, recently partnered with Voyager Innovations (hereafter called Voyager), a subsidiary of Philippine Communications giant PLDT/Smart, and started offering Popslide’s service geared toward users of Voyager’s free internet service, SafeZone. In partnership with 19 major brands like Zalora, Skyscanner, Philippine Airlines , SafeZone offers free mobile internet service in exchange for using these brands’ online services. In countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Nigeria, free mobile internet connection services are being offered as part of service promotions from Facebook, Google, and others, but SafeZone, in emulation of these concepts, has made it possible for multiple brands to offer connection service over a shared platform led by the telecom company. See also: Telkomsel and Google Bring Free Mobile Internet to Indonesia (Tech in Asia) Facebook’s Internet.org app brings free mobile internet to the Philippines (Tech in Asia) Airtel, Google give customers free internet service (Vanguard) Through PopSlides participation with SafeZone, SafeZone users in the Philippines who have accumulated reward points on PopSlide by seeing ads displayed on their lock screen, will be able to easily use those points…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Yoyo Holdings, the startup behind PopSlide, a rewards platform for smartphone users in Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, recently partnered with Voyager Innovations (hereafter called Voyager), a subsidiary of Philippine Communications giant PLDT/Smart, and started offering Popslide’s service geared toward users of Voyager’s free internet service, SafeZone.

In partnership with 19 major brands like Zalora, Skyscanner, Philippine Airlines , SafeZone offers free mobile internet service in exchange for using these brands’ online services. In countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Nigeria, free mobile internet connection services are being offered as part of service promotions from Facebook, Google, and others, but SafeZone, in emulation of these concepts, has made it possible for multiple brands to offer connection service over a shared platform led by the telecom company.

See also:

Through PopSlides participation with SafeZone, SafeZone users in the Philippines who have accumulated reward points on PopSlide by seeing ads displayed on their lock screen, will be able to easily use those points to enjoy free mobile internet service. Currently there are 800,000 PopSlide users in the Southeast Asia region, but with the development of this partnership, they can expect an influx of some percentage of the Philippines 2 million SafeZone users to begin using the PopSlide service.

Yoyo Holdings co-founder and CEO Yosuke Fukada commented on the partnership with SafeZone.

Both PopSlide and SafeZone(or YOYO and Voyager) have the same vision of inspiring progress in society by providing free access to the internet through its products and partners. I’m sure that this partnership will foster more impactful collaborations through the union of business and technology.

I am so glad to be able to start providing bigger opportunities in the Philippines through our partnership with SafeZone. This is just the beginning. I believe that this is just our first step in creating disruptive innovations in user experience across the region.

Voyager COO Benje Fernandez also commented on the new partnership.

With SafeZone, brands have the opportunity to be ever-present in the lives of users through a device they always carry with them wherever they go.” said Benjie Fernandez, COO of Voyager Innovations Inc.

Our latest partnership with PopSlide is inline with our vision of working with global startups to offer the complete digital lifestyle to the Filipino for free. Now PopSlide users can be rewarded with no data charges.

As for Yoyo Holdings, surely they will be working overtime with the increase in recognition of their service by partnering with the biggest local telco. In an interview with Fukada in May of this year, it was made clear that together, there are 1,000,000 users of Popslide and Candy, a service for getting points that can be exchanged for telephone charges, in southeast Asia, and that expansion into the Indian market will be within the year.

Translated by Connor Kirk
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

Mobile shoe fitting and ordering app Cinderella Shoes wins 8th KDDI Mugen Labo Demo Day

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See the original story in Japanese. On July 14th at Shibuya Hikarie in Tokyo, Japan’s leading telco, KDDI (TSE:9433) held a Demo Day event for the 8th batch of the KDDI Mugen Labo incubation program. In continuing with the program’s format, partnered businesses offered mentoring and support for participating startups over the three-month incubation period. The audience choice award as well as the grand prize went to Cinderella, the company behind the app Cinderella Shoes. The following is a summary of the participating startups’ pitches that were given. (The title of each section consists of the service’s name and the name of the speaker. The company’s name, if it differs from their service, will be placed in parentheses.) Cinderella Shoes (Cinderella): Pitch by Kumiko Matsumoto In keeping with the name, Cinderella Shoes is an e-commerce service for women which is used to get the most accurate shoe recommendations by entering information about your feet in the app. CEO Kumiko Matsumoto who was selected for the program, has been involved in designing shoes for thirteen years. Finding the most appropriate shoes requires a variety of foot measurements, not just shoe size alone, but the number of people who have actually measured…

kddi-mugen-labo-8th-demo-day-all-grads

See the original story in Japanese.

On July 14th at Shibuya Hikarie in Tokyo, Japan’s leading telco, KDDI (TSE:9433) held a Demo Day event for the 8th batch of the KDDI Mugen Labo incubation program. In continuing with the program’s format, partnered businesses offered mentoring and support for participating startups over the three-month incubation period.

The audience choice award as well as the grand prize went to Cinderella, the company behind the app Cinderella Shoes. The following is a summary of the participating startups’ pitches that were given. (The title of each section consists of the service’s name and the name of the speaker. The company’s name, if it differs from their service, will be placed in parentheses.)

Cinderella Shoes (Cinderella): Pitch by Kumiko Matsumoto

kddi-mugen-labo-8th-demo-day-cinderrella-shoes

In keeping with the name, Cinderella Shoes is an e-commerce service for women which is used to get the most accurate shoe recommendations by entering information about your feet in the app. CEO Kumiko Matsumoto who was selected for the program, has been involved in designing shoes for thirteen years.

Finding the most appropriate shoes requires a variety of foot measurements, not just shoe size alone, but the number of people who have actually measured their feet before is quite few. Meanwhile shoe store staff that actually know proper fitting techniques are rare, and custom order shoes are expensive and often not very cute.

Matsumoto believes that this service will now be able to offer a solution for the challenge of appropriate shoe selection. By taking a picture of your feet and sending it to the service using a smartphone camera, users will be able to get suggestions for shoes that will be a perfect fit. Serving as mentors to Cinderella, KDDI and Sumitomo Fudosan (TSE:8830) were active in collaboration to develop the needed image recognition technology and voice recognition.

Oshareca: Pitch by Natsumi Satake

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“Information about hairstyling is everywhere now, but what if I just want to see information that is more tailored to my personal preferences and hair type? I have a regular stylist and salon but I can’t go very often due to cost. I like to see a service that allows more direct communication with stylists and beauticians.” That was the basis for Oshareca, an application for nominating individual beauticians and making reservations.

As a female student entrepreneur, CEO Natsumi Satake’s aim is to optimize the beauty industry by digitizing the inefficient telephone reservation system that is predominantly used. With Credit Saison participating as Oshareca’s mentor company, follow-ups have been carried out using market data from their business network in the beauty industry.

Bee Sensing: Pitch by Hideki Matsubara

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Bee Sensing is a startup that is automating the management of honey production with AI(artificial intelligence)-equipped beehives. CEO Hideki Matsubara says that because honey producing beehives are typically located away from densely populated areas, there is a large need for automation and optimization in the beekeeping industry. As a beekeeper and honey producer himself, Matsubara founded the company in reaction to market pressure from cheap foreign produced honey.

Depending on location and local flora, the taste of honey can change dramatically. By being able to manage multiple hives in remote areas without having to go all the way there to check on them, Bee Sensing will increase the total number of hives that one person or team is capable of managing.

Matsubara says he hopes to reach half of all domestically produced honey with this project. The mentor company, Toppan Printing, is also considering advancing the service into the agriculture industry as an in-house project.

Handmade goods platform PU (SuperStudio): Pitch by Tsutomu Mano

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SuperStudio proposed a platform for handmade things called PU. The platform will bring together various how-to instructions and information related to DIY targeted at interior and general goods, as well as allow users to post and share their own DIY how-to’s.

With the hopes of creating a more multifaceted platform by soliciting cooperation with web media, events, and e-commerce to, for example, suggest retailers from whom materials can be purchased directly. CEO Tsutomu Mano also plans to create a system of creative collaboration with art university students and others from their warehouse located in eastern part of Tokyo. Tokyo-based private broadcaster TV Asahi offered their knowledge and experience with regard to creating large quantities of video content as PU’s mentor.

Lyncue: Pitch by Teijiro Shiotsuka

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Lyncue is a device that proposes connecting people living far apart using light as a main feature. By turning on one of the paired devices the other will light up, creating a new way to feel the presence of someone even from remote distance. The concept that has been suggested by the company is “communication using light.”

The Lyncue device is equipped with a camera and a projector, so when two paired devices are both lit up video can be transmitted and received. For example, by sending a Lyncue device to your grandparents who live far away, it’s possible for them to talk to and see their children and grandchildren in a convenient and natural manner.

In addition to KDDI, Hitachi also participated as a mentor to the project, offering their wealth of manufacturing knowledge and even offering assistance with things such as circuit design. KDDI also supported the device by incorporating their telecommunications environment to help produce a concrete product.


The Demo Day event came to a close with an explanation of what to expect at the next program from KDDI Representative Director Makoto Takahashi.

The 8th batch was conducted in cooperation and with the support from 15 partnering companies, featuring the first appearance of proposals in the hardware category. Since the beginning of the program a total of 39 startups have graduated from the program and 29 of them have successfully fundraised from investors.

Additionally, with regard to the business matching occurring in the program, collaborations between 70 partner companies have been born, doubling from the previous term.

“There’s definitely pressure to bring new things to the table every time.” Takahashi shared, “We’re paying close attention to manufacturing opportunities right now.” Partner involvement in the 9th batch will be expanded even further, including companies such as Google, Sumitomo Fudosan, Japanese credit card company Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS (TSE:8583) in a list of 18 newly added companies. Collaboration efforts with local governments are also being expanded, with Ishinomaki City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and Fukuoka City now included.

Lastly, it was announced that, starting from next time, a program geared towards aiding manufacturing related businesses will begin. Diverging from the standard three-month pattern, this program will feature a six-month backing term. KDDI explained that they will offer substantial support including business matching with enterprises to the teams that have graduated from the past incubation batches as well.

Translated by Connor Kirk
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

Japan’s Appliv, app discovery platform for mobile users, preparing for global expansion

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Volare, the Japanese startup behind mobile app discovery platform Appliv, announced today that it has set up a subsidiary in the Philippines for global expansion, planning to launch the US version in late September. The platform lists about 70,000 articles regarding mobile apps, to allow users in finding apps that look to better match their situation than conventional app stores or other platforms. While more than 6 million desktop users visit the website every month, the platform’s mobile app has marked over 1 million downloads ( iOS / Android ) in total. The company is launching a subsidiary in the Philippines where local writers are readying articles about mobile apps focused on the English-language markets. When the first several thousand articles are ready to publish, they will launch the English version of the AppLiv platform. Their global expansion effort will start with the English-language markets which have a large mobile user base, considered reaching beyond to other markets in the future. We’ve seen several app analytics services for businesses like AppAnnie, but none for those focused on introducing apps for mobile users. With the launch of the English version, the Appliv platform could gain a presence globally as well. The company will apparently announce more updates by this year-end. It…

appliv_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Volare, the Japanese startup behind mobile app discovery platform Appliv, announced today that it has set up a subsidiary in the Philippines for global expansion, planning to launch the US version in late September.

The platform lists about 70,000 articles regarding mobile apps, to allow users in finding apps that look to better match their situation than conventional app stores or other platforms. While more than 6 million desktop users visit the website every month, the platform’s mobile app has marked over 1 million downloads ( iOS / Android ) in total.

The company is launching a subsidiary in the Philippines where local writers are readying articles about mobile apps focused on the English-language markets. When the first several thousand articles are ready to publish, they will launch the English version of the AppLiv platform. Their global expansion effort will start with the English-language markets which have a large mobile user base, considered reaching beyond to other markets in the future.

We’ve seen several app analytics services for businesses like AppAnnie, but none for those focused on introducing apps for mobile users. With the launch of the English version, the Appliv platform could gain a presence globally as well.

The company will apparently announce more updates by this year-end. It will be interesting to see how far they can get from here.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Asia-focused mobile rewards startup Yoyo Holdings fundraises from KLab, Gree Ventures

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See the original story in Japanese. Yoyo Holdings, the startup known for providing mobile rewards platforms, announced today that it has secured funding from KLab Global, Gree Ventures, and an unnamed angel investor. Details of the investment have not been disclosed but the raised sum likely ranges around several million US dollars. The company fundraised $1.3 million from Gree Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures and Incubate Fund in the previous round back in May 2014. See also: Candy: A sweet mobile rewards solution from Singapore’s Yoyo Holdings Yoyo launches rewards platform in Indonesia, offers free internet access to Android users Out of all three investors participating in this round, KLab Global is a Singapore-based global business-focused subsidiary of Japanese mobile game development company KLab (TSE:3656). Yoyo Holdings is incorporated in Singapore but runs systems development and business operations mainly in Manila, the Philippines. Based on a partnership with KLab Global, Yoyo Holdings will relocate its Manila operations to inside the office of KLab Cyscorpions, a Manila-based subsidiary of KLab Global, aiming to receive substantial support for engineering efforts and corporate operations. Consisting of about 25 employees, Yoyo Holding provides mobile users with rewards platform: Candy and PopSlide. Candy is a solution that rewards users for performing micro-tasks – such as surveys,…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Yoyo Holdings, the startup known for providing mobile rewards platforms, announced today that it has secured funding from KLab GlobalGree Ventures, and an unnamed angel investor. Details of the investment have not been disclosed but the raised sum likely ranges around several million US dollars. The company fundraised $1.3 million from Gree Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures and Incubate Fund in the previous round back in May 2014.

See also:

Out of all three investors participating in this round, KLab Global is a Singapore-based global business-focused subsidiary of Japanese mobile game development company KLab (TSE:3656). Yoyo Holdings is incorporated in Singapore but runs systems development and business operations mainly in Manila, the Philippines. Based on a partnership with KLab Global, Yoyo Holdings will relocate its Manila operations to inside the office of KLab Cyscorpions, a Manila-based subsidiary of KLab Global, aiming to receive substantial support for engineering efforts and corporate operations.

Consisting of about 25 employees, Yoyo Holding provides mobile users with rewards platform: Candy and PopSlide. Candy is a solution that rewards users for performing micro-tasks – such as surveys, app installs, banner clicks or review submissions – by giving them airtime or prepaid phone credit. Popslide distributes news and weather forecasts as well as other updates and ads to your smartphone lock screen. In return for viewing such information, users receive rewards for free Internet access on their smartphone. The company’s combined user base from the two services has acquired over a million users to date in the Southeast Asia region.

Yoyo Holdings co-founder and CEO Yosuke Fukada told The Bridge that they will use the funds to strengthen their engineering development resources:

In Southeast Asia, for instance, many people use an Android phone supporting multiple SIM cards with multiple phone numbers, so we need to support models which are not so common in advanced countries. Even Facebook has developed a mobile app specifically designed for rural areas in this region, where mobile broadband is likely unavailable. In a similar manner, we want to strengthen our engineering in order to better fit the targeted markets.

Coinciding with the funding, the company unveiled that Suni Kang has joined the team. She was previously working at Tonchidot Corporation, the Japanese startup behind the Sekai Camera Augmented Reality (AR) app, followed by working in the Philippines; she wanted to fathom the market potential in the Southeast Asia region. Along with working at an IT company as a project manager in Manila, she has deepened the mutual relationship with Yoyo Holdings by writing a guest post about them for Japanese tech blog Techwave, resulting in her joining the team as a project manager and recruiter.

Aiming to attract the Next Billion Market which accounts for two-thirds of the entire global population, Yoyo Holdings plans on expanding into the Indian market by the end of this year, in addition to enhancing their existing presence in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. Unlike typical message apps, a mobile reward app using a lock screen will not typically co-exist with other similar apps in the smartphone since there’s only one lock screen for each mobile. Upon this understanding, Fukada and his team aim to fill the role as a dominant player in this space as soon as possible.

Yoyo won the startup competition and New Economic Summit in April as well as the second prize at Infinity Venture Summit (IVS) 2014 Fall last year. According to Fukada, their massive exposure at IVS helped them lead to the funds at this time around from KLab Global.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s mobile analytics company Repro secures $835,000 from DG Incubation, others

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Repro, the provider of mobile analytics tool Repro, recently stated that the company has fundraised 100 million yen (about $835,000) from DG Incubation, Brain Pad (TSE:3655), and Shift (TSE:3697). DG Incubation is the investment arm of Japanese internet service company Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while Brain Pad is a Japanese big data analysis company and Shift runs a software testing business. Repro provides SDK (software development kit) for supporting the development of apps for the retention rate of users and UI (user interface) improvement based on user behavior on mobile apps. When a user operates an app with an SDK installed, information such as the user’s method of operating the interface, the track record of that operation, and the user’s facial expressions during that time are recorded. Unlike websites, it is very difficult to update apps real time once they are released. Therefore, it is important to improve the app as much as possible before release. Hence, these days an increasing number of startups and companies are strengthening their UX (user experience) design based on user tests and hearings. However, in group tests for running user tests, the situation can often differ from the…

repro_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Repro, the provider of mobile analytics tool Repro, recently stated that the company has fundraised 100 million yen (about $835,000) from DG Incubation, Brain Pad (TSE:3655), and Shift (TSE:3697). DG Incubation is the investment arm of Japanese internet service company Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while Brain Pad is a Japanese big data analysis company and Shift runs a software testing business.

Repro provides SDK (software development kit) for supporting the development of apps for the retention rate of users and UI (user interface) improvement based on user behavior on mobile apps. When a user operates an app with an SDK installed, information such as the user’s method of operating the interface, the track record of that operation, and the user’s facial expressions during that time are recorded.

Unlike websites, it is very difficult to update apps real time once they are released. Therefore, it is important to improve the app as much as possible before release. Hence, these days an increasing number of startups and companies are strengthening their UX (user experience) design based on user tests and hearings.

However, in group tests for running user tests, the situation can often differ from the everyday, natural atmosphere. Even direct observation of behavior and interview with users still can be artificial due to it being a face-to-face interaction in an interview setting, which means that there is still the chance of a mismatch between the interaction produced there and the users’ actual thoughts and actions. In response to these problems, Repro saves voice recording data and takes photographs with a built-in camera, thus recording the user’s natural behavior. In addition, Repro also accumulates data on how users swiped and clicked on the screen, which makes it possible to see when and where the user decided to depart. Test users can use the app in natural settings such as the user’s home, as opposed to places such as a meeting room.

Unlike existing crash-detection tools, Repro can reproduce the crash based on video recordings from the start to the crash of an app, providing fact-based feedback and making debugging more efficient. The accumulated data support the improvement of the app not only through quantitative analyses such as click rates, roaming time and departing points, but also through qualitative analyses based on video recordings. Needless to say, Repro also assures privacy protection. The text fields of the app detect text input and runs an image processing. Also, it is possible to place a survey either at the beginning or the end of the tests.

Repro CEO Yusuke Hirata explained:

Many customers who introduced Repro into their systems voice how they were able to learn the users’ behavior which were not visible through mere quantitative data and became visible by knowing the living behavior of users. Of course, most of these lessons seemed to have been quite shocking for them. (Laughs.) I mean, learning the manner in which the majority of users move away from the app in a matter of seconds, and learning it through the qualitative data of video recordings, one can directly confront actual reality. We believe that app improvement begins with a proper confrontation of such reality. Indeed, most people who introduce Repro are able to find concrete solutions.

Moreover, in addition to traditional funnel and retention analyses, the administrator screen shows real-time analyses based on video recordings of the users’ behaviors within the app. With previous quantitative data, the only way to analyze user behavior was to look at behavior represented by numbers alone. Over the Repro administrator screen, on the other hand, video allows for a much more concrete representation of user retention and conversion and of where, when, and how users depart or stumble.

Hirata explained:

Live user behavior is a goldmine of hints for app improvement. I would like others to reflect such live information on their apps and understand the true behavior of users. Once analyses are done carefully, one could discover the magic number for letting services grow. For example, users may become active after the number of friends on Facebook passes a certain threshold, or when a certain number of follows are made on Twitter, or the number of saves on the Pocket app (formerly known as Read It Later), and so forth.

If there existed a magic number for increasing the growth of all services and user activity rates, and if it were possible to discover such numbers, then they could be used as KPIs. Enabling analysis of data, discovering the interrelationships. Therefore, Repro can allow observations which can capture the live voice and behavior of users with greater accuracy, by combining quantitative data with qualitative ones.

Repro graduated from the 6th batch of KDDI Mugen Labo, the accelerator program by a Japanese leading telco. During the eight months from the program’s demo day up to the present, Repro has already released a beta version, been introduced into companies such as Mixi and Rakuten, and been used by more than 400 e-commerce and news apps from various genres.

Based on the present release, Repro began providing an official version from its beta version. Plans include a free plan, 12,000 yen ($100) per month plan for startups, 60,000 yen ($500) per month basic plan, 120,000 yen ($1,000) per month gross plan, 360,000 yen ($3,000) per month plan for businesses, and more. The recorded videos and the quantity of data varies according to price.

Moreover, the funding will foster an expansion of the supply of developers, which will lead to creating business overseas, primarily in the US, by 2016.

Notes Hirata,

Analytics service such as MIXPanel and Lookback exist overseas, but Repro has demonstrated high performance in SDK storage, CPU usage, memory usage, etc. As a product, it has been developed to compete on the world market. Taking the present funding as an opportunity, we will build the foundations for expanding our business overseas.

Repro CEO Yusuke Hirata
Repro CEO Yusuke Hirata

Translated by  Conyac crowdsourced translation service
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda