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Buzzreach raises $450K to help Japanese pharma firms ease clinical trials for drugs

Buzzreach

Masaru Ikeda 2019.03.05

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based MedTech startup Buzzreach announced today that it has fundraised 50 million yen (about $450,000 US) in a seed round. This round was secured in December of 2018 and led by KLab Venture Partners. The amount includes loans from financial institutions. The company offers a matchmaking platform called Puzz between clinical trial patients and pharmaceutical companies as well as a media portal called ‘Smt‘. Buzzreach was founded by Takateru Inokawa (current CEO) and Kiyoshi Aoyagi (current COO), both of whom had been previously involved in the foundation of two patient recruit organizations: Clinical Trial and Croee. In the increased globalization of the pharmaceutical industry and their drug discovery business, more new drugs are becoming in need of getting approved by authorities in each country before coming to the markets. To seek approval for drugs, it is necessary to conduct tests called clinical trials. Clinical trials are roughly classified into three phases: phase I: Conducting a trial to evaluate drug’s safety and toxicity to healthy persons phase II: Conducting a trial to examine usage / dosage with a smaller number of patients phase III: Conducting trial to assess drug’s effectiveness comparing to conventional drugs in…

The Buzzreach team, investors from KLab Venture Partners
Image credit: Buzzreach

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based MedTech startup Buzzreach announced today that it has fundraised 50 million yen (about $450,000 US) in a seed round. This round was secured in December of 2018 and led by KLab Venture Partners. The amount includes loans from financial institutions. The company offers a matchmaking platform called Puzz between clinical trial patients and pharmaceutical companies as well as a media portal called ‘Smt‘.

Buzzreach was founded by Takateru Inokawa (current CEO) and Kiyoshi Aoyagi (current COO), both of whom had been previously involved in the foundation of two patient recruit organizations: Clinical Trial and Croee.

In the increased globalization of the pharmaceutical industry and their drug discovery business, more new drugs are becoming in need of getting approved by authorities in each country before coming to the markets. To seek approval for drugs, it is necessary to conduct tests called clinical trials.

Clinical trials are roughly classified into three phases:

phase I: Conducting a trial to evaluate drug’s safety and toxicity to healthy persons
phase II: Conducting a trial to examine usage / dosage with a smaller number of patients
phase III: Conducting trial to assess drug’s effectiveness comparing to conventional drugs in a larger number of patients.

Out of all these phases, phase I trials are performed in a smaller group consisting of recruited subjects by giving compensation as we can occasionally see recruitment ads on job magazines. On the other hand, phase II and III trials must be performed in a larger group of patients with a specific disease.

This process in recruiting patients poses many difficulties. To participate a clinical trial for a new drug, patients are required to meet eligibility criteria set for each trial including health status or disease condition. Even if a patient meet the criteria, a pharmaceutical company would have to acquire the consent from the patient and cooperate with medical centers / clinics as well as principal investigators. If the pharmaceutical company could not have a sufficient number of patients, it would be forced to extend the period of the trial or increase the number of medical centers / clinics, which requires vast extra-budget before the application for marketing approval.

To solve these problems, Buzzreach has developed Puzz, the data management system of clinical trial subjects. Pharmaceutical companies, CRO (contract research organization) which monitors clinical trial process and SMO (site management organization) which owns data about medical centers / clinics capable of participating clinical trials are allowed to join Puzz and then can deliver clinical trial information to more than 2.5 million potential trial subjects, over 10 healthcare-related media outlets and 10 patient advocacy groups.

For subject candidates needing clinical trial information, Buzzreach offers a medical portal site called SMT, where users can search specific clinical trials with the criteria which their clinical condition and symptom meets. Although such information is also provided by Japic CTI (Japan Pharmaceutical Information Center), it is not so user-friendly; the website offers only smaller information only and no inquiry contact. SMT gives detailed information provided by pharmaceutical companies in addition to the quote from Japic CTI. By replying to questionnaires shown in search results, applicants can convey their intention to participate in a clinical trial to a pharmaceutical company.

Buzzreach makes money by charging fee to pharmaceutical companies using the platform on a monthly basis. The startup provides three pricing plans according to how many drug discovery pipelines the user company has or how much budget they have.

We have seldom seen KLab Venture Partners’ investment in a vertical SaaS (software as a service) startup. However, the VC firm may not help ignoring the existence of patients as consumers in the business model. Of course, such a service requires great care to handle information concerning users’ privacy, but Buzzreach has a great potential to create another value through the secondary use of such precious individual data.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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20 Japanese startups unite to exhibit at 4FYN 2019 in Barcelona, attract big crowd

4YFN

Masaru Ikeda 2019.02.20

See the original story in Japanese. Four Years From Now (4YFN for short) is a startup showcase event in Barcelona, annually taking place along with globally known tech conference MWC (previously known as Mobile World Congress). Launched back in 2013 by distinguished Israeli entrepreneur and investor Yossi Vardi, the conference now attracts about 20,000 attendees every year. Some of our readers may recall that 7 Japanese startups jointly set up their Japanese Pavilion booths by paying expense by themselves at 4YFN last year in response to a massive effort by Tomohiro Hagiwara, CEO of Japanese startup Aquabit Spirals. But this year, they have successfully obtained a financial support from JETRO, the Japanese government-backed trade promotion organization, and as many as 20 startups and SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) from Japan attended the event as exhibitors and speakers this year. Exhibitors from Japan are Infinitegra (developing high sernsitive wearable camera), Mitsuya (plating electronic parts), Kotozna (offering multi-language translation service using social network and technology), George and Shaun (developing loss prevention devices and predicting dementia patients), Spiral (developing indoor-use drones), Techno Labo (case forming for IoT sample devices), Pisces (developing a virtual office room connecting remote workers using augmented reality technology)、pop…

Inside the 4YFN venue
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

See the original story in Japanese.

Four Years From Now (4YFN for short) is a startup showcase event in Barcelona, annually taking place along with globally known tech conference MWC (previously known as Mobile World Congress). Launched back in 2013 by distinguished Israeli entrepreneur and investor Yossi Vardi, the conference now attracts about 20,000 attendees every year. Some of our readers may recall that 7 Japanese startups jointly set up their Japanese Pavilion booths by paying expense by themselves at 4YFN last year in response to a massive effort by Tomohiro Hagiwara, CEO of Japanese startup Aquabit Spirals. But this year, they have successfully obtained a financial support from JETRO, the Japanese government-backed trade promotion organization, and as many as 20 startups and SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) from Japan attended the event as exhibitors and speakers this year.

Jun Yamadera of FUKUSHIMA Wheel was interviewed by a local press.
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

Exhibitors from Japan are Infinitegra (developing high sernsitive wearable camera), Mitsuya (plating electronic parts), Kotozna (offering multi-language translation service using social network and technology), George and Shaun (developing loss prevention devices and predicting dementia patients), Spiral (developing indoor-use drones), Techno Labo (case forming for IoT sample devices), Pisces (developing a virtual office room connecting remote workers using augmented reality technology)、pop inc (developing image analysis SDK for mobile)、Sigma-SAR (satellite data analysis), Trigence (developing high quality semiconductors for audio equipment), FUKUSHIMA Wheel (ad platform by displaying the LED on the bicycle rim), Aquabit Spirals (developing the Smart Plate device which enables bookmarking on real objects using NFC-enabled IC chips), Empath (identifying people’s emotion from vocal patterns in real-time regardless of language), Mobilous (offering the AppExe cloud for mobile app developers), PicoCELA (developing the multi-hop technology which enables users to install a wide-area local area network without cable), Vanguard Industries (IoT venture builder), Soinn (developing neural network for machine learning), and Mira Robotics (developing remotely-controlled robots delegating housekeeping chores).

The Japan Innovation Showcase session was fully packed with an audience. A shot from PicoCERA’s pitch.
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

Among all of them, Empath, FUKUSHIMA Wheel, George and Shaun, Kotozna, PicoCELA, pop inc, Aquabit Spirals, Techno Labo, and Tringence were invited to present onstage at Japan Innovation Showcase, the presentation session for Japanese startups at 4YFN where the venue for 200 people was all full with having some standing viewers. Compared to MWC where it’s harder to choose which exhibitors to check because of too many booths, more startups are concentrated in the 4YFN venue so that it’s more efficient for investors to look for good startups to invest in and for entrepreneurs to find enterprises in need of collaborating with startups. With the massive support from their government-backed startup support organizations, more than 100 companies from Korea and Taiwan were exhibiting at MWC and 4YFN, showing off more presence than local startups in Europe.

Participants were incessantly visiting the Japanese startup booth area.
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

Hagiwara, who led the startup delegations to 4YFN this year, told us that his motivation for joining the event was triggered by meeting up with Visualead, the Israeli startup acquired by Alibaba in 2017.

The Visualead ream told me that seeking a way out of the country and making global expansion efforts to find the optimal market is not only fatal but also very normal for Israeli startups, which is contrast with Japan having a sufficient-sized market inside the country.

I think that even Japanese startups need to take the “Global First” approach rather than the “Global Expansion” one.

Since we’ve heard more startups and startup supporting organizations all across Japan are uniting with each other in this movement, more teams are expected to join the delegations and exhibit next year.

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Quan, creating messaging characters, snags $3.6M to strengthen China, Thai expansion

Masaru Ikeda 2019.02.20

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo- / Bangkok- / Shanghai-based Quan, the Japanese startup creating and offering character stickers for online messaging, announced today that it has raised 400 million yen (about $3.6 million) in the latest round. Participating investors are Nissay Capital, ABC Dream Ventures, OLM Ventures (a subsidiary of Imagica Group), Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital and CiP (Contents Innovation Program). The amount of the fund includes loans from Sumitomo Mitsui Bank and Mizuho Bank. This follows their funding from Japanese film and theater production company Toho back in 2017 (Nikkei reported it was about $450,000), several million dollars from six VC firms back in 2014, and an undisclosed sum from Netprice.com and East Ventures back in 2012. All these bring Quan’s total funding raised so far to about 800 million yen (about $7.2 million). With the latest funding, the firm focuses on establishment of character licensing business, acceleration of the merchandise business and character development for VTuber, blockchain, and other new technology-based services. Quan was founded by the current CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno in 2011. The firm initially focused on the Lounge message app targeting the Asian market but subsequently pivoted to the character sticker creation business…

quan-team — The Quan team
Image credit: Quan

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo- / Bangkok- / Shanghai-based Quan, the Japanese startup creating and offering character stickers for online messaging, announced today that it has raised 400 million yen (about $3.6 million) in the latest round. Participating investors are Nissay Capital, ABC Dream Ventures, OLM Ventures (a subsidiary of Imagica Group), Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital and CiP (Contents Innovation Program). The amount of the fund includes loans from Sumitomo Mitsui Bank and Mizuho Bank.

This follows their funding from Japanese film and theater production company Toho back in 2017 (Nikkei reported it was about $450,000), several million dollars from six VC firms back in 2014, and an undisclosed sum from Netprice.com and East Ventures back in 2012. All these bring Quan’s total funding raised so far to about 800 million yen (about $7.2 million). With the latest funding, the firm focuses on establishment of character licensing business, acceleration of the merchandise business and character development for VTuber, blockchain, and other new technology-based services.

quan-characters — Quan’s characters
Image credit: quan

Quan was founded by the current CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno in 2011. The firm initially focused on the Lounge message app targeting the Asian market but subsequently pivoted to the character sticker creation business in 2012. Their unique characters became popular as distributing them to major messaging apps like Line, Facebook (Facebook Messenger), WeChat and KakaoTalk. As of December of 2018, their stickers have been downloaded over 2.6 billion times while the total number of exchanged messages containing their stickers has exceeded 24 billion to date.

Gaining the popularity of their characters by distributing stickers foe free, Quan monetize through merchandising sales and letting enterprises to use these characters for their promotional activities. With the establishment of local subsidiaries in Thailand and China, the startup has begun their business operations in these markets since around 2017. Both of the heads of the two subsidiaries are still 26, and we could interview them to hear about their recent business development in each market.

quan-okukawa-mizuno-sato — LtoR: Masato Okugawa (Head, Quan Thailand), Kazuhiro Mizuno (CEO, Quan), Munetaka Sato (Head, Quan China)
Image credit: Quan

Munetaka Sato was working for Quan while at Keio University in Japan but once left the company at the time of his graduation. After finihshing studying at Beijing University, he started his business and came back to Quan to support their sales force as an outsourcing contractor. Having been targeting the Chinese market since around 2013, Quan decided to appoint Sato as the head of Quan China (可澳恩信息技术) for their full-scale operation. Sato has been managing the startup’s business in China for two years.

While Quan China covers business in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the business movement has been moving northward from southern China. In Hong Kong, the startup succeeded to tie up with a local shopping mall while their flagship character was chosen for Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s online promotion campaign. The counterfeit goods problem is a major concern for IP (intellectual property) businesses in China, but Sato explains that IP business environment in China has been gradually improved and monetization has become easier in recent years as unlicensed products are being eliminated in the market. Since Alibaba established the Alifish copyright trading platform, Quan China became able to grasp the exact monthly sales numbers of their character goods on Taobao.

quan-china-team-members — Team of Quan China
Image credit: Quan

Since his graduation from Thammasat University in Bangkok, Masato Okugawa, had served Quan as a director of mobile game development. He was subsequently appointed as Quan’s business manager in the Thai market. In the Southeast Asian market where Quan Thailand covers, the Korean entertainment industry’s business expansion strategy, such as allowing local companies to use K-POP content for free at first but subsequently recouping the initial investment by monetizing through merchandise, is doing well. Since the character business born out of internet culture looks slightly challenging in the region it may be hard to make money with licensing deals only. They are looking to monetize by having their characters used for companies’ promotional activities.

Mizuno told us that some companies have been hiring Japanese advisors and introducing cartoon characters born out of internet culture such as Ali the Fox (阿狸) and Budding Pop (长草颜団子) but few companies have secured funding with the character sticker business in the Chinese market. He talked about a future plan to strengthen the startup’s sales department to monetize these opportunities, aiming to grow it as another Sanrio that can link online and offline businesses.

quan-thailand-team-members — Team of Quan Thailand
Image credit: Quan

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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Japanese user location analytics startup Rei Frontier raises $2.7M from Mitsui & Co.

Masaru Ikeda 2019.02.14

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Rei Frontier, the Japanese startup behind AI-powered user location analytics platform called SilentLog Analytics/SDK, announced today it has raised 300 million yen (about $2.7 million US) from Mitsui & Co. The investment includes a strategic partnership, which lets the startup collaborate with the trading giant to offer various mobility services according to the user’s behavioral characteristics, create new means of mobility to alleviate traffic congestion by changing people’s behavior, and design an integrated system so that people can move seamlessly between multiple ways of transportation. The company provides a marketing service called Silent Log Analytics enabling a new type of activity analysis by analyzing customers’ location information with artificial intelligence (AI). Companies want to know about customers and customers want companies to make optimized proposal for each, but in reality, sometimes the problem occurs where products that were purchased offline are recommended online. To solve this, Silent Log Analytics acquires 40,000 users’ activity data per day, obtaining their consent. Using smartphone-mounted GPS and sensors, it determines users’ condition or social attribute. Rei Frontier gathers information and owns the accumulated knowledge that only requires 3% power consumption. The team aims to optimize recommendation or…

L to R: Kenshi Tamura (CEO, Rei Frontier), Michihiro Nose (Mobility Business Unit I, Mitsui & Co.)
Image credit: Rei Frontier

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Rei Frontier, the Japanese startup behind AI-powered user location analytics platform called SilentLog Analytics/SDK, announced today it has raised 300 million yen (about $2.7 million US) from Mitsui & Co.

The investment includes a strategic partnership, which lets the startup collaborate with the trading giant to offer various mobility services according to the user’s behavioral characteristics, create new means of mobility to alleviate traffic congestion by changing people’s behavior, and design an integrated system so that people can move seamlessly between multiple ways of transportation.

The company provides a marketing service called Silent Log Analytics enabling a new type of activity analysis by analyzing customers’ location information with artificial intelligence (AI). Companies want to know about customers and customers want companies to make optimized proposal for each, but in reality, sometimes the problem occurs where products that were purchased offline are recommended online.

To solve this, Silent Log Analytics acquires 40,000 users’ activity data per day, obtaining their consent. Using smartphone-mounted GPS and sensors, it determines users’ condition or social attribute. Rei Frontier gathers information and owns the accumulated knowledge that only requires 3% power consumption. The team aims to optimize recommendation or customer notification by not sending entertainment information during work or not sending business information after work.

This Rei Frontier’s app allows users to monitor the fuel efficiency of their car on mobile.
Image credit: Rei Frontier

SilentLog Analytics has two types of use cases: One is the public type offering an SDK (software developer kit) to mobile apps for consumers, and the other one is the private type for corporate users for their internal business use. Diversified in many fields, examples include integration with a health promotion app, a fleet management app as well as predicting how people move in town especially in the event of a disaster.

Since Mobility Business Unit I of Mitsui & Co. has railway companies, transport functions at mines and other assets in the overseas, Rei Frontier says they can expect to achieve a good result of the collaboration in the mobility sector.

SilentLog Analytics has expanded into the European Union and UK markets where GDPR has been effective and requires businesses strictly comply with local regulations on information handling. Rei Frontier CEO Kenshi Tamura told The Bridge that facility investment in such overseas markets is one of the reasons why they have decided to raise funds at this time.

Rei Frontier was chosen for the third batch of Tokyo Railway’s accelerator program back in 2017, won the Spring Up! sports-focused accelerator program by Japanese system integration company TIS back in 2018. The company raised an undisclosed sum from Adways and Inclusion Japan back in April of 2015, subsequently an undisclosed sum from Mizuho Capital and IID (TSE:6038) back in August of 2016, and also 140 million yen ($1.2 million US) from Iwagin Jigyo Sozo Capital and Energy & Environment Investment.

Their potential competitors include Sentinance (Belgium), Anagog (Israel), SafeGraph (US) and Factual (US), but there is no dominant player yet from the technology and data volume perspective. Our readers may recall that Tokyo-based VC Global Brain-backed startup Near, previously called AdNear and originated from India, has expanded into the Japanese market.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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Doreming Asia now allows employees in Vietnam to get paid before payday

Doreming Asia

The Bridge 2019.02.05

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese financial inclusion startup Doreming Asia has developed a payroll system enabling calculation of the salary amount real-time before the closing date of companies, allowing workers to get paid before their payday. Last week the company launched the service in Vietnam through ViViet, the digital wallet app by the country’s leading retail bank Lien Viet Post Bank. Leveraging its propretary real-time payroll system, the firm gives Vietnamese workers an easy access to pro-rata payments or their monthly paycheck. Although it is the poor who really require financial services for a stable life and security, not enough such services are provided in emerging countries. If low-income people with poor credit ratings can receive loans, the service plans will be limited to ones with annual interests of 100%, 300% or even 1,600% due to the high probability of these becoming irrecoverable. By allowing workers get paid before their payday, Doreming Asia wants to prevent their unnecessary debt and to help them manage a better family budget. Doreming Asia signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lien Viet Post Bank and Mitsui Knowledge Industry for a PoC (proof of concept) study in Vietnam, which was conducted from…

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese financial inclusion startup Doreming Asia has developed a payroll system enabling calculation of the salary amount real-time before the closing date of companies, allowing workers to get paid before their payday. Last week the company launched the service in Vietnam through ViViet, the digital wallet app by the country’s leading retail bank Lien Viet Post Bank. Leveraging its propretary real-time payroll system, the firm gives Vietnamese workers an easy access to pro-rata payments or their monthly paycheck.

Although it is the poor who really require financial services for a stable life and security, not enough such services are provided in emerging countries. If low-income people with poor credit ratings can receive loans, the service plans will be limited to ones with annual interests of 100%, 300% or even 1,600% due to the high probability of these becoming irrecoverable. By allowing workers get paid before their payday, Doreming Asia wants to prevent their unnecessary debt and to help them manage a better family budget.

Doreming Asia signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lien Viet Post Bank and Mitsui Knowledge Industry for a PoC (proof of concept) study in Vietnam, which was conducted from September to December back in 2017. Subsequently, these three parties signed an agreement to roll out the total service in May of last year.

Vietnam is celebrating Lunar New Year’s Day called Tết today, having set the weeks from January 29 to February 12 the annual holiday season for the New Year celebration. The company could successfully launch the service before Vietnamese people may have unforeseen expenses or enjoy shopping sprees especially in the season.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda

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Japan’s 600, startup behind kiosks-in-a-fridge for offices, raises $920K in funding

600

Masaru Ikeda 2019.01.29

Tokyo-based 600, the Japanese startup offering the kiosks-in-a-fridge service for offices, announced today that it has fundraised 100 million yen (about $920,000 US) from Asahi Media Lab Ventures (investment arm of Japanese leading newspaper publisher Asahi Shimbun and its affiliate TV broadcasters), SMBC Venture Capital, AG Capital as well as Apricot Ventures. Details of finantial terms have not been disclosed. Since its launch back in June of last year, the startup has been offering the service (dubbed an “unmanned convenience store” in Japanese) to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), startups, and large enterprises in Japan. The refrigerator is filled up with a variety of items from munchies and beverages to lunchbox and delicatessen for office employees while the variety can be added upon their request via the Line messenger app or Slack. The company uses the funds to strengthen its logistic network, aiming to serve 200,000 items to up to 500 offices within this year. The value proposition that the startup can provide is a new way to collect consumer behavior and marketing data in an area which has less access to neighboring retailers such as convenience stores on street corners. By intentionally placing items competing each other in the…

Tokyo-based 600, the Japanese startup offering the kiosks-in-a-fridge service for offices, announced today that it has fundraised 100 million yen (about $920,000 US) from Asahi Media Lab Ventures (investment arm of Japanese leading newspaper publisher Asahi Shimbun and its affiliate TV broadcasters), SMBC Venture Capital, AG Capital as well as Apricot Ventures. Details of finantial terms have not been disclosed.

Since its launch back in June of last year, the startup has been offering the service (dubbed an “unmanned convenience store” in Japanese) to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), startups, and large enterprises in Japan. The refrigerator is filled up with a variety of items from munchies and beverages to lunchbox and delicatessen for office employees while the variety can be added upon their request via the Line messenger app or Slack.

The company uses the funds to strengthen its logistic network, aiming to serve 200,000 items to up to 500 offices within this year.

The value proposition that the startup can provide is a new way to collect consumer behavior and marketing data in an area which has less access to neighboring retailers such as convenience stores on street corners. By intentionally placing items competing each other in the refrigerator, their brands can get insights from consumers to improve their products or create better new ones.

600 was launched by Kei Kubo who previously founded a payments solution called WebPay and subsequently sold it to messaging giant Line for an undisclosed sum in 2015.

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Japanese AI startup Cinnamon closes series B round with $13.7M in funding

Cinnamon AI

Masaru Ikeda 2019.01.28

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup Cinnamon, developing a document reading engine and a voice recognition solution leveraging their proprietary AI technologies, announced it has closed a series B round. The total amount of funding in this round has reached about 1.5 billion yen (about $13.7 million). In addition to the investors revealed in the previous announcement, Mirai Creation Fund, Nomura Holdings, Sumitomo Corporation, SMBC Venture Capital (SMBC-VC), Sachio Semmoto (Co-founder of KDDI), Fujiyo Ishiguro (President of Netyear Group) participated in this round. All the investments including the one from SMBC-VC intend strategic partnerships. Flax Scanner, the RPA (robotics process automation) class 2 solution using the company’s own document reading engine Cinnamon AI, is widely used for handling documents such as contracts, resumes, sales progress reports, medical charts, handwritten application forms, real estate property information, receipts, etc. Rossa Voice, another flagship product from the company, is a voice dictation solution based on an automated word correction technology used for Flax Scanner. Among all the investors revealed at this time, it appears that Nomura Holdings will use Rossa Voice to streamline the call center operations at their brokerage services. Aiming to improve their service quality and prevent possible defects,…

The Cinnamon team
Image credit: Cinnamon

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese startup Cinnamon, developing a document reading engine and a voice recognition solution leveraging their proprietary AI technologies, announced it has closed a series B round. The total amount of funding in this round has reached about 1.5 billion yen (about $13.7 million). In addition to the investors revealed in the previous announcement, Mirai Creation Fund, Nomura Holdings, Sumitomo Corporation, SMBC Venture Capital (SMBC-VC), Sachio Semmoto (Co-founder of KDDI), Fujiyo Ishiguro (President of Netyear Group) participated in this round. All the investments including the one from SMBC-VC intend strategic partnerships.

Flax Scanner, the RPA (robotics process automation) class 2 solution using the company’s own document reading engine Cinnamon AI, is widely used for handling documents such as contracts, resumes, sales progress reports, medical charts, handwritten application forms, real estate property information, receipts, etc. Rossa Voice, another flagship product from the company, is a voice dictation solution based on an automated word correction technology used for Flax Scanner.

Among all the investors revealed at this time, it appears that Nomura Holdings will use Rossa Voice to streamline the call center operations at their brokerage services. Aiming to improve their service quality and prevent possible defects, many brokerage firms record phone interactions between their agents and customers regarding deals. However, it would be impossible for humans to monitor in real-time or review all records. Rossa Voice can make these processes more efficient and labor-saving.

Through cooperation with Cinnamon, Sumitomo Corporatation aims to strengthen their Digital Transformation effort in the entire company. SMBC-VC, the investment arm of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, aims to improve the efficiency of the group’s financial subsidiaries including Sumitomo Mitsui Bank while Mirai Creation Fund (operated by Sparx Group, funded by Toyota Motor and Mitsui Sumitomo Bank) expects contribution to streamlining operations at Toyota.

With the latest funding, Cinnamon will be more focused on global expansion. In addition to AI development centers in Vietnam and Taiwan, the Tokyo-based startup will set up an office in the San Francisco Bay Area to expand into the US market. Since Rossa Voice has succeeded in attracting US companies through introduction at InsureTech conferences there, they have made up their mind to expand into the US which has higher demand than other markets.

In addition, the company announced it will appoint Takeshi Niinami, President of Suntory Holdings, as an advisor as of February 1st. With the help of Niinami who has demonstrated leadership at Japanese renowned companies like Mitsubishi Corporation and convenience store giant Lawson, Cinnamon expects to strengthen the structure of their team which is rapidly expanding. Going forward, the company plans to strengthen hiring representatives for business development, delivering AI solutions, and senior AI researchers.

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Meet 4 startups that pitched at Global Brain annual portfolio showcase in Tokyo

Masaru Ikeda 2019.01.27

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese VC firm Global Brain held the its annual event called Global Brain Alliance Forum 2018 last month in Tokyo. In the pitch competition even, 10 participant startups from Japan and the rest of Japan gave excellent pitches in front of a big audience. This article introduces four award-winning teams from among them. The judges for the Pitch Battle were as follows: Yusuke Asakura (Co-founder, Signifiant) Nobuhiro Ariyasu (Entrepreneur / Angel Investor) Kiyo Kobayashi (Cofounder / CEO, Chomp) Masaki Sugiyama (Outside Director, Nikkatsu) Kotaro Chiba (Angel investor / Partner, Drone Fund) Pitch Panel Award winner: MeicalCare Station by Embrace Embrace develops a social network for physicians and nurses, named MedicalCare Station. Regarding medical practice, FAX or other methods had been conventionally used in communication between core hospitals and staffers. MedicalCare Station is a communication platform to digitalize this process where nurses can post clinical updates of each patient they are taking care of as a timeline and share them with other staffers. The platform is available for free for physicians and nurses but it’s not easy to introduce such a new tool to the medical front lines. That’s why the company has been focusing…

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese VC firm Global Brain held the its annual event called Global Brain Alliance Forum 2018 last month in Tokyo. In the pitch competition even, 10 participant startups from Japan and the rest of Japan gave excellent pitches in front of a big audience. This article introduces four award-winning teams from among them.

The judges for the Pitch Battle were as follows:

Yusuke Asakura (Co-founder, Signifiant)
Nobuhiro Ariyasu (Entrepreneur / Angel Investor)
Kiyo Kobayashi (Cofounder / CEO, Chomp)
Masaki Sugiyama (Outside Director, Nikkatsu)
Kotaro Chiba (Angel investor / Partner, Drone Fund)

Pitch Panel Award winner: MeicalCare Station by Embrace

Embrace develops a social network for physicians and nurses, named MedicalCare Station. Regarding medical practice, FAX or other methods had been conventionally used in communication between core hospitals and staffers. MedicalCare Station is a communication platform to digitalize this process where nurses can post clinical updates of each patient they are taking care of as a timeline and share them with other staffers.

The platform is available for free for physicians and nurses but it’s not easy to introduce such a new tool to the medical front lines. That’s why the company has been focusing on promoting it through lobbying medical associations across the country for five years since its launch. Their efforts paid off, and 214 medical associations (one in four of all 891 medical associations in Japan) have agreed to introduce the platform for their use. It’s also used at 34,000 nursing facilities in Japan. Based on its user base, the firm has been monetizing their business by offering a SaaS (Software as a Service) for healthcare app development to medical device / pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Audience Award winner: Fermented products utilizing unused resources by Fermenstation

Some of our readers may recall Fermenstation, the fermentation technology-focused startup based out of Japan’s northern city of Iwate, won the Aomori Mayor’s Award at the Demo Day of JR East Startup Program’s 2nd batch. The firm asks local farmers to grow rice in fallow or abandoned rice fields, refines it into rice-derived fermented ethanol, and produces cosmetic products from them. The strained lees obtained in refining process are eventually returned to rice field and thereby the firm realized a sustainable business model.

This story of fermented products utilizing unused resources attracted the Japanese market and the firm has been receiving many OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) offers from major retail dealers. For example, Akomeya Tokyo is manufactured by Fermenstation but sold as one of Sazaby League’s beauty-care product lineups under their brand. The firm also utilizes strained lees of rice in various ways; the firm sells it as distiller as it is, uses it as cattle raising feed and sells the beef from them in crowdfunding, or uses it as poultry feed for chicken and returns their fowl droppings to rice fields as fertilizer. In addition, the firm started inspection tours for consumers after receiving the attention from them, resulting in contributing to the local economy.

GBAF Award winner: Visualization of hygiene factor by Okan

Some of our readers may also recall this startup. Okan provides special refrigerators with vacuum-packaged side dishes stocked to offices and allows employees there to purchase any of them for 100 yen (about $0.91) for each. This service has been introduced in more than 1,300 offices in total, and charges monthly fees from user companies according to the number of employees. For these companies, it works as a company benefit for employees.

The team had paid attention to Herzberg’s Two-factor Theory on job satisfaction caused by motivator factors and hygiene factors, in anticipation of future decline in the labor force population which may cause bankruptcy. Of the two factors, there are few approaches to reduce turnover rates by improving the hygiene factors. The firm plans to launch a beta service that visualizes assessment or problems of hygiene factors.

GBAF Award winner: Computer vision for autonomous driving by StradVision

Korea / the U.S.-based StradVision develops the SVNet computer vision engine for autonomous driving, enabling an accurate environment recognition. SVNet is able to perform effective processing in real-time even on low-specification chipsets and to detect objects using deep learning. Since the engine does not require higher specification for chipsets, users can introduce it into autos which they already own without replacing hardware.

StradVision takes mainly on sales of the product by OEM and has been providing its service in the U.S. and China. The firm had secured funds from HDTP Technology, Hyundai Motor, LGE, and Global Brain. In May of last year, it fundraised about 8 billion won (about $7 million US) from Hyundai Mobis, Korea’s leading auto parts manufacturer.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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Japan Airlines launches $70M fund for business collaboration with startups

Japan Airlines

The Bridge 2019.01.27

See the orignal story in Japanese. Japan Airlines (JAL) announced on Thursday that it is forming a new fund focused on investing in startups in Japan and the rest of the world, called Japan Airlines Innovation Fund. Aiming to provide value propositions to various life scenes of consumers, JAL wants to create new businesses by offering comprehensive air mobility services as well as new means of transport and their user experiences through the fund. In this scheme, Silicon Valley-based Translink Capital provides deal sourcing, investment execution, and hands-on support for investees. JAL has supported startup conferences by offering complimentary miles to entrepreneurs flying aboard leveraging the airliner’s mileage program. Aiming to collaborate with 100 startups, the company launched a innovation lab facility near their their headquarters in Tokyo last May. In view of JAL’s involvement in the startup community, they have invested in iSpace, the startup behind the Hakuto team which took part in the Google-sponsored Lunar Xprize race, by participating in their series A funding round back in late 2017. In addition, JAL introduced Comuoon hearing assistance device to their customer counter on a trial basis back in 2015. Comuoon won the Morning Pitch yearend edition in 2017. Looking…

See the orignal story in Japanese.

Japan Airlines (JAL) announced on Thursday that it is forming a new fund focused on investing in startups in Japan and the rest of the world, called Japan Airlines Innovation Fund. Aiming to provide value propositions to various life scenes of consumers, JAL wants to create new businesses by offering comprehensive air mobility services as well as new means of transport and their user experiences through the fund. In this scheme, Silicon Valley-based Translink Capital provides deal sourcing, investment execution, and hands-on support for investees.

JAL has supported startup conferences by offering complimentary miles to entrepreneurs flying aboard leveraging the airliner’s mileage program. Aiming to collaborate with 100 startups, the company launched a innovation lab facility near their their headquarters in Tokyo last May.

In view of JAL’s involvement in the startup community, they have invested in iSpace, the startup behind the Hakuto team which took part in the Google-sponsored Lunar Xprize race, by participating in their series A funding round back in late 2017. In addition, JAL introduced Comuoon hearing assistance device to their customer counter on a trial basis back in 2015. Comuoon won the Morning Pitch yearend edition in 2017.

Looking at how the Japanese aviation industry working with startups, All Nippon Airways (ANA) has launched their own crowdfunding site as well as hosting a global avatar development competition in addition to sponsoring startup conferences. They have participated in the series C round of space debris removal startup Astroscale, and recently announced the participation in α Trackers (Alpha Trackers), the research consortium led by Japanese VC Global Brain for corporate venture capitals.

From a global point of view, Lufthansa Innovation Hub, Lufthansa Cargo, and Star Alliance have respectively partnered with Plug and Play to explore collaboration with startups.

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Japan’s Grooves raises $920K from Halal fund to expand recruiting business in Malaysia

Masaru Ikeda 2019.01.24

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Grooves, the company best known for its engineer recruiting platform called Forkwell, announced today that it has fundraised $920,000 from Inspire PNB Partners. Inspire PNB is the joint venture between Japanese investment firm Inspire and Malaysia’s state-run firm Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), managing a Sharia-compliant private equity fund called PNB-INSPiRE Ethical Fund 1 (formed in April of 2014, valued around 6 billion yen = $54.8 million US). The fund has invested in Japanese private cloud platform developer Keepdata and deep learning solution startup Abeja. For Grooves, the funding at this time is seen making the amount raised to date total at more than 1 billion yen (about $9 million US). The company has raised from Inspire, the parent company of Inspire PNB, in the 200 million yen funding round back in March of 2017. Grooves established its Malay subsidiary called Grooves Asia Sdn.Bhd. last year when their CEO Hiro Ikemi moved to Kuala Lumpur to more closely working with businesses in Malaysia. It’s their Japanese business entity who secured funding at this time but the local subsidiary will be more focused on business expansion in Malaysia in partnership with PNB Group. Since the…

From the left: Hiro Ikemi (CEO, Grooves), Datin Paduka Kartini (Deputy President, Strategic Investment, Permodalan Nasional Berhad)
Image credit: Grooves

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Grooves, the company best known for its engineer recruiting platform called Forkwell, announced today that it has fundraised $920,000 from Inspire PNB Partners. Inspire PNB is the joint venture between Japanese investment firm Inspire and Malaysia’s state-run firm Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), managing a Sharia-compliant private equity fund called PNB-INSPiRE Ethical Fund 1 (formed in April of 2014, valued around 6 billion yen = $54.8 million US). The fund has invested in Japanese private cloud platform developer Keepdata and deep learning solution startup Abeja.

For Grooves, the funding at this time is seen making the amount raised to date total at more than 1 billion yen (about $9 million US). The company has raised from Inspire, the parent company of Inspire PNB, in the 200 million yen funding round back in March of 2017. Grooves established its Malay subsidiary called Grooves Asia Sdn.Bhd. last year when their CEO Hiro Ikemi moved to Kuala Lumpur to more closely working with businesses in Malaysia. It’s their Japanese business entity who secured funding at this time but the local subsidiary will be more focused on business expansion in Malaysia in partnership with PNB Group.

Grooves’ Malay subsidiary / office is located in WORQ, a co-working space in Kuala Lumpur.
Image credit: Grooves

Since the launch of the Malay subsidiary, Grooves has been focused on international business not only in Malaysia but also in other Asian markets. The firm got approval from Tokyo Labor Bureau to launch a recruiting agency business for so-called “highly-skilled professionals” from Korea and Taiwan. The geographical coverage is expected to expand in the future.

In Islamic countries, since Sharia (Islamic law) prohibits acceptance of specific interest or fees for loaning money, hedge funds or other financing schemes common in Western countries are unlikely to be accepted. Meanwhile, Malaysia has now become an Islamic finance hub offering Sharia-compliant financing schemes. Startups receiving funds from such schemes can expand their services into Islamic markets more smoothly, just as Halal-approved restaurants can.

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Pitch Panel Award winner: MeicalCare Station by Embrace

Audience Award winner: Fermented products utilizing unused resources by Fermenstation

GBAF Award winner: Visualization of hygiene factor by Okan

GBAF Award winner: Computer vision for autonomous driving by StradVision

Japan Airlines launches $70M fund for business collaboration with startups

Japan’s Grooves raises $920K from Halal fund to expand recruiting business in Malaysia

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