News

news

Japanese gourmet media startup Favy raises $9M, with 67M MAU closing in on big players

Favy
MyNavi

Takeshi Hirano 2018.09.29

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Favy, the Japanese startup behind a comprehensive food marketing service including gourmet media, has just announced that it raised 1 billion yen (about $8.8 million) from Mynavi, a Japanese leading human resource informaiton portal provider. The two companies formed a capital tie-up and began cooperation in marketing service provision / recruitment business for nationwide restaurant chains. Specifically, Mynavi will introduce restaurant clients who are interested in recruitment to Favy, utilizing Mynavi’s promotion network consisting of 1,000 staffers and 60 bases all over Japan. They are to jointly develop recruitment branding products that target restaurant users as well. At the same timing, Favy announced the launch of Favy Store, a service store for retailers. Boasting 67 million MAU closing in on big players It is newsworthy that Favy succeeded in this large-scale fundraising using an interesting business model, upon which we have been focused since this company started up. As borne out by the investor list consisting of a single company — Mynavi — Favy’s main purpose this time was business tie-up rather than money. According to Takumi Takanashi, CEO of Favy, the number of its staffer has been increased to 210 in which…

favy_mynavi_002 — L to R: Kazuma Mori (Manager of Domestic Business Development Dpt. of Mynavi), Takumi Takanashi (CEO of Favy)

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Favy, the Japanese startup behind a comprehensive food marketing service including gourmet media, has just announced that it raised 1 billion yen (about $8.8 million) from Mynavi, a Japanese leading human resource informaiton portal provider.

The two companies formed a capital tie-up and began cooperation in marketing service provision / recruitment business for nationwide restaurant chains. Specifically, Mynavi will introduce restaurant clients who are interested in recruitment to Favy, utilizing Mynavi’s promotion network consisting of 1,000 staffers and 60 bases all over Japan.

They are to jointly develop recruitment branding products that target restaurant users as well. At the same timing, Favy announced the launch of Favy Store, a service store for retailers.

Boasting 67 million MAU closing in on big players

It is newsworthy that Favy succeeded in this large-scale fundraising using an interesting business model, upon which we have been focused since this company started up. As borne out by the investor list consisting of a single company — Mynavi — Favy’s main purpose this time was business tie-up rather than money. According to Takumi Takanashi, CEO of Favy, the number of its staffer has been increased to 210 in which restaurant staffers account for half while its marketing system strengthened to 50 staffers.

Mynavi has not handled food-related contents previously so apparently was in need of a touch-point for its operational portfolio. Mynavi has restaurant accounts based on recruitment of part-time staffers and it is easy to understand that the firm aims to upsell by leveraging such business.

One aspect to scrutinize regarding this news is the increase in Favy’s business reach. Although a simple comparison is impossible with only 67 million MAU (monthly active users) announced this time, as for the status of the two key gourmet media players in Japan, Tabelog has 154.19 million monthly users with the total number of online reservations reaching 40 million (as of June 2018) while Gnavi has 65 million monthly unique users and a membership is 16.05 million (as of July 2018). Figures for both are quoted from their financial result documents for the third quarter of 2019.

Favy plans and operates showcase retailers

favy_002 — Favy’s Takanashi (left) with Seven Dreamers CEO Shin Sakane (right)

It is difficult to explain Favy’s business model. I had tried to analyze it in the previous round last year, but it does not remain in the same place as in the past. Its core service is Favy Page, the marketing package for restaurants. It is a SaaS (software as a service) model which provides various marketing functions such as introduction article published on Favy, listing advertisement agency, guarantee for no-notice reservation cancellations and customer management, charging 15,000 to 50,000 yen (about $130 to $440) monthly according to service plans. The firm has disclosed that 30,000 restaurant users are using this service, including those who using free plans.

In addition, the firm conducts a showcase-like business with real retailers as introduced before. The aim of this service is to develop business model for restaurants. The firm announced this September that it is going to establish a “co-working space for chefs” wherein their knowledge bases can be integrated.

favy_mynavi_001 — Co-working space focusing on food business in Ginza, scheduled to open soon.

Favi Store, the new service announced this time, is also a part of the comprehensive marketing service providing chefs or companies who want to start restaurant business with know-how of restaurant management in the digital marketing era, such as automation of restaurant management, promotion, recruitment, business style planning, hardware purchase or choice of property. Takanashi called it PaaS (platform as a service) for restaurants. Anyway, the firm has acquired Big Data about what 67 million monthly users want to eat, as an entrance into the following services.

If its data tracking is combined with retailers’ visitor data including location or beacon information in the future, this service can likely become an absolute platform connecting readers and restaurants effectively. In fact, I heard ideas beyond that and will introduce it next time. In the Japanese gourmet media field, major players like Tabelog, Gnavi and Hot Pepper have long held dominance but it seems certain that Favy will gradually assert its presence.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japan’s Open8 raises $13M, launches AI-powered video creation tool for business

Takeshi Hirano 2018.09.28

See the original story in Japanese. There are many “seeing is believing” cases in reality; children smiling while participating in a social activity, a small restaurant’s much-vaunted new menu, or marketing documents and employee training manuals that are difficult to explain with words. A cloud solution which can realize these things was launched this month. The keyword for the service is AI (artificial intelligence). Tokyo-based Open8, providing the LeTronc video magazine and some video ad network services, earlier this month launched the AI-powered video creating SaaS (software as a service) named Video Brain.It charges 150,000 yen (about $1,300) monthly, in addition to requiring an annual contract for allowing users to create 20 videos a month maximum. At the same time the company announced it had raised money from WiL (World Innovation Lab) and Mirai Sousei Fund (by SPARX Group). The raised amount is 1.5 billion yen (about $13 million) and the investment ratio was not disclosed. The total secured amount of Open8 reached 4 billion yen (about $36 million). The firm also announced that it had invited Hiroto Ebata who is known for marketing promotion activities of Coca Cola Japan as its video business advisor. See also: Open8, Japan’s…

videobrain_featuredimage — Video Brain
Image credit: Open8

See the original story in Japanese.

There are many “seeing is believing” cases in reality; children smiling while participating in a social activity, a small restaurant’s much-vaunted new menu, or marketing documents and employee training manuals that are difficult to explain with words. A cloud solution which can realize these things was launched this month.

The keyword for the service is AI (artificial intelligence). Tokyo-based Open8, providing the LeTronc video magazine and some video ad network services, earlier this month launched the AI-powered video creating SaaS (software as a service) named Video Brain.It charges 150,000 yen (about $1,300) monthly, in addition to requiring an annual contract for allowing users to create 20 videos a month maximum.

At the same time the company announced it had raised money from WiL (World Innovation Lab) and Mirai Sousei Fund (by SPARX Group). The raised amount is 1.5 billion yen (about $13 million) and the investment ratio was not disclosed. The total secured amount of Open8 reached 4 billion yen (about $36 million). The firm also announced that it had invited Hiroto Ebata who is known for marketing promotion activities of Coca Cola Japan as its video business advisor.

See also:

The Video Brain platform has developed for enterprise users based on the LeTronc auto-video creation engine LeTronc AI which was launched last October. Analyzing user’s viewing patterns based on retrieval query and others, LeTronc AI automatically edits enormous number of video/ photo materials to match them with each desired scene. With this engine, the firm has been creating and providing 1,000 videos monthly with just 70 staffers.

The platform provides the necessary solution especially focusing on video material editing. Specifically, users upload video / photo materials and a manuscript (text) of the story from browser and choose a template. The platform recognizes the meaning of each uploaded content, and automatically matches them and edits a video content.

open8-videobrain-2 — Video Brain’s dashboard
Image credit: Open8

There were already similar services for video creation, but users had to input materials manually and edit the text themselves. The platform eliminated the need for all of these processes. As I took a look at the demonstration, it seemed fantastic that all materials were uploaded just by drag-and-drop and then a video was created by one-click only. The firm began test operation targeting enterprise users this June; it is used for creating video material for news in a major newspaper company or employee training video / sales proposal materials in a restaurant chain.

open8-videobrain-1 — Open 8 Yukou Takamatsu

The topics of auto-video creation had come up frequently. For example, I have heard of a concept combining crowdsourcing and AI such as auto-creation / suggestion of subtitle, and that seems to be close to the platform

What matters here is the quality of created products. To be honest, the platform cannot do everything. As Open 8 CEO Yukou Takamatsu mentioned, this service has works in and out of its line. It is good at video creation in which atmosphere is valued such as image video advertisement but weak at video editing in which strict content is required such as business manuals. However, Takamatsu said that he aims to change the communication of enterprises by launching this solution:

Clients with huge budget can focus on planning and photographing so that they can create high-quality videos, of course. However, small retailers or intra-company communication are lacking in such power.

For example, a restaurant chain has been carrying out social contribution activities (corporate social responsibility; CSR) with its team consisting of a few members. They have many photo / video materials about underprivileged children, but it takes much time to edit them. It would cost hundreds of thousands of yen if ordering video editing production.

I thought that the speed of business and the quality of intra-company communication would be improved by making this process efficient. The information which was hard to be understood turns into something providing a strong impression. I would like to meet such requests from companies.

The firm has its R&D department in Singapore, and will conduct development of AI, speech recognition / transcription function and improvement of editing accuracy.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japanese smart wheelchair Whill secures $45M to expand into North America, Europe

whill

SCORE 1,340

Takeshi Hirano 2018.09.24

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Whill ( US / Europe ) developing personal mobility aids announced on Tuesday that it has successfully raised 5 billion yen (around $44.5M US) from 13 companies: SBI Investment, Daiwa Securities Group, Whiz Partners, Mistletoe, Endeavor Catalyst, Japan Material Technologies Corporation, ES Networks, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, Eight Roads Ventures, Nippon Venture Capital, DG Innovation, and Mizuho Capital. This brings the total amount raised by the company to 8 billion yen (about $71.2M US). Details about this round, such as investment ratios were not released. The funds procured this time around will be used to further expand the sales of Model Ci in the U.S. and Canada, and to begin sales throughout Europe starting with the U.K. and Italy. See also: Tokyo Motor Show 2015: Lots of Misses, Nuts & Bolts but a Lot Amiss Japan’s wheelchair startup Whill raises over $10,000 on Kickstarter in six hours In conversation with Whill, the Japanese personal mobility startup on a roll in Silicon Valley Next-gen Japanese wheelchair startup, Whill, closes seed funding with a total of $1,750,000 Next-gen Japanese wheelchair startup raises $1M from 500 Startups and other…

WHILL_Satoshi-Sugie — Satoshi Sugie, Co-founder and CEO of Whill

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Whill ( US / Europe ) developing personal mobility aids announced on Tuesday that it has successfully raised 5 billion yen (around $44.5M US) from 13 companies: SBI Investment, Daiwa Securities Group, Whiz Partners, Mistletoe, Endeavor Catalyst, Japan Material Technologies Corporation, ES Networks, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, Eight Roads Ventures, Nippon Venture Capital, DG Innovation, and Mizuho Capital.

This brings the total amount raised by the company to 8 billion yen (about $71.2M US). Details about this round, such as investment ratios were not released. The funds procured this time around will be used to further expand the sales of Model Ci in the U.S. and Canada, and to begin sales throughout Europe starting with the U.K. and Italy.

See also:

Whill is a mobility product that supports the elderly and people with disabilities affecting mobility. The company began selling its first product Model A in 2014 in the U.S., and began sales of its second product Model Ci in April of last year.

Additionally, the company has plans to launch a MaaS (Mobility as a SaaS) platform business which will further strengthen its organization. Whill, which previously focused on individual sales, will position itself as a “mobile service” to be offered to businesses with users who may have issues with mobility, such as sports facilities and airports.

We interviewed CEO Satoshi Sugie and asked him about the details of this new project to promote development. (Questions are in bold, responses are by Sugie.)

First of all, in regards to the new model being sold. How is it different to the first model?

It’s light. It can be broken down into three parts and packed into a car. Because most people use a car to get around in the US, we adapted to meet these needs. On the flipside, the power is weaker than the first model. And with the price as well, the first model sold for nearly 1 million yen (about $8,900 US) while this new model is less than half that at 450K yen (around $4,000 US).

In terms of purchasing, I think depending on the country there may be subsidies available…

Not in the US. In Japan the entire cost may be born depending on the insurance for people with disabilities. Also, the elderly are eligible for subsidies that cover 10% of monthly rental fees.

And the sales performance thus far?

Of the numbers we’ve published, the first model has sold over 1000 units. We are aiming to sell 10,000 units of the second model.

How about the user feedback?

(One user who has difficulty walking) shared that they are able to take their dog for a walk now. The second model can fit in a car, so we already have feedback that it could be used in emergencies.

I’d like to ask about the new service. With MaaS, there are companies aiming for a mobility platform and talking about “ID business (user billing)” and “data sales”, but what about Whill’s strategy?

I describe it as becoming public transportation for sidewalks. It’s a so-called sidewalk version of Uber. Our first step is to offer services at airports and amusement parks.

Can you elaborate?

Until now, the staff has supported people who have difficulty moving, like the elderly, in public facilities like airports. But in the United States, such operation costs are becoming a burden.

I see. Whill will be placed in these areas for people to share. In the press release it says users are free to use them and they will be equipped with automatic driving technology to return them after use. Are you developing this technology yourselves?

Usually I would answer this with, “No comment,” but we plan to work with partner companies to promote the R&D of automatic driving and the return function, etc.

It seems like many companies are developing automatic driving mobility.

That may be true–for carrying luggage, but I believe we are the only company developing mobility aids that carry humans, while simultaneously developing software.

Mobility sharing services for bicycles and recently for scooters with Bird, are gaining popularity. Any plans to take to the streets?

Currently, none.

Any thoughts on the business side of things?

We aren’t just selling mobility aids, but a fleet management service that can be controlled by the facility. We also provide options such as maintenance. It’s a so-called monthly subscription service.

Any plans to expand the business to general users?

It may be possible at amusement parks.

Thank you.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

news

B2B marketplace for deadstock apparel wins Starburst accelerator 5th Demoday in Tokyo

Masaru Ikeda 2018.09.23

See the original story in Japanese. StarBurst is the Tokyo-based seed accelerator managed by ProtoStar. The accelerator held its 5th Demo Day in Tokyo in late August, and eight teams gave pitches in the event. According to Yusuke Kurishima, CCO of ProtoStar, the total number of startups turned out from the accelerator is 114 (it does not match the number of teams that gave pitches in the past Demo Days) and the total amount that they have funraised is 7.62 billion yen (about $68 million) as of August 25th. This article introduces the services and the pitch contents of the eight teams including prize winners. The judges for the pitch competition were as follows. The sponsor prizes were given based on each company’s judgment result. Tetujiro Nakagaki, Draper Nexus Ventures Yukihiro Yoshida, Island Crea / Outside Director of Prototar Goushi Yamaguchi, COO of Protostar Top Prize / Awesome Award by Framgia / Ernst & Young ShinNihon Award: Smasell by Wefabrik Supplemental prizes: Amazon gift card worth 30,000 yen by ProtoStar Comlimientary invitation to Hanoi, Vietnam by Framgia Free use right for 3 months of EY E-learning service by Ernst & Young ShinNihon Wefabrik provides Smasell, the B2B (business to business)…

See the original story in Japanese.

StarBurst is the Tokyo-based seed accelerator managed by ProtoStar. The accelerator held its 5th Demo Day in Tokyo in late August, and eight teams gave pitches in the event.

According to Yusuke Kurishima, CCO of ProtoStar, the total number of startups turned out from the accelerator is 114 (it does not match the number of teams that gave pitches in the past Demo Days) and the total amount that they have funraised is 7.62 billion yen (about $68 million) as of August 25th.

This article introduces the services and the pitch contents of the eight teams including prize winners. The judges for the pitch competition were as follows. The sponsor prizes were given based on each company’s judgment result.

Tetujiro Nakagaki, Draper Nexus Ventures
Yukihiro Yoshida, Island Crea / Outside Director of Prototar
Goushi Yamaguchi, COO of Protostar

Top Prize / Awesome Award by Framgia / Ernst & Young ShinNihon Award: Smasell by Wefabrik

Supplemental prizes:

Amazon gift card worth 30,000 yen by ProtoStar
Comlimientary invitation to Hanoi, Vietnam by Framgia
Free use right for 3 months of EY E-learning service by Ernst & Young ShinNihon

Wefabrik provides Smasell, the B2B (business to business) trading platform for dead stock of apparel products. It allows purchasers to buy products at lower prices than market prices and exhibitors to reduce the disposal cost without asking industrial waste disposers. In the world, 23 billion deadstock wears are disposed annually, and the team aims to solve the cost / time / environmental load problems through the reduction of the disposal amount. As merits of B2B service, purchasers can demand samples for exhibitors or negotiate the price on the platform.

Since launch back in summer of 2017, the number of registered business operators has exceeded 1,500 including major apparel makers, general merchandise stores, discount stores and department stores. The platform allows quick purchase as well as payment by introducing a mega-bank’s escrow service and has been establishing a global logistics scheme jointly with a major distribution company to support cross-border trading. The team aims to raise some 500 million yen (about $4.5 million) by next February and has been looking for local agencies as its business support area to expand into.

2nd Place / Net Protections Award: Alice.style by PeaceTecLab

Supplemental prizes:

Amazon gift card worth 10,000 yen by ProtoStar
Use right of account service including NP Late Payment free of fixed charge By Net Protections

PeaceTecLab develops the C2C (commerce to commerce) sharing platform Alice.style, which allows individual / enterprise users to lend out products to individual users and carries out matching optimization based on its own algorithm. The team is led by Rieko Muramoto, who served Jiji Press and held various positions such as professor, School of Business Administration at Senshu University or Chairperson of Gala, and after that involved in the foundation of the video distribution service BeeTV at Avex Digital. Hitomi Sato, Muramoto’s colleague at BeeTV, was appointed COO of the team.

Alice.style links a borrower to a lender having a certain product to provide use experience without owning it in various situations: to experience a product which a borrower pressed the like switch on SNS, to experience a premium product before purchase, or to lease bulky product which cannot be used every day. Enterprise users can also use the platform as a channel to increase their business opportunity by making consumers to recognize and purchase their products. This service targets female in 20 to 40, and the team plans to expand its business nature into various style such as the subscription rental or the household appliance lease service in the future.

3rd Place / 31 Ventures Award: BeLiving by Tokyo Hearth

Supplemental Prizes:

Amazon gift card worth 10,000 yen by ProtoStar
10 tickets of Art Aquarium 2018 by 31 Ventures

The rate of vacancy of rental houses in Tokyo is 34.3% (according to real estate research company TAS), while 39.3% of rental house owners refuse foreigner move-ins. There are some background factors with this gap: differences in language or culture, absence of guarantor in Japan, need of contract / payment based on paper document, or lack of furnished apartment. BeLiving, the apartment rental platform developed by Tokyo Hearth, enables foreigners living in or visiting Japan to rent houses easily and provides owners to improve their occupancy rate.

Utilizing the Explanation of Important Matters Using IT related to leasing transactions, the service started full-scale operation in Japan last year, BeLiving lowering the hurdle of rent contract for foreigners by providing various functions such as customer collection online, online guarantee (guaranteed by Tokyo Hearth) and interview recordings with translation.

The team took the market-in type approach which is the merchandise design based on a concept of ideal living style, not the product-out type launching products to meet the existing demand, and therefore their renovated share-house or community space also gained popularity.

The team has been conducting PoC (proof of concept) with Daito Trust Construction and creating a community space within a Nomura Securities-owned building in Shinjuku Ward after won the Demo Day of the Nomura’s accelerator program VOYAGER 2nd batch.

ENTX Award: Spoby by CuvEyes

Supplemental prizes:

mora card worth 10,000 yen and ENTX T-shirts

CuvEyes focuses on the synergy of healthcare and entertainment, aiming to solve health problems targeting consumers, as well as management problems targeting government / enterprises, plus social problems.

This February, the team launched Spoby, the app allowing users to be sponsored by enterprises through gamificated exercise, directed at user’s performance itself without common advertisement insertion of sports products using celebrities. The app was ranked first of the free app ranking of AppStore twice.

In Spoby, users can acquire the ‘sweat jewel’ like sapphire / ruby / emerald / crystal according to exercise quantity or type, recognized by acceleration sensor and GPS of their smartphone. The enterprise users wanting to promote their products can set the sweat jewel conditions for rewards to be satisfied according to their targeting user layer. When a user satisfies the condition, enterprise user pays 500 yen ($4.5)per person as sponsorship fee.

The app supports a function to create news featuring users themselves. Its sponsors currently include Suntory, Kao, Keihan Electric Railway, JINS, Nestle, JTB and Chinese restaurant chain Osaka Osho.

IBM BlueHub Award: SpaceR by SpaceR

Supplemental prize:

free use right of IBM Cloud by IBM BlueHub

SpaceR develops an connected locker for delivery use unlockable by smartphone. Conventional smart lockers require long deprecation period due to the high cost, so that they are installed at limited spots such as stationfronts. The spread of open-type delivery boxes which can be used by multiple transportation companies has not been advancing well in Japan due to the cost and specification limitations also. SpaceR approaches these problems from the aspect of IoT (Internet of Things) introduction for lockers.

Users can use this IoT locker for free for the first two hours and be charged 240 yen ($2.1) every 6 hours, and the revenue is shared among landowner, SPACER and maintenance operator. If private shops installed the locker at storefront, they can transfer products outside business hours, so that improvement of convenience and sales can be expected in addition to the usage fee. The team has been conducting PoC at Tokyo Nihonbashi Tower, Central Library of Kinki University, Chiba University Hospital and Soshigaya Okura Shopping Street, cultivating new installment spots.

Audience Award: Tlunch by Mellow

Supplemental prize:

Amazon Echo by Amazon Web Services

Tlunch is the food truck platform to match truck owners with shop setting up places such as vacant space of buildings. The platform ties up with owners of 80 buildings located in Roppongi, Akasaka or Yokohama, and 400 food trucks had used it. It is troublesome for truck owners to negotiate with each building owner for shop set-up, and Tlunch carries out all of the processes on behalf.

Tlunch charges 15% of the sales to food trucks as commission fee, and 5% will be paid to building owners. Tlunch arranges different food trucks at the same place each day of a week to avoid users’ boring, and also provides sales analysis / shop setting management system or customer collection app to truck owners. As a result, it achieved 144% growth rate of the sales for each food truck compared with the previous year.

Tlunch aims to diversify its business by expanding the service coverage to the nail salon or market field other than food, and has started providing trucks with massage service since this July. The team won the startup catapult of ICC Summit Fukuoka 2018 held this February.

The following two teams were highly evaluated by the judges and the audience but unfortunately missed prizes.

Shuuumatu-Worker by Shuuumatu-Worker

Shuuumatu-Worker is the staff agency service for side business workers who work 10 to 15 hours in a week. As the Japanese social situation promoting the parallel career or the work style reform provided tailwind for the service, the number of registered users is 3,500 and the cumulative number of clients reached 121 since its launch in July of 2017.

On the other hand, the one-year operation of the service focusing on side business revealed some problems: workers’ skills in main job are sometimes not well-received in side business, motivation management is important due to the limitation of work time, or company users lack know-how of the side business worker management. The team is going to publish ‘guidance for utilization of side business workers having immediate fighting strength’ summarizing the acquired know-hows.

Souco by Souco

Enterprises generally stock a certain amount of products in their own storage to handle with the gap of supply and demand or quick delivery, but the demand of products changes significantly due to the influences of season, climate, or social situation. When the amount of stock exceeded the storage capacity, enterprises have to rent external storages but need to inquire about each storage specifications by telephone and exchange documents concerning contract or cost estimation. In addition, there are many limitations in the use condition of each storage such as minimum use period, minimum use area or payment of deposit.

Souco built an online database of storages which matches storage lenders and borrowers. It simplified all required processes and enabled to start using storage easily within three days from application at the shortest even in short-term / small-lot use. Additionally, it reduced the rental cost by an average of 30% by introducing flexible contract content. Since its launch, the total area of dealt storage exceeded 200,000 tsubo (about 660,000 square meters) and the number of registered user companies is almost reaching 100. The team aims for business development in China and ASEAN countries in the future.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Payke mobile shopping assistant for foreign visitors in Japan raises $9 million

Payke

Masaru Ikeda 2018.09.23

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo- and Okinawa-based Payke, the Japanese startup behind a mobile shopping assistant app ( iOS / Android ) for foreign visitors to Japan under the same name, annouced last week that it has raised 1 billion yen (nearly $9M US) in its latest round. This round was led by Eight Roads Ventures Japan with participatin from SBI Investment, Okinawa Development Finance Corporation, SMBC Venture Capital, and Intage Open Innovation Fund (jointly managed by Intage Holdings and SBI Investment). This is the third round for Payke following one in June of 2017. The total amount raised including this third round is 1.22 billion yen (around $11M US). Founded in Naha, Okinawa in November of 2014, Payke launched the mobile app a year later. Designed for foreign visitors shopping in Japan, it can display product information in 7 languages (English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese) by simply scanning the barcode of what they want to check. Foreign visitors to Japan make up more than 95% of the app’s users, and it has been downloaded approximately 700,000 times (as of August 2018). Summed up with third party services using Payke’s multilingual product database…

payke_featuredimage — Payke
Image credit: Payke

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo- and Okinawa-based Payke, the Japanese startup behind a mobile shopping assistant app ( iOS / Android ) for foreign visitors to Japan under the same name, annouced last week that it has raised 1 billion yen (nearly $9M US) in its latest round. This round was led by Eight Roads Ventures Japan with participatin from SBI Investment, Okinawa Development Finance Corporation, SMBC Venture Capital, and Intage Open Innovation Fund (jointly managed by Intage Holdings and SBI Investment).

This is the third round for Payke following one in June of 2017. The total amount raised including this third round is 1.22 billion yen (around $11M US).

Founded in Naha, Okinawa in November of 2014, Payke launched the mobile app a year later. Designed for foreign visitors shopping in Japan, it can display product information in 7 languages (English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese) by simply scanning the barcode of what they want to check. Foreign visitors to Japan make up more than 95% of the app’s users, and it has been downloaded approximately 700,000 times (as of August 2018). Summed up with third party services using Payke’s multilingual product database via API, the company’s platform is now being used by 3.4 million people in 132 countries (as of September 2018).

Payke is monetizing primarily through B2B dealings for now. Their clients (mainly cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies) have the ability to customize the content introductions in multiple languages which the Payke users see when they inquire after the product, and it is also possible to see which product was inquired after and where it was on the analytics screen. Up to now, around 1,200 Japanese companies have used the service.

payke-tablet-donki-singapore-100am — A “Payke Tablet” installed at Don Quixote 100AM store in Singapore
Image credit: Payke

Payke will use the funds raised this time around to focus on two main projects.

One is expanding the sales of the Payke Tablet, which has been installed in stores like Singapore’s Don Quixote (see above). One tablet is capable of providing product information in 7 languages and costs 3,800 yen (about $34 US) per month. It can be installed in the store itself. Customers can use the Payke Tablet to scan a barcode and browse the product information in the language that feels most comfortable for them. In addition to improving customer satisfaction, it saves the store the cost of labor for store clerks that speak multiple languages. Payke initially produced 1,000 Payke Tablets, but as the stock has already ran out, it will produce the next lot and introduce them to retail companies such as drug stores and supermarkets.

The other project consists of adding a function that allows foreign visitors to make a repeat purchase even after they have returned home. Since there is a record of which items the user inquired about on Payke, the company can then use that information to guide users to shop it online. Currently, Payke is testing the work flow of repeat purchase focusing on users in some areas of Southeast Asia. More information will become available when the service is launched full-scale.

Since Payke can acquire location information when a user inquires about product information, it can also distribute the information using push notifications within a specific area. Last week, when the Hokkaido Eastern Iburi Earthquake Hokkaido Eastern Iburi Earthquake struck, the company provided evacuation and rescue information to users in disaster affected areas free of charge in seven languages.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

news

Japan’s HiNative Q&A app for language learning hits 3.4M registered users, raises $6M

SCORE 1,196

Takeshi Hirano 2018.09.13

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Lang-8, the company behind a Q&A app for language learning called HiNative, announced on Wednesday that it has fundraised 650 million yen (around $5.8 million US) from YJ Capital, Daiwa Corporate Investment, and FFG Venture Business Partners, along with individual investor Kotaro Chiba. The payment was completed in August of this year. Other details, such as the investment ratios, were not released. As of August 2018 there are 3.41 million registered users on the HiNative app. This is nearly 17 times the amount related 2 years ago when we interviewed the company. According to Lang-8 CEO Yangyang Xi the current number of questions posed has reached 8.54 million and the number of responses totals 27,760,000. These numbers have also increased nearly tenfold compared to two years ago. See also: Japan’s HiNative, Q&A app for language learning, secures $2M to boost user growth Much as Stack Overflow and Yahoo Answers, it is desirable for Q&A services that provide open answers to offer both the “flow experience” where responses can appear immediately and the “stock experience” where answers close to a users’ query pop up on demand after searching. To elaborate on such services, when…

hinative-yangyang-xi — Lang-8 CEO Yangyang Xi at his new office in Ebisu, Tokyo
Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Lang-8, the company behind a Q&A app for language learning called HiNative, announced on Wednesday that it has fundraised 650 million yen (around $5.8 million US) from YJ Capital, Daiwa Corporate Investment, and FFG Venture Business Partners, along with individual investor Kotaro Chiba. The payment was completed in August of this year. Other details, such as the investment ratios, were not released.

As of August 2018 there are 3.41 million registered users on the HiNative app. This is nearly 17 times the amount related 2 years ago when we interviewed the company. According to Lang-8 CEO Yangyang Xi the current number of questions posed has reached 8.54 million and the number of responses totals 27,760,000. These numbers have also increased nearly tenfold compared to two years ago.

See also:

Japan’s HiNative, Q&A app for language learning, secures $2M to boost user growth

Much as Stack Overflow and Yahoo Answers, it is desirable for Q&A services that provide open answers to offer both the “flow experience” where responses can appear immediately and the “stock experience” where answers close to a users’ query pop up on demand after searching.

To elaborate on such services, when I search for a phrase, in many cases it turns up owned content such as English speaking services on Skype. HiNative has reached a milestone because its search results are open, so the access to them will help the company to stand out in each country. Access to this web index is about 6 million unique users a month.

The company has a wide reach with 110 supported languages in 240 regions, and fast answers to questions posed via the flow experience appear in less than a few minutes. It has built up a community that is able to provide some form of an answer within an hour, and the knowhow garnered from Lang-8 is a big help here. The funds raised this time around will be used to further increase the overseas use rate, and to strengthen the management and development teams, which are currently consist of 10 employees, as well as to further strengthen the company’s marketing activities.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

news

Japanese personal data storage startup Datasign launches password manager app

Masaru Ikeda 2018.09.09

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based DataSign, a startup offering a service for managing and using personal data, officially launched the Paspit personal data management service with the aim to realize an “information bank” with a built-in PDS (Personal Data Store). Since Paspit functions as a Chrome Extension, it can only be used with Google Chrome. An information bank is a third party service that enables individuals to manage and control information by depositing their own personal data. While various online and offline services are increasing, giving personal data to these service providers involves various risks. Information could leak inadvertently, and even if a user opts out of the service, it depends on the morale of the provider as to whether personal data is deleted or not. In the information bank, the user registers their original personal data, and it is possible to control what personal data is shared with whichever service they want to use by following the user’s instructions regarding permission/denial. If a user sets up a policy of permissions/denials in advance, it is not necessary to grant permission/denial each time they use Paspit. By using an information bank, even if information leaks from services used by…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based DataSign, a startup offering a service for managing and using personal data, officially launched the Paspit personal data management service with the aim to realize an “information bank” with a built-in PDS (Personal Data Store). Since Paspit functions as a Chrome Extension, it can only be used with Google Chrome.

An information bank is a third party service that enables individuals to manage and control information by depositing their own personal data. While various online and offline services are increasing, giving personal data to these service providers involves various risks. Information could leak inadvertently, and even if a user opts out of the service, it depends on the morale of the provider as to whether personal data is deleted or not.

In the information bank, the user registers their original personal data, and it is possible to control what personal data is shared with whichever service they want to use by following the user’s instructions regarding permission/denial. If a user sets up a policy of permissions/denials in advance, it is not necessary to grant permission/denial each time they use Paspit. By using an information bank, even if information leaks from services used by the user, risks are reduced because the services do not hold the original data, and even if the service provider does not allow users to opt-out, it is possible to forcibly withdraw from said service.

See also:

Japan takes step toward enormous bank of personal data (Nikkei Asian Review)

paspit-diagram — How Paspit works (Phase 1)
Image credit: DataSign

One example of how users could use it on a daily basis is by changing from paying for services online using a credit card to using a PayPal account. The risk of a leaked credit card number decreases, and in the case of recurring charges, contracts can be forcibly canceled at the request of the user. Another daily use example could be using it to authenticate oneself with sites like Facebook and Twitter, rather than entering a user ID and password each time (reducing the risk of ID and password leakage).

In order to create an information bank with a built-in PDS, it is desirable to have various other services acting as neutral entities; also, it is necessary to redirect all kinds of personal data such as user IDs/passwords/payment information and relay it to the original service, which will take a certain amount of time to finalize. DataSign released Paspit as a password management tool that can become a foothold for opening such an information bank. The set of user ID/password for each web service is stored on Paspit, and authentication with the web service is carried out by an irreversible hash value (token) that corresponds to the user ID/password on a one-to-one basis.

The biggest feature of Paspit is that it uses web scraping when authenticating users using hash values with web services. Previously, to make web services which only accept credit card payments recognize PayPal payments or to make web services that only work with regular user ID/password authentication correspond to Facebook and Twitter authentication, even though it is a minor thing, it was necessary to integrate with some sort of API. However, since Paspit uses web scraping, basically it can correspond to all web services.

paspit-yahoo-login — An example of using Paspit to login to Yahoo Japan
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

DataSign currently works with market research big names like Intage and Video Research on development and experiments that allow companies to offer rewards when users agree to provide their personal data (opt-in). In the field of information banks, Dentsu and Mitsubishi UFG Trust and Bank, etc., have expressed interest in participating, but it is certainly significant that a “sprightly” startup is stepping up to the challenge to provide a neutral service that can release information even against competing services.

DataSign was established in September of 2016 by Yuichi Oota, who previously served as the president of Owldata, Japan’s first DMP (datamanagement platform) developer. The company has been raising funds from individual investors.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

news

Senri, sales optimization tool for FMCG firms in Africa, raises $7.2M from Japanese VCs

Masaru Ikeda 2018.09.03

See the original story in Japanese. Nairobi-based Africa Incubator (Afri-inc), the Kenyan startup offering the Senri sales optimization platform for manufacturing and distribution businesses in Africa, announced today that it has fundraised 80 million yen (about $7.2 million US) from three Japanese VC firms – Money Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures, and Anri. The funding round at this time has not been designated but appears to be a seed or pre-series A round. This follows their 40 million yen ($3.6 million US) funding back in 2015 from Japanese confectionary company Morinaga and Anri, which made the total funding raised up to 120 million yen (about $1.1 million US). Afri-inc will use the funds to strengthen the capability of the Senri platform including adding payments function in addition to expanding the platform into Nigeria, or Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest market. Since its launch back in 2015 by Kentaro Nagai who has launched and operated several projects at JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) in Africa followed by managing projects at global several strategic consulting firms, Afri-inc has been offering the Senri platform for about 50 manufacturing and distribution businesses centered on FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) including Japanese companies like Honda and Morinaga. In Africa,…

Kentaro Nagai, CEO and Founder of Africa Incubator
Image credit: Masaru Ikeda

See the original story in Japanese.

Nairobi-based Africa Incubator (Afri-inc), the Kenyan startup offering the Senri sales optimization platform for manufacturing and distribution businesses in Africa, announced today that it has fundraised 80 million yen (about $7.2 million US) from three Japanese VC firms – Money Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures, and Anri. The funding round at this time has not been designated but appears to be a seed or pre-series A round. This follows their 40 million yen ($3.6 million US) funding back in 2015 from Japanese confectionary company Morinaga and Anri, which made the total funding raised up to 120 million yen (about $1.1 million US).

Afri-inc will use the funds to strengthen the capability of the Senri platform including adding payments function in addition to expanding the platform into Nigeria, or Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest market.

Since its launch back in 2015 by Kentaro Nagai who has launched and operated several projects at JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) in Africa followed by managing projects at global several strategic consulting firms, Afri-inc has been offering the Senri platform for about 50 manufacturing and distribution businesses centered on FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) including Japanese companies like Honda and Morinaga.

Senri (click to enlarge)
Image credit: Afri-inc

In Africa, the distribution process costs more because most of consumer goods are likely to be distributed through traditional retailers, which makes it harder to build a efficient distribution network. Leveraging the SaaS model, Senri has helped users streamline their distribution process including sending and receiving orders, eventually improved their productivity by over 20%.

Nagai says,

In Africa, as the population explosively increases, it is necessary to establish and grasp the network for distributing goods. Africans basically do not trust each other in deals but there are many IT and mobile solutions that can tackle these issues.

According to Nagai, Senri originally launched in Uganda which can easily validate business performance before total roll-out because of the country’s market size, so then advanced to exlore more business opportunities. With all this, he realized streamlining distribution channels to be in high demand regardless of whichever market in the region, eventually made up his mind to start expanding into multiple markets. As long as having an English interface, the platform will not require much localization effort when expanding to other countries. With earlier market expansion efforts, they aim to be dominant in African key markets like Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania.

Afri-inc is not the only company offering this kind of service. There is definitely a competitor in Kenya, so may it in Nigeria too. But Nagai thinks the existence of competitors proves market potential. This market is still immature, so he looked confident to take the lead in every country by offering better customer care and user experience.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Activ8 raises $5.4M from Gumi, Makers Fund; expands ‘Virtual YouTuber’ business

Activ8
Upd8

SCORE 1,658

Takeshi Hirano 2018.09.02

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Activ8 (pronounced ‘activate’), the Japanese startup behind the Upd8 (pronounced ‘update’) ‘Virtual YouTuber’ supporting project, announced on Tuesday that it has raised 600 million yen (about $5.4M US) in funding from Hong Kong-based Makers Fund and Tokyo-based gaming company Gumi (TSE:3903). Details regarding the payment date and investment ratio were not disclosed. Activ8 graduated from the 3rd batch of Tokyo XR Startups and this is the third time it has raised outside funds. The company has also previously received funds from a fund managed by Gumi, and the current capital stands at 695 million yen (about $6.3M US). The company employs 40 people. Since is launch back in September of 2016, Activ8 has been supporting original “virtual talents” in the expanding field of “Virtual YouTubers”. Kizuna AI, an AI-powered virtual YouTuber backed by the company, is ranked most popular on User Local’s ranking survey based on the number of fans and total number of views. Additionally, at the end of May this year the company released the Upd8 virtual support platform. It provides support projects for virtual talent job matching and original goods sales after passing an examination conducted by the company. They…

From left: Activ8 CEO Takeshi Osaka, Masashi Nakano
Image credit: Activ8

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Activ8 (pronounced ‘activate’), the Japanese startup behind the Upd8 (pronounced ‘update’) ‘Virtual YouTuber’ supporting project, announced on Tuesday that it has raised 600 million yen (about $5.4M US) in funding from Hong Kong-based Makers Fund and Tokyo-based gaming company Gumi (TSE:3903).

Details regarding the payment date and investment ratio were not disclosed. Activ8 graduated from the 3rd batch of Tokyo XR Startups and this is the third time it has raised outside funds. The company has also previously received funds from a fund managed by Gumi, and the current capital stands at 695 million yen (about $6.3M US). The company employs 40 people.

Since is launch back in September of 2016, Activ8 has been supporting original “virtual talents” in the expanding field of “Virtual YouTubers”. Kizuna AI, an AI-powered virtual YouTuber backed by the company, is ranked most popular on User Local’s ranking survey based on the number of fans and total number of views.

Additionally, at the end of May this year the company released the Upd8 virtual support platform. It provides support projects for virtual talent job matching and original goods sales after passing an examination conducted by the company. They have 25 registered talents and 26 registered YouTube channels. In Japan this type of project is preceded by the MCN (Multi-Channel Network) developed by UUUM, and can be regarded as a derivation.

See also:

Japan’s leading YouTuber management agency Uuum files for IPO

According to Activ8’s CEO Takeshi Osaka one idea for future expansion includes developing an IP (intellectual property) licensing business. For example, Marvel has produced not only individual titles but has also combined them to form episodes under the main title of Avengers.

Osaka remarked that one strength of virtual talent lies in, “Being able to come in contact with it more frequently, rather than, say, seeing a movie once a year”. Moreover, compared to the period when global access was nearly half what it is now, he noted the borderless feature of this market.

Future plans include increasing the main virtual talent to about 20 by the end of next year, and for Upd8, which is open for general use, the company has a goal of about 1,000 members for the platform as a whole.

Even though everything is virtual, it is still a support platform for gathering talent that will have a strong influence, and since anonymity is high we thought to confirm the level of safety such as the countermeasure to prevent it from being possibly exploited by antisocial forces. Activ8 would like to protect and cherish the world of virtual talent, and unless publicly announced by the talent themselves, the company will not release identities.

Osaka says,

“In terms of judging, we are focusing on diversity. We value the culture of this market.”

With regards to registered talent, the company takes measures to make direct contact with the talent and confirm the safety. When a behavior concern arises the corresponding virtual talent takes direct responsibility and as a platform it will take action according to the code of conduct.

The funds raised this time around will go to strengthening human resources in order to accelerate the company’s virtual talent entertainment activities.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

news

Japan’s Leapfrog Ventures invests in Kenya-based sales bot and SaaS startup Biashara

Masaru Ikeda 2018.08.27

See the original story in Japanese. Three months have passed since we first covered Leapfrog Ventures which started invested in the Sub-Saharan African market, but we just got another news update for their investment from Nairobi, Kenya. The firm announced today that it has invested $50,000 US in Kenya-based Biashara Viral Gains, which develops the BiasharaBot social commerce solution suite consisting of a messenger bot and SaaS (service as a service) to help merchants streamline their sales management processes. Biashara was selected in April as one of top three startups at the Demo Day of Pangea, the Norwegian startup accelerator conducting their programs in Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt. And then the Kenyan startup successfully raised $50,000 US from the accelerator followed by Leapfrog Ventures’ investment at this time. Derived from ‘Sell’ & ‘Buy’ in Arabic, Biashara is a Swahili word meaning business. In Africa, e-commerce customers sometimes receive wrong or counterfeit items since logistic systems and customer relationship management efforts are sloppy. To address this issue, Biasharabot offers a messenger bot helping merchants encourage potential customers purchased items through recommendations from their friends and celebrities, in addition to sales management SaaS solution enabling order receiving, delivery management and payments acceptance….

Moses Korir, Co-founder of Biashara Viral Gains, delivered his pitch at the recent Pangea startup accelerator Demo Day.
Image credit: Biahara Viral Gains

See the original story in Japanese.

Three months have passed since we first covered Leapfrog Ventures which started invested in the Sub-Saharan African market, but we just got another news update for their investment from Nairobi, Kenya. The firm announced today that it has invested $50,000 US in Kenya-based Biashara Viral Gains, which develops the BiasharaBot social commerce solution suite consisting of a messenger bot and SaaS (service as a service) to help merchants streamline their sales management processes.

Biashara was selected in April as one of top three startups at the Demo Day of Pangea, the Norwegian startup accelerator conducting their programs in Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt. And then the Kenyan startup successfully raised $50,000 US from the accelerator followed by Leapfrog Ventures’ investment at this time.

Derived from ‘Sell’ & ‘Buy’ in Arabic, Biashara is a Swahili word meaning business. In Africa, e-commerce customers sometimes receive wrong or counterfeit items since logistic systems and customer relationship management efforts are sloppy. To address this issue, Biasharabot offers a messenger bot helping merchants encourage potential customers purchased items through recommendations from their friends and celebrities, in addition to sales management SaaS solution enabling order receiving, delivery management and payments acceptance.

BiasharaBot
Image credit: Biashara Viral Gains

Customer acquisition efforts and sales management activities are totally different processes, but the messenger bot engages customers and receives their orders so that it can connects these processes to make a seamless workflow from order receipt to delivery monitoring. Integrated with Kenyan mobile payments system M-Pesa and local on-demand delivery service Sendy, the suite allows merchants to call a driver by one-click to deliver items to customers.

Using the funds raised at this time, Biashara plans to develop and release plug-ins for major e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento, while attracting up to 1,000 paying merchants. Not to mention service expansion in Kenya, the company espouses an ambition to advance in Nigeria, South Africa and among other highly-populated Sub-Saharan African markets in the future.

Leapfrog Ventures CEO Takuma Terakubo told The Bridge that our recent coverage about Exuus’ funding encouraged Biashara to get in touch with Terakubo for investment. We were told that the deal was secured in as early as two weeks since the first appointment. We are looking forward to bring you another news update around Leapfrog Ventures soon.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

News

Japanese gourmet media startup Favy raises $9M, with 67M MAU closing in on big players

Boasting 67 million MAU closing in on big players

Favy plans and operates showcase retailers

Japan’s Open8 raises $13M, launches AI-powered video creation tool for business

Japanese smart wheelchair Whill secures $45M to expand into North America, Europe

B2B marketplace for deadstock apparel wins Starburst accelerator 5th Demoday in Tokyo

Top Prize / Awesome Award by Framgia / Ernst & Young ShinNihon Award: Smasell by Wefabrik

2nd Place / Net Protections Award: Alice.style by PeaceTecLab