See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based ispace, the Japanese startup behind the Hakuto team which is currently taking part in the Google-sponsored Lunar Xprize race, announced today that it has raised 10.15 billion yen (about $89.5 million US) in a series A round. ispace founder and CEO Hakamada is also known for having backed the Xprize-targeting White Label Space effort before the European participants dropped out. Participating investors in this round are Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), Development Bank of Japan (DBJ), Tokyo Broadcasting Systems Holdings (TSE:9401), Konica Minolta (TSE:4902), Shimizu Corporation (TSE:1803), Suzuki Motor (TSE:7269), Dentsu, Realtech Fund (run by Euglena SMBC Nikko Leave a Nest Capital), KDDI (TSE:9433), Japan Airlines (TSE:9201), Toppan Printing (TSE:7911) and Sparx Group (TSE:8739). This marks Japan’s biggest funding record for a series A round to date. With this funding, the company aims to mount two moon missions. The first will launch the ispace lander to lunar orbit, in order to study the moon’s surface, in late 2019. The second will put the lander upon the lunar surface to deploy multiple rovers in late 2020. Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Tokyo-based ispace, the Japanese startup behind the Hakuto team which is currently taking part in the Google-sponsored Lunar Xprize race, announced today that it has raised 10.15 billion yen (about $89.5 million US) in a series A round. ispace founder and CEO Hakamada is also known for having backed the Xprize-targeting White Label Space effort before the European participants dropped out.
Participating investors in this round are Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), Development Bank of Japan (DBJ), Tokyo Broadcasting Systems Holdings (TSE:9401), Konica Minolta (TSE:4902), Shimizu Corporation (TSE:1803), Suzuki Motor (TSE:7269), Dentsu, Realtech Fund (run by Euglena SMBC Nikko Leave a Nest Capital), KDDI (TSE:9433), Japan Airlines (TSE:9201), Toppan Printing (TSE:7911) and Sparx Group (TSE:8739).
This marks Japan’s biggest funding record for a series A round to date. With this funding, the company aims to mount two moon missions. The first will launch the ispace lander to lunar orbit, in order to study the moon’s surface, in late 2019. The second will put the lander upon the lunar surface to deploy multiple rovers in late 2020.
Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based Candee, a livestreaming startup focused on millennials such as producing the “Live Shop!” livestreaming e-commerce platform, announced today that it has raised 2.45 billion yen (about $21.5 million US) from seven companies. This round was led by Eight Roads Ventures Japan with participation from NTT docomo Ventures, Opt Ventures, Gree, Daiichi Shokai (pachinko maker in Nagoya), Mizuho Capital and YJ Capital. YJ had participated in the previous round. Details of financial terms have not been disclosed. Coinciding with this funding, the company announced that Masatoshi Fukasawa, principal of Eight Roads, was appointed to join its board of directors. The company has been developing various kinds of livestreaming content and platforms centering around three keywords: smartphone first, social and interactive. With aim to execute this vision, the company launched the Live Shop platform targeting females in their teens to twenties. According to Candee CEO Kazuki Kogishi, the company has started a trial of sports livecasting on the platform in partnership with NTT docomo. Details have not been disclosed but it appears they will offer the type of content that casual sports fans can enjoy watching from before the game…
Candee’s management team: (From left) CEO Kazuki Kogishi, CSO Yoshikatsu Yamamura, CCO Takuro Arai, external director Masatoshi Fukasawa
Tokyo-based Candee, a livestreaming startup focused on millennials such as producing the “Live Shop!” livestreaming e-commerce platform, announced today that it has raised 2.45 billion yen (about $21.5 million US) from seven companies.
This round was led by Eight Roads Ventures Japan with participation from NTT docomo Ventures, Opt Ventures, Gree, Daiichi Shokai (pachinko maker in Nagoya), Mizuho Capital and YJ Capital. YJ had participated in the previous round. Details of financial terms have not been disclosed.
Coinciding with this funding, the company announced that Masatoshi Fukasawa, principal of Eight Roads, was appointed to join its board of directors.
The company has been developing various kinds of livestreaming content and platforms centering around three keywords: smartphone first, social and interactive. With aim to execute this vision, the company launched the Live Shop platform targeting females in their teens to twenties.
According to Candee CEO Kazuki Kogishi, the company has started a trial of sports livecasting on the platform in partnership with NTT docomo. Details have not been disclosed but it appears they will offer the type of content that casual sports fans can enjoy watching from before the game until after it.
See the original story in Japanese. The Philippines-based Venteny, the startup offering employee benefits and loan services for companies, announced today that it has raised $2.3 million in a series A round from SBI Investment, SV-FINTECH Fund (jointly run by Tokyo-based web service giant Voyage Group and Silicon Valley-based VC firm SV Frontier), angel investors such as Makoto Takano and Mamoru Taniya in addition to an unnamed Singaporean firm. This follows their seed round back in February when they secured an undisclosed amount from KK Fund and Ocean Capital. Incorporated in Singapore, Venteny has been offering an outsourced perks service for companies in the Philippines since April of 2015. Employees of the companies subscribing to the service can receive rewards or discounts at 500 locations such as retail shops and other merchants. The company also offers these employees with pay-day loans. In Southeast Asian countries, people tend to need funds all of a sudden for their child’s entry into higher education or their family member’s medical treatment because they are less familiar with insurance for educational endowment or health care. Since employees in companies have few access to loans and other financial services for such a situation, they tend to…
The Philippines-based Venteny, the startup offering employee benefits and loan services for companies, announced today that it has raised $2.3 million in a series A round from SBI Investment, SV-FINTECH Fund (jointly run by Tokyo-based web service giant Voyage Group and Silicon Valley-based VC firm SV Frontier), angel investors such as Makoto Takano and Mamoru Taniya in addition to an unnamed Singaporean firm. This follows their seed round back in February when they secured an undisclosed amount from KK Fund and Ocean Capital.
Incorporated in Singapore, Venteny has been offering an outsourced perks service for companies in the Philippines since April of 2015. Employees of the companies subscribing to the service can receive rewards or discounts at 500 locations such as retail shops and other merchants. The company also offers these employees with pay-day loans.
In Southeast Asian countries, people tend to need funds all of a sudden for their child’s entry into higher education or their family member’s medical treatment because they are less familiar with insurance for educational endowment or health care. Since employees in companies have few access to loans and other financial services for such a situation, they tend to change jobs on the grounds that their wages are insufficient rather than other reasons like unmatched aptitude or low motivation for their position.
Venteny founder and CEO Junichiro Waide presents his service onstage at FIBC 2017 in Tokyo. Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Venteny offers the service to the Philippines’ leading banks, call centers and IT firms. Securing a partnership with CCAP (Contact Center Association of the Philippines) back in November, the company now can serve up to 800,000 call center representatives belonging to the institution. CCAP employs 800,000 out of all 2 million representatives working in the entire industry in the country.
Venteny wants to expand into other ASEAN markets while focusing on gaining additional values of financial services for company employees in the region.
See the original story in Japanese. There are an increasing number of people working in cafes, even among my own companions. In the past, often startups that did not have their own office space would start their business with a co-working space while startups with just a few employees would use cafes. However, recently it does not matter whether companies have office spaces or not, the number of people choosing to “cafe hop” is by no means low, and the position of co-working spaces seems to be changing with WeWork’s entry into Japan. In fact, even I, despite having an office, spend more time working in cafes. I do not want to get writer’s block as my work requires me to think and write, and it also means I have to move around to access primary information. When going someplace new, I usually do a fair amount of research into cafes with power sources and WiFi, and then about six months ago I came across the eye-opening app Café Wifi. Users launch the app while at a cafe and check in, then information such as the presence or absence of power supply, pictures showing the atmosphere of the shop, and…
Many cafes in Shibuya, Tokyo are registered with Café Wifi
There are an increasing number of people working in cafes, even among my own companions. In the past, often startups that did not have their own office space would start their business with a co-working space while startups with just a few employees would use cafes. However, recently it does not matter whether companies have office spaces or not, the number of people choosing to “cafe hop” is by no means low, and the position of co-working spaces seems to be changing with WeWork’s entry into Japan.
In fact, even I, despite having an office, spend more time working in cafes. I do not want to get writer’s block as my work requires me to think and write, and it also means I have to move around to access primary information. When going someplace new, I usually do a fair amount of research into cafes with power sources and WiFi, and then about six months ago I came across the eye-opening app Café Wifi.
Users launch the app while at a cafe and check in, then information such as the presence or absence of power supply, pictures showing the atmosphere of the shop, and additionally, if it is equipped with WiFi, and what’s more the actual measured communication speed, can all be posted together. When other users use the app to find a cafe near their whereabouts, the cafes that are easiest to do nomad work (based on high scores) are displayed in descending order.
The Dilemma of Crowding in Popular Cafes
Café Wifi’s check-in screen (left) and the function for transferring private seats (right)
Because a cafe is crowded with customers, the term “popular” may apply, but cafes that are user-friendly and in a convenient location are always crowded. As the number of nomad workers increases, the rotation rate of the seats drops, so it takes time before a seat becomes available even if you wait. A new feature released in November that may eliminate this dilemma has been made available to some users from version 0.9.42.
The new function allows users to transfer the seat they currently occupy to someone else. When this function is turned on, they can receive notifications from the person who wants to take over the seat and updates on how many minutes until they arrive. It can be used as a way to reserve seats for those that want to use a cafe, and those users that hand over their seats can accept small fees via Apple Pay, etc. Also, the app can act as a reservation function for potential customers when cafe owners make use of it.
With respect to the seats being owned by the shop, there is some resistance remaining concerning the user’s right to transfer and buy seats when the shop does not intervene. However, the role that the cafe plays will change with the times. Each cafe has a management strategy, but if you look at chain stores in the city center that do not have power supply or WiFi, it feels as if they have not caught up with the demands of the times. If the number of nomad workers increases, and the turnover rate of customers drops putting pressure on business, it may be necessary to find a new price plan and business model.
The “Host” function that allows for the concession of seats is an invitation only limited function which can be used solely in Tokyo at the present time. To receive an invitation users must be invited by someone already using Host, or must request to be added to the system on the Café Wifi website. As Café Wifi’s functions improve and community building progresses, it is expected that the Host function will become available to the public in the future.
Tokyo: Ideal place to launch a startup?
L to R: Remote Work co-founders Ben Guild, Philip Bergqvist. Remote Work develops the Café Wifi app. Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Bostonian native Ben Guild and his Swedish mate Philip Bergqvist established Remote Work, the startup behind Café Wifi. After launching last December and participating in the 14th batch of Open Network Lab’s Seed Accelerator Program this year, they continue to develop services while cafe hopping around Tokyo and doing nomad work.
Originally, I thought that they came to Japan to participate in the Open Network Lab program, but it turns out both of them had been staying in Japan preparing for entrepreneurship even before that. Their reason for choosing Tokyo is simply that Tokyo is an easy place to launch a startup.
Bergqvist says:
Food here is good, and the city is compact and convenient to do anything. Despite a well-developed city, Tokyo is cheaper than San Francisco, New York City, and London in living expenses.
It’s not so cheap as Bangkok, but urban convenience and affordability of living expenses co-exist in this city. However, my number one reason why I do startup here is food quality (laugh).
On the other hand, Guild points out that Tokyo has weak points from the view of foreign entrepreneurs.
Guild continued:
It’s unfortunate that we have to have a registered office though our company encourages nomad working style. If we were Japanese, having a real address would be pretty enough to register a company. But for foreigners like us, we have to set up an environment where we can always work to prepare for the possibility that officials may come and check. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?
the process to incorporate a company is very troublesome and difficult, but once you make it, Tokyo is very convenient to do a startup than any other city. Once I learned the procedure to launch a company here, I even could help a new foreign entrepreneur launch his or her startup in Japan (laugh).
The Remote Work team received seed money when participating in Open Network Lab’s Seed Accelerator Program, but currently it is in the process of steadily improving functions and community building and is not taking steps toward further financing at this moment. Although the company is not actively developing its marketing, it has gathered profiles of more than 100,000 cafes in 2,000 cities around the world. This amount is around 30 times more than the accumulated info half a year prior.
In the future and while continuing to improve functions, the company will add a function that will serve as a means of marketing for cafes, and it also plans to release an Android version in addition to the current iOS version. In Tokyo there is no big entrepreneurs’ hubs like Google Campus or Station F, but if foreign entrepreneurs doing nomad work flood the cafes, it could be the appearance of another unique form of a startup hub unlike what we’ve seen in Silicon Valley or Tech City in London.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Taiwan-based Health2Sync, the startup behind a diabetes management platform under the same name, announced today that it has secured $6 million US in a series B round. This round was led by Japanese insurance conglomerate Sompo Holdings (TSE:8630) with participation from existing investors: Alibaba and WI Harper. For Health2Sync, this follows their seed round $1.2 million funding from Cherubic Ventures back in June of 2014 and their series A 3 million funding back in August of 2016. During the raising of the series A round, the company participated in the 7th batch of Korea’s SparkLabs global accelerator. The Health2Sync platform helps diabetes patients to keep track of their blood-sugar level online. Their mobile apps are available in several languages on the iTunes AppStore and Google Play. Integrated with glucose meters from different makers, it aims to reduce the patient’s burden in managing and recording their blood-sugar level by automating the process. The company claims many of their users come from Taiwan followed by Japan and Hong Kong. With more than 10 million diabetes patients domestically, Japan is now ranked the 8th in the population of diabetics. We were told that the team has decided…
Health2sync team members in Taipei. CEO Ed Deng stands in the left corner on the back row. See also: Health2Sync
Taiwan-based Health2Sync, the startup behind a diabetes management platform under the same name, announced today that it has secured $6 million US in a series B round. This round was led by Japanese insurance conglomerate Sompo Holdings (TSE:8630) with participation from existing investors: Alibaba and WI Harper. For Health2Sync, this follows their seed round $1.2 million funding from Cherubic Ventures back in June of 2014 and their series A 3 million funding back in August of 2016. During the raising of the series A round, the company participated in the 7th batch of Korea’s SparkLabs global accelerator.
The Health2Sync platform helps diabetes patients to keep track of their blood-sugar level online. Their mobile apps are available in several languages on the iTunes AppStore and Google Play. Integrated with glucose meters from different makers, it aims to reduce the patient’s burden in managing and recording their blood-sugar level by automating the process. The company claims many of their users come from Taiwan followed by Japan and Hong Kong. With more than 10 million diabetes patients domestically, Japan is now ranked the 8th in the population of diabetics. We were told that the team has decided to expand into Japan because the country’s massive governmental policies and funding measures for preventing the disease.
Health2Sync CEO Ed Deng told The Bridge:
In terms of population, it is true that China and India have a larger number of diabetes patients respectively. In such emerging countries, however, people’s awareness still low while their governments are not gungho for funding to disease prevention businesses.
In Japan, the government has gradually facilitated schemes so that diseasse prevention projects and clinical care providers can receive grants or get funds. That is why we decided to expand into the Japanese market.
Health2sync’s mobile app Image credit: Health2Sync
The funds aforementioned here is not one that the Health2Sync will directly receive but it will be distributed to local municipalities and care providers across Japan by the government, and the Health2sync solution will be able to see more opportunities for use in such a supply chain. The company expects to gain access to potential users through these stakeholders, aiming to help individuals improve their eating habits and maintain their health.
Sompo Holdings has a subsidiary focused on elderly care services called Sompo Care Next. However, Deng told The Bridge that the Japanese insurance conglomerate’s intention with the latest investment is probably inventing a new insurance product through supporting Health2Sync’s roll-out in Japan rather than adopting the solution into elderly people because the platform’s primary end users are aged between 40 to 65.
Health2Sync is also discussing potential partnership with other insurance companies in Japan because the agreement with Sompo Holdings is not an exclusive deal. Because it is offered as a service providing software, Health2Sync will massively explore collaboration opportunities with glucose meter manufacturers that are likely to complement each others, in addition to working with startups in sectors like Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and telemedicine.
The company is setting up a team in Japan consisting of one business developer plus two engineers. With the fresh cash injection, they will strengthen employee hiring for online marketing and other professionals like Certified Diabetes Educators (CDEs).
In addition to many CDEs getting older, they are suffering from overwork and chronic shortages of personnel while diabetes patients are increasing but CDEs are not. So what HealthSync wants to solve may include the context of robotics process automation and workstyle reforms in this niche.
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
CEO Ed Deng stand in the middle of Health2Sync three co-founders Image credit: Health2Sync
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-basedFactbase announced a cryptocurrency-focused market forecast platform called Signal at Blockchain Expo, which just finished in Santa Clara, US last week. Coinciding with this announcement, the company began accepting pre-registration for use of the service. Factbase was founded in November by Osaka University alumni Yusuke Takahashi and other members. The team recognized that distribution flow of news updates and other elements likely to produce price fluctuations in cryptocurrencies are totally different from those for legal currencies. The Signal platform provides two functions: a web-based dashboard called Signal Board offering market forecast and analysis, and a notification service called Signal Alerts which lets users know via the LINE messaging app when an event likely to greatly impact price fluctuation of a cryptocurrency occurs. Takahashi explained: For example, presidents of Bank of Japan never tweet about banking policy or strategy. In contrast, information distributed online is likely to reflect price fluctuation of cryptocurrecies, and the information flow of it is also unique. Most of this kind of information is publicly available online, which usually gets bigger and bigger thorugh communities of mining users and others, and eventually snowball into big news with huge impact. […] Hence,…
CEO Yusuke Takahashi stands in the center of the Factbase team. Image credit: Factbase
Tokyo-basedFactbase announced a cryptocurrency-focused market forecast platform called Signal at Blockchain Expo, which just finished in Santa Clara, US last week. Coinciding with this announcement, the company began accepting pre-registration for use of the service.
Factbase was founded in November by Osaka University alumni Yusuke Takahashi and other members. The team recognized that distribution flow of news updates and other elements likely to produce price fluctuations in cryptocurrencies are totally different from those for legal currencies. The Signal platform provides two functions: a web-based dashboard called Signal Board offering market forecast and analysis, and a notification service called Signal Alerts which lets users know via the LINE messaging app when an event likely to greatly impact price fluctuation of a cryptocurrency occurs.
Takahashi explained:
For example, presidents of Bank of Japan never tweet about banking policy or strategy. In contrast, information distributed online is likely to reflect price fluctuation of cryptocurrecies, and the information flow of it is also unique. Most of this kind of information is publicly available online, which usually gets bigger and bigger thorugh communities of mining users and others, and eventually snowball into big news with huge impact. […]
Hence, anyone can gain access to information resources which may alter the trend of cryptocurrencies, but it’s hard to organize this kind of information and understand its context because of too much miscellaneous information being included. The Signal platform leverages big data and artificial intelligence to help users organize it and understand the context more accurately.
Factbase CEO Yusuke Takahashi presents the Signal platform at Blockchain Expo Image credit: FactbaseThe Factbase team demos the Signal platform in their booth at Blockchain Expo. Image credit: Factbase
In view of other areas where publicly disclosed information is likely to alter market trends, when a listed company announces their financial statement, hedge funds and institutional investors first sell or buy the company’s shares based on it, and then individual investors follow, which eventually leads to price fluctuations for the market.
In contrast to legal currencies or stock prices, not only the mechanisms behind securing values but also those leading to price fluctuations have become decentralized for cryptocurrencies. For cryptocurrency investors, keeping their eyes on announcements from Federal Reserve Bank or Bank of Japan by watching CNBC or reading the Nikkei would not suffice upon catching market trends. It is here the Signal platform can create a niche opportunity that can provide investors a new value.
Screenshots of Signal Board Image credit: Factbase
The Signal platform curates timelines and posts by crawling Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, GitHub and other websites, and analyzes them from different viewpoints using Natural Language Processing to see whether each article has a positive or negative context. They will initially start with Bitcoin out of many cryptocurrency options. Generally speaking, it’s difficult to distinguish between news updates on Bitcoin and those on Bitcoin Cash, but we were told that the company’s technology can realize it by leveraging their proprietary algorithm.
We are currently focused on curating, organizing and analyzing information. We are planning to start publishing reports in partnership with cryptocurrency-focused market analysts. In addition, we intend to publish a sort of “Cryptocurrency market index” based on calculation using our proprietary algorithm. […]
Our mission is to offer optimized collecting information on cryptocurrency investment by forecasting a fluctuation in prices.
A screenshot of Signal Alert Image credit: Factbase
Going forward the company plans to introduce a so-called “development index” for every cryptocurrency. Since the ecosystem of cryptocurrencies is a real mix of wheat and chaff, these indexes will help cryptocyrrency investors understand, for example, which ICO (initial coin offering) campaigns are well organized or plain irresponsible. The team aims to acquire a million users in two years from now, planning to expand the service into English and Korean languages.
Factbase has secured a seed funding from multiple unnamed angel investors. Takahashi says the company is hiring data analysts, data scientists and “engineers who are likely to feel ecstasy upon collecting information” for further service development of the platform.
Tokyo-based Groove X, the humanoid robot developer founded by Kaname Hayashi — who was responsible for the Pepper project at Softbank — announced on Monday it has raised up to 4.35 billion yen ($38.7 million in US) in their latest series A round. Participating investors in this round were Mirai Creation Fund, Japanese government-backed investment company Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), Shenzhen Capital Group, Line Ventures, Dai-ichi Seiko (TSE:6640), Global Catalyst Partners Japan (GCPJ), Taiwan’s Amtran Technology (TPE:2489), OSG (TSE:6136) and SMBC Venture Capital. Mirai Creation Fund is run by Tokyo-based investment company Sparx Group (TSE:8739) with financial backing from Toyota Motors (TSE:7203) and Sumitomo Mitsui Bank. INCJ has agreed to additionally invest up to 2.1 billion yen ($18.7 million in US) in a series B round. This round follows the company’s previous seed funding in January and September of 2016 when they raised 1.42 billion yen ($12.6 million) from Mirai Creation Fund, Amtran and Dai-ichi Seiko, in addition to GCPJ. With all these funding rounds in the past and in planning, the company will have raised a total of 8 billion yen (about $71.1 million) through series B. During the press conference on Monday, Hayashi announced that his…
Groove X founder and CEO Kaname Hayashi From Groove X’s YouTube video
Tokyo-based Groove X, the humanoid robot developer founded by Kaname Hayashi — who was responsible for the Pepper project at Softbank — announced on Monday it has raised up to 4.35 billion yen ($38.7 million in US) in their latest series A round.
Participating investors in this round were Mirai Creation Fund, Japanese government-backed investment company Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), Shenzhen Capital Group, Line Ventures, Dai-ichi Seiko (TSE:6640), Global Catalyst Partners Japan (GCPJ), Taiwan’s Amtran Technology (TPE:2489), OSG (TSE:6136) and SMBC Venture Capital.
Mirai Creation Fund is run by Tokyo-based investment company Sparx Group (TSE:8739) with financial backing from Toyota Motors (TSE:7203) and Sumitomo Mitsui Bank. INCJ has agreed to additionally invest up to 2.1 billion yen ($18.7 million in US) in a series B round.
This round follows the company’s previous seed funding in January and September of 2016 when they raised 1.42 billion yen ($12.6 million) from Mirai Creation Fund, Amtran and Dai-ichi Seiko, in addition to GCPJ. With all these funding rounds in the past and in planning, the company will have raised a total of 8 billion yen (about $71.1 million) through series B.
During the press conference on Monday, Hayashi announced that his company aims to introduce a humanoid robot called Lovot, named by combining Love and Robot, in late 2018 followed by commencing sales in 2019. Details of the concept have not been unveiled but the new product is expected to be one optimized for the lifestyle of urban residents.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based InsurTech startup JustInCase announced last week that it had fundraised from 500 Startups Japan in a seed round. The raised amount was not disclosed but is estimated to be a few hundred thousand dollars. justInCase was founded in 2016 by Kazuya Hata (CEO) who had served the leading actuary consultancy Milliman and has been providing risk management services such as Asset Liability Management (ALM) to insurance companies, Hiroo Koizumi (CTO) who had engaged in modeling / data analysis of assets and liabilities, Shinichi Nasukawa (CFO) who had been involved in development of advertisement business platform at an ad agency as a data scientist and others. The team consists of technology-driven members as CEO and CFO that have engineering background, in addition to CTO. Smartphone Insurance — justInCase’s first product planned for launch soon — is a repair cost insurance service for smartphones. By analyzing users’ activity patterns with Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm and evaluating risk for each user, it provides insurance service with optimized fee. With this method, the firm realizes a cheaper service than AppleCare or ones provided by major carriers to smartphone users. Since this field is a niche market which…
Tokyo-based InsurTech startup JustInCase announced last week that it had fundraised from 500 Startups Japan in a seed round. The raised amount was not disclosed but is estimated to be a few hundred thousand dollars.
justInCase was founded in 2016 by Kazuya Hata (CEO) who had served the leading actuary consultancy Milliman and has been providing risk management services such as Asset Liability Management (ALM) to insurance companies, Hiroo Koizumi (CTO) who had engaged in modeling / data analysis of assets and liabilities, Shinichi Nasukawa (CFO) who had been involved in development of advertisement business platform at an ad agency as a data scientist and others. The team consists of technology-driven members as CEO and CFO that have engineering background, in addition to CTO.
Smartphone Insurance Image credit: JustInCase
Smartphone Insurance — justInCase’s first product planned for launch soon — is a repair cost insurance service for smartphones. By analyzing users’ activity patterns with Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm and evaluating risk for each user, it provides insurance service with optimized fee. With this method, the firm realizes a cheaper service than AppleCare or ones provided by major carriers to smartphone users.
Since this field is a niche market which major insurance companies do not deal with, it is possible to generate new insurance demand and to establish cooperative relationships with conventional players. justInCase has been coordinating activities with the Kanto Local Finance Bureau in order to be registered as a small amounts and short term insurance provider, and plans an official launch of the service within 2018. Furthermore, it started accepting user pre-registrations on its website from the day.
While the details about Smartphone Insurance have not been revealed yet, it is thought to be an app capable of self-diagnosis when insuring /claiming insurance in addition to carrying out user activity analysis like Sure, a similar service in the US. The Sure team behind the service is in its third year since its foundation and had raised $10.6 million in total including the series A round fundraising conducted this year.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Lute, which operates the Instagram Stories-based video media Lute, announced last week that it has raised 80 million yen (about $710K US) in the seed round. Gumi Ventures, Candee (video production), Allfuz (ad production) and one individual investor all participated in this round. The company proposes to use the funds raised to promote Lute’s video content production and media operations. Hirohiko Igarashi (current CEO), who was previously involved in editing and translating the online media Lifehacker, launched Lute in 2016 as a media label of Avex Digital’s internal venture. On August 15th of this year, Lute was established as a spinoff and independent startup. The Board of Directors includes Kurando Furuya (video director known for the movie yearbook “Eizou Sakka 100 nin, literally meaning 100 videographers), Shun Takeda (media producer who has served as Editor in Chief of the Roomie online magazine), and Kazuki Kogishi (CEO of Candee). During his time at Avex Digital, Igarashi hinted at his future plans with projects like Vice Plus and other video media, and with the cooperation of various artists established Lute. Igarashi explained: Millennials, generation X, that’s our target. Since they have smartphones they don’t connect to…
Tokyo-based Lute, which operates the Instagram Stories-based video media Lute, announced last week that it has raised 80 million yen (about $710K US) in the seed round. Gumi Ventures, Candee (video production), Allfuz (ad production) and one individual investor all participated in this round.
Lute CEO Hirohiko Igarashi
The company proposes to use the funds raised to promote Lute’s video content production and media operations.
Hirohiko Igarashi (current CEO), who was previously involved in editing and translating the online media Lifehacker, launched Lute in 2016 as a media label of Avex Digital’s internal venture. On August 15th of this year, Lute was established as a spinoff and independent startup.
The Board of Directors includes Kurando Furuya (video director known for the movie yearbook “Eizou Sakka 100 nin, literally meaning 100 videographers), Shun Takeda (media producer who has served as Editor in Chief of the Roomie online magazine), and Kazuki Kogishi (CEO of Candee).
During his time at Avex Digital, Igarashi hinted at his future plans with projects like Vice Plus and other video media, and with the cooperation of various artists established Lute.
Igarashi explained:
Millennials, generation X, that’s our target. Since they have smartphones they don’t connect to WiFi at home and they don’t watch YouTube or music videos. To target this generation you use media distribution, Snapchat in the US, Instagram Stories in Japan, and so on.
There is no web portal on Lute; it is distributed media specialized in Instagram Stories. The company’s approach is similar to that of Firebug’s Thirty, which was discussed previously, and while keeping in mind the spare moments users have while completing other tasks, Lute is producing mobile optimized vertical short videos. For video production, it is common to use something like a storyboard or cue sheet in the pre-production process, but with Lute, one section is as short as 15 seconds or so, and it is done with the sense of putting together a magazine layout. In fact, many magazine and media editors can be named among the directors and staff.
Program examples: My Best (left), Artist Interview (right) Image credit: Lute
Lute’s business model is roughly divided into two: the management business and the commission production business.
The management business includes the management of artists. According to Igarashi, as mobile media and influencer marketing advances, for example, there are an increasing number of cases where people who use the title of “model” also work like musicians, it calls for a different way of managing artists. Lute rents office space in Shibuya, Tokyo nearby the NHK broadcasting center, so when artists stop by for a moment the company can shoot and produce videos on the spot multiple times throughout the day.
For the production of commissioned work, Lute does casting, consulting etc. for the content creation of other companies. Using Igarashi’s personal network, the company seems to be good at casting people who fit in with the Millennials, such as a remarkable indie artist or up and coming rapper who are not with conventional production companies.
Igarashi continued:
Various data, like audience ratings, can be taken with Lute. It’s possible in the future something like advertisements might come along, but we’re not thinking about it for now. First of all, we want to build a user base, and in the medium to long term, we will start with music, and want to achieve multi-channelization to subculture media and culture media.
Originally Candee’s Kogishi wanted to invite Igarashi to Candee to launch this project, but since Igarashi was willing to start his own business himself, he abandoned the invitation and instead of giving up Lute he decided to invest and take office as a director. Thus, the business synergy between Candee and Lute is likely to rise.
Kogishi added:
Products for kids is becoming a subculture. For now, Lute’s management and commission businesses will grow bigger, but I expect that it will grow in the media business too. […]
(As a means of promoting music artists) Up until now, you make a music video, release it to the media thereby launching one big firework. But from now on, rather than launching one big firework, it is important to keep launching many small fireworks.
But, it’s hard to do. (For productions and artists) I think that Lute should be used as such a place (one where a lot of small fireworks can be launched).
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Ascent Robotics has been developing autonomous driving software for Level 4 capable-vehicle (fully autonomous driving including steering, accelerating and braking without human input) in the Japanese road environment. The firm launched a beta version of AI (Artificial Intelligence) learning environment named Atlas last week. Atlas is a learning environment for AI used in simulator-based vehicle / robot, integrating VR (Virtual Reality) human interface and 3D simulation environment, in addition to deep reinforcement learning algorithm. By using both real and pseudo data for learning AI, the learning efficiency is increased to more than 50 times compared to that when using only real data. Utilizing the superiority of Atlas, Ascent Robotics aims the realization of Level 4 autonomy by 2020 when market competition is expected to be intensified. Since the Japanese or Asian road environment is considerably different from Western ones that DeepMind, Waymo, and Uber deal with, Ascent Robotics focuses on the Level 4 autonomy applicable for narrow streets having much traffic as the conventional Japanese streets normally have, and the team expects to lead the global market in this field. Ascent Robotics was founded in September 2016 by Fred Almeida, the Canadian engineer…
Autonomous vehicle developed with Ascent Robotics’ technology (concept image) Image credit: Ascent Robotics
Tokyo-based Ascent Robotics has been developing autonomous driving software for Level 4 capable-vehicle (fully autonomous driving including steering, accelerating and braking without human input) in the Japanese road environment. The firm launched a beta version of AI (Artificial Intelligence) learning environment named Atlas last week.
Atlas is a learning environment for AI used in simulator-based vehicle / robot, integrating VR (Virtual Reality) human interface and 3D simulation environment, in addition to deep reinforcement learning algorithm. By using both real and pseudo data for learning AI, the learning efficiency is increased to more than 50 times compared to that when using only real data.
Utilizing the superiority of Atlas, Ascent Robotics aims the realization of Level 4 autonomy by 2020 when market competition is expected to be intensified. Since the Japanese or Asian road environment is considerably different from Western ones that DeepMind, Waymo, and Uber deal with, Ascent Robotics focuses on the Level 4 autonomy applicable for narrow streets having much traffic as the conventional Japanese streets normally have, and the team expects to lead the global market in this field.
Learning AI for autonomous driving in Atlas 3D simulator space Image credit: Ascent Robotics
Ascent Robotics was founded in September 2016 by Fred Almeida, the Canadian engineer who had successively held high-level positions in Salesforce and Pasona Tquila. According to Nikkei Robotics, the firm has already concluded a business contract with one of the major Japanese automakers. Ken Kutaragi, known as the father of PlayStation, has also joined the firm as Outside Director.
Looking at the trend of the major Japanese automakers, Toyota, Mazda, Honda and others have targeted about 2025 as the goal for establishment of level 4 autonomous technology. If the practical application of Ascent Robotics’ technology is realized, schedules of the major automakers’ research and development may be pushed forward a few years and more.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
The Bridge
Masaru Ikeda
