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Dine, dating app that guarantees first dates, raises $1.3M from Japan’s marriage agency

SCORE 2,662

Masaru Ikeda 2017.11.09

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Mrk & Co, the Japanese startup behind mobile dating app Dine, announced earlier this month that it has raised a total of 150 million yen (about $1.3M US) in funding from marriage agency big name Partner Agent (TSE: 6181), Venture United, and through a loan from Japan Finance Corporation. For Mrk & Co, this follows their previous funding approximately 40 million yen (about $349K US) from CyberAgent Ventures and iSGS Investment Works in March of last year. Additionally, the company announced the official launch of the app in Japan. The Dine app is available on iTunes (with the Android version set to release at the beginning of 2018). Mrk & Co was established in 2015 by Keisuke Kamijo (CEO) and Takashi Morioka (CTO) who were previously involved in developing social game apps at DeNA (TSE: 2432). For those familiar with the Internet in the 2000’s, Kamijo is well known as the auther of his blog, “Ganbare, Seikyou no Shiraishi-san.” Much like coffee, according to Kamijo the “third wave” has come to dating apps too. The original “1st Generation: Search Type” services took advantage of a large number of users; however, the probability of…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Mrk & Co, the Japanese startup behind mobile dating app Dine, announced earlier this month that it has raised a total of 150 million yen (about $1.3M US) in funding from marriage agency big name Partner Agent (TSE: 6181), Venture United, and through a loan from Japan Finance Corporation. For Mrk & Co, this follows their previous funding approximately 40 million yen (about $349K US) from CyberAgent Ventures and iSGS Investment Works in March of last year.

Additionally, the company announced the official launch of the app in Japan. The Dine app is available on iTunes (with the Android version set to release at the beginning of 2018).

Mrk & Co was established in 2015 by Keisuke Kamijo (CEO) and Takashi Morioka (CTO) who were previously involved in developing social game apps at DeNA (TSE: 2432). For those familiar with the Internet in the 2000’s, Kamijo is well known as the auther of his blog, “Ganbare, Seikyou no Shiraishi-san.”

Much like coffee, according to Kamijo the “third wave” has come to dating apps too. The original “1st Generation: Search Type” services took advantage of a large number of users; however, the probability of obtaining a first date was not very large. The “2nd Generation: Casual Type” services, such as Tinder and Happn, took advantage of the left and right swipe function on smartphones to increase the matching probability, but although they take an innovative approach to the user interface (UI), it is said that users often use the encounters for entertainment elements.

Finally, based on what the company learned from the 1st and 2nd generations, the biggest feature of Dine is the dramatically increased possibility of interactions that lead to a date. With the Dine app, five people per day who seem to suit the user will be introduced to them. When the user approaches the other user, they select up to three places to go on a date and propose the first date. For date locations, with the US version of Dine users can choose a restaurant freely from Yelp’s API (application programming interface), but with the idea of providing the best user experience (UX) the Japanese version is tuned to allow users to choose from 100 locations, 50 in Ginza and 50 in Ebisu.

From left: Mrk & Co CEO Keisuke Kamijo, CTO Takashi Morioka
Image credit: Mrk & Co

Kamijo explained:

For Tinder or Happn, some say that cases leading to actual dates is less than 10%. What often happens is that when both of the users approve and the message opens, it starts with a conversation like “Hi!” or “How’s it going?”, and after continuing what feels like an unnecessary conversation, users become tired and stop responding.

With Dine, the first screen a user sees when a message is opened is the schedule adjustment. According to the service evaluation up to now in the US, if users match and the conversation starts, about 40% of the time it leads to a date. It is a very high number.

The app’s matching capabilities learn the preference of the user based on their preferred physical appearance, age, and the chosen destination for the date, and the accuracy gradually increases. The company uses a subscription model set at 6,500 yen (about $57 US) per month or 4,800 yen (about $42 US) per month if users pay for three months upfront. A common fee system is applied to both male users and female users from the viewpoint of gender equity, and if either a male or female user pays the fee, it is possible to arrange dates. Although this makes it rather highly priced among dating apps, the result is users committed to dates and high quality matching. Also, Dine’s UI creates a sophisticated atmosphere that somewhat reflects the desire of Kamijo to, “Not make dating apps embarrassing.”

Dine has already launched in North America in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Vancouver. In Japan, following Tokyo, the company would like to expand services mainly in metropolitan areas such as Osaka, Yokohama and Fukuoka while monitoring how users in Japan are using the app. In New York and Los Angeles, when a couple matched via Dine visits a restaurant, they are offered a service called Dine Pass, which makes the first drink free, which also shows its potential as an O2O (online-to-offline) app.

Among the companies that Mrk & Co raised funds from this time, it appears there may be a strategic alliance with Partner Agent, but both parties have not disclosed specific details of the alliance at this time. For Mrk & Co, in the past year there was North America, in the coming year there will be Japan and identifying the market potential, and in the future, there may be expansion into the Asian and European markets. Kamijo remarked that he is aiming for a system that can secure approximately half of its sales outside Japan and the rest from within Japan.

In this field, there are a couple of fellow apps that offer similar commitment to dating. Behind the scenes, it seems that multiple dating apps launched by CyberAgent TSE:4751) under their Coupling Union initiative are seeing increasingly good results across the board, which has led to a revitalization of the entire vertical. For now, it appears that the ban on dating app commercials on TV stations, which was supposed to be lifted this autumn, has been postponed until after next year, but in any case, as long as the basic human instinct to find partners stays in tact, we should continue to be able to see the evolution of the dating app.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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Japan’s Meleap raises $2.6M to offer augmented reality-based sports experiences globally

Hado
Meleap

Masaru Ikeda 2017.11.08

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Meleap, the Japanese startup developing the Hado augmented reality(AR)-powerd sports game series and expanding a franchise of arcade stores that offer gaming experiences in town, announced on Monday that it had raised 300 million yen (about $2.6M US) in funding from Incubate Fund, DBJ Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital. The funding round is unknown, but it is estimated to be a Series A round. This follows their previous funding of 60 million yen (around $528K US) by Meleap in a seed round (investors not disclosed) conducted in January of 2016. Meleap plans to open branch offices in Los Angeles (US) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), strengthen the structure of arcade store development and customer support, and spur global development with the funds raised this time around. In addition, the company is developing a new AR-powered game title and is planning to strengthen the development system for a release next year. Hiroshi Fukuda (current CEO of Meleap), previously of Recruit, and Hitoshi Araki (current CTO of Meleap), previously of Fujitsu, established Meleap in 2014. The company is developing games for release with AR that simulates anime’s “Kamehameha” and “Surge Fist”, as well as developing a…

From left: Keisuke Wada (Partner, Incubate Fund), Takuma Motoki (CCO, Meleap), Hiroshi Fukuda (CEO, Meleap), Hitoshi Araki (CTO, Meleap), Yukiharu Tomita (COO, Meleap), Masafumi Kawai (Director, DBJ Capital)
Image credit: meleap

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Meleap, the Japanese startup developing the Hado augmented reality(AR)-powerd sports game series and expanding a franchise of arcade stores that offer gaming experiences in town, announced on Monday that it had raised 300 million yen (about $2.6M US) in funding from Incubate Fund, DBJ Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital. The funding round is unknown, but it is estimated to be a Series A round. This follows their previous funding of 60 million yen (around $528K US) by Meleap in a seed round (investors not disclosed) conducted in January of 2016.

Meleap plans to open branch offices in Los Angeles (US) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), strengthen the structure of arcade store development and customer support, and spur global development with the funds raised this time around. In addition, the company is developing a new AR-powered game title and is planning to strengthen the development system for a release next year.

Hado is a sport where players fight by shooting energy balls
Image credit: meleap

Hiroshi Fukuda (current CEO of Meleap), previously of Recruit, and Hitoshi Araki (current CTO of Meleap), previously of Fujitsu, established Meleap in 2014. The company is developing games for release with AR that simulates anime’s “Kamehameha” and “Surge Fist”, as well as developing a franchise of arcade stores that allows players to experience the games as sports in town. Today, there are 43 permanent stores in nine countries (25 in Asia and 13 in Japan), and more than 600,000 users have experienced the Hado AR sports series. In terms of worldwide effects and keeping in mind that e-sports are growing steadily, with AR users must actively use their bodies and experience a greater sense of immersion, which means AR sports can be defined as a field that has advanced even further than e-sports.

Meleap has participated twice in Incubate Camp, an annual 2-day bootcamp program by Incubate Fund offering budding entrepreneurs with mentoring opportunities, first in the 7th camp (2014) and secondly in the 10th camp (2017). At the 7th camp, the company was still in the phase of how to realize AR sports technically, but at the 10th camp held this year, Fukuda suggested that Hado’s service development was on track and that he was craving financing to accelerate the development of the sports gaming experience stores worldwide, and the company got a high rating from the investors and gained the top ranking overall during the event. Additionally, the company was adopted to the seventh batch of KDDI Mugen Labo in 2015, nominated for the Pitch Contest of Hack Osaka 2016, and received the PR Times Award at SLUSH Asia 2016.

Meleap plans to hold its second AR sports festival titled “Hado World Cup 2017” with a grand prize of 3 million yen (about $26K US) in winter of this year in order to raise awareness of AR sports such as Hado. A selection of teams from up to six countries will gather and they are supposed to battle it out at the Star Rise Tower next to Tokyo Tower.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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Japan’s Hikakaku, purchase price comparison site for used items, raises $3.8M

JIrafee

The Bridge 2017.11.06

See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Jiraffe, operating the “Hikakaku!” purchase price comparison website for used items, on Thursday announced it had raised 400 million yen (about 3.8 million dollars US) in total from Imercury Capital, Gree, Mercari and Adventure, in addition to current investors of Dream Incubator and Shunsuke Sasaki (Founder / Executive Director of Japanese gaming company Pokelabo). The share ratios and the pay-in dates were undisclosed. Jiraffe was founded in October of 2014 by the current CEO Teruaki Aso, who launched Hikakaku! from his experience of having trouble selling his own iPad when he was at Hitotsubashi University. The firm had subsequently raised and now owns a capital of 600 million yen (5.7 million dollars US) including capital reserves. In 2017, the firm launched marketplace for used smartphone “Smama (Smartphone-no-Market)” and announced a capital tie-up with CASH, providing pawnbroker app for spot cash under the same name. To meet potential demands Jiraffe has been hiring staffers almost every month. I asked Aso why it was necessary now to raise funds and he answered: The main purpose is to step up to the next round. Business style with a horizontal spread can be considered but we decided…

See the original story in Japanese.

Japan’s Jiraffe, operating the “Hikakaku!” purchase price comparison website for used items, on Thursday announced it had raised 400 million yen (about 3.8 million dollars US) in total from Imercury Capital, Gree, Mercari and Adventure, in addition to current investors of Dream Incubator and Shunsuke Sasaki (Founder / Executive Director of Japanese gaming company Pokelabo). The share ratios and the pay-in dates were undisclosed.

Jiraffe was founded in October of 2014 by the current CEO Teruaki Aso, who launched Hikakaku! from his experience of having trouble selling his own iPad when he was at Hitotsubashi University. The firm had subsequently raised and now owns a capital of 600 million yen (5.7 million dollars US) including capital reserves.

In 2017, the firm launched marketplace for used smartphone “Smama (Smartphone-no-Market)” and announced a capital tie-up with CASH, providing pawnbroker app for spot cash under the same name.

To meet potential demands

Jiraffe has been hiring staffers almost every month. I asked Aso why it was necessary now to raise funds and he answered:

The main purpose is to step up to the next round. Business style with a horizontal spread can be considered but we decided to take on a new situational challenge.

We have managed Hikakaku to meet obvious demands so far, but we will provide services including Smama to meet potential demands. We raised the funds also to cover the cost of commercial message production for them.

According to Aso, many of the investors of this round have already recognized Jiraffe and their assessment has improved since the previous presentation. Many investment companies participated in this round and the point of success upon raising money was that they attained high opinion for the results shown, in addition to the team itself, seeing possibilities for the new business fields.-

Aso is 25 years old now and had started business as a student entrepreneur, but the team has many members aged around 30 with much experience working at major companies. Assigning persons in charge of business for each product, Aso leads cooperation and communication structure in entirety for this management system.

The firm will maintain growth for each of its current services; it will continue development of Smaphone-no-Market and is considering an additional function on Hikakaku! that performs a package estimate for all items sent from each user.

Aso continued:

Seeing how Yusuke Horie (CEO of Dely, running a cooking video service Kurashiru) succeeded in raising funds, I felt as a member of the same generation that he exhibited suavity. I think more people should take on challenges like him rather than looking for easy wins. My company and I, as an individual, can hopefully take the lead in this trend.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Triple W Japan, developer of DFree urination predictor, secures $4.4M pre-series B round

Masaru Ikeda 2017.11.05

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Triple W Japan, the startup which developed urination predictor device DFree, announced on Monday that it has raised 500 million yen (about $4.4 million US) from Nissay Capital and 2020, the Japanese investment partner fund of Taiwanese electronics outfit Foxconn, in a pre-series B round. For Triple W Japan, this follows their series A round back in July of 2017 raising 500 million yen (about $4.9 million US), including 1 million yen in loans from Mizuho Bank and Japan Finance Corporation. Nissay Capital also participated in a seed round back in April of 2015 while 2020 joined the series A round last year. Triple W Japan has a total of 1.5 billion yen (about $13.1 million) in funding to date. The company has rolled out the DFree urination prediction device into 150 nursery care facilities across Japan in partnership with the eldercare industry, including 116 facilities run by Sompo Care Next, where the solution has been adopted for 2,000 elderly patients. In France, a country which faces a typical aging population, Triple W Japan recently secured clinical testing of the solution at Paris and Poissy care facilities working with European eldercare giant Korian,…

DFree device and app
Image credit: Triple W Japan

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Triple W Japan, the startup which developed urination predictor device DFree, announced on Monday that it has raised 500 million yen (about $4.4 million US) from Nissay Capital and 2020, the Japanese investment partner fund of Taiwanese electronics outfit Foxconn, in a pre-series B round.

For Triple W Japan, this follows their series A round back in July of 2017 raising 500 million yen (about $4.9 million US), including 1 million yen in loans from Mizuho Bank and Japan Finance Corporation. Nissay Capital also participated in a seed round back in April of 2015 while 2020 joined the series A round last year. Triple W Japan has a total of 1.5 billion yen (about $13.1 million) in funding to date.

The company has rolled out the DFree urination prediction device into 150 nursery care facilities across Japan in partnership with the eldercare industry, including 116 facilities run by Sompo Care Next, where the solution has been adopted for 2,000 elderly patients. In France, a country which faces a typical aging population, Triple W Japan recently secured clinical testing of the solution at Paris and Poissy care facilities working with European eldercare giant Korian, readying to put it into practical use at these facilities. Beyond deployment at an unnamed major hospital in Singapore, the company will exhibit at Medica 2017, the world’s largest medical device-focused exhibition in Düsseldorf (Germany), aiming to cultivate sales channels in the US market.

Furthermore, Triple W Japan has been selected as a do-support company in the category of robotics tech for nursery care, a joint initiative of Japanese ministries overseeing welfare and economy (latter known as METI), while preparing to visit Israel next January under METI’s Hiyaku Next Enterprise tour of startup ecosystems.

DFree has been adopting the B2B (business-to-business) or the B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) business model in terms of how to distribute devices and sell services. However, as they gain more exposure through various media outlets, more inquiries from individuals are incoming so they started working on the B2C (business-to-consumer) sales in response to such needs. According to Atsushi Nakanishi, CEO of Triple W Japan, stroke is the most frequent cause of elderly people becoming in need of long-term care, but he said that few systematic rehabilitation and training facilities exist focused on natural excretion to help get them back to regular daily life requiring no hospital care. By offering the DFree device, he explained that his company may help patients get back home and continue their daily life with dignity.

The pre-series B round at this time looks to help the company’s continued growth without sacrificing speed because an upcoming series B round will require more time to secure. The company plans to start raising for the series B round in earnest, so investors participating in the latest round are expected to exchange their convertible equities into common stocks when the series B round is closed. They target about 1 billion yen (about $8.8 million US) in the series B round next year.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Kitchhike, Airbnb for home-cooked meals, gets $1.8M from Mistletoe, Mercari, others

kitchhike

SCORE 1,140

The Bridge 2017.11.04

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Kitchhike announced on Tuesday that it has raised a total of 200 million yen (about $1.8 million US) from Mistletoe, Mercari, Venture United, in addition to a fund jointly run by Freebank and Tokyo TY Financial Group (TSE:7173). Financial terms have not been disclosed. The service initially started as a matching platform that connects cooking users and dining users in kitchens around the world. Launched back in May of 2013, it was slightly pivoted into a new concept in April of 2016 as a local community service allowing everyone to enjoy eating meals together. It has made a total of 10,000 matchmaking to date, bridging more than 1,000 matchmakings of cooks and diners each month. Females in their 30s account for many of the service’s user base, and there’s also increasing cases that a user sometimes cooks meals for other users while also eating meals cooked by other users at other times. The company’s CEO Masaya Yamamoto told The Bridge that what’s common among users are they love eating and enjoy communicating with others. The company periodically hosts dinner parties at five locations in Tokyo, aiming to expand it into 500 locations…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Kitchhike announced on Tuesday that it has raised a total of 200 million yen (about $1.8 million US) from Mistletoe, Mercari, Venture United, in addition to a fund jointly run by Freebank and Tokyo TY Financial Group (TSE:7173). Financial terms have not been disclosed.

The service initially started as a matching platform that connects cooking users and dining users in kitchens around the world. Launched back in May of 2013, it was slightly pivoted into a new concept in April of 2016 as a local community service allowing everyone to enjoy eating meals together. It has made a total of 10,000 matchmaking to date, bridging more than 1,000 matchmakings of cooks and diners each month.

Females in their 30s account for many of the service’s user base, and there’s also increasing cases that a user sometimes cooks meals for other users while also eating meals cooked by other users at other times. The company’s CEO Masaya Yamamoto told The Bridge that what’s common among users are they love eating and enjoy communicating with others. The company periodically hosts dinner parties at five locations in Tokyo, aiming to expand it into 500 locations in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

After making a matchmaking between cooking users and dining users online, we assume that it will be a challenge for them who have never met before on a face-to-face basis to join a gathering.

Yamamoto explains:

You may think that sharing a dinner table with strangers is a new concept but it has been universally done for a very long time. We consider that such a culture should be matured in our service. Using the Internet, we’d like to reorganize the concept of meals to connect people with each others which was very common for mankind a long time ago.

The funds will be used to strengthen human resources for engineering, business development, and customer support. They will also focus on adding more features to their iOS and Android apps, expanding the aforementioned dinner party initiative, promoting growth marketing efforts. They aim to reach 100,000 monthly matchmakings in two years.

Regarding strategic partnerships with investors participating in this round, the company plans to work with Food and Farming Department at Mistletoe as well as collaborating with Mercari’s C2C marketplace app and the Mercari Atte classified service app, with aim to gain the quality of user experience and increase matchmaking opportunities.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Vook, knowledge base and portfolio showcase for videographers, raises $875K

Adoir
Vook

The Bridge 2017.11.03

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Adoir, the Japanese startup running online platforms for videographers called Vook, announced on Monday that it has secured 100 million yen (about $875,000) in funding from Mizuho Bank with loans from government-backed Japan Finance Corporation. No details on financial terms have been included. Launched back in February of 2016 as a beta version, the platforms allow users to share their knowledge and experiences about filming and videography, consisting of Vook note for sharing technical information among users and an invitation-only online portfolio showcase called Vook port. In addition to offering the service online, the company holds user meet-ups and bootcamp events across Japan to help the creators form a community. The platform now has tens of thousand people as users, and many of them are involved in on-the-spot filming, animation producion, computer graphics, virtual reality and other video creation jobs. In additon to knowledge sharing in this sector, the platform is also well used for connecting business opportunities among users. Going forward, the platform will aim to serve computer graphics creators, music composers and actors beyond dealing with camera-related topics and video-editing expertise. The company says that the funds will be used to…

The Adoir team: CEO Shuntaro Okamoto sits on the left on the front row.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Adoir, the Japanese startup running online platforms for videographers called Vook, announced on Monday that it has secured 100 million yen (about $875,000) in funding from Mizuho Bank with loans from government-backed Japan Finance Corporation. No details on financial terms have been included.

Launched back in February of 2016 as a beta version, the platforms allow users to share their knowledge and experiences about filming and videography, consisting of Vook note for sharing technical information among users and an invitation-only online portfolio showcase called Vook port. In addition to offering the service online, the company holds user meet-ups and bootcamp events across Japan to help the creators form a community.

The platform now has tens of thousand people as users, and many of them are involved in on-the-spot filming, animation producion, computer graphics, virtual reality and other video creation jobs. In additon to knowledge sharing in this sector, the platform is also well used for connecting business opportunities among users.

Going forward, the platform will aim to serve computer graphics creators, music composers and actors beyond dealing with camera-related topics and video-editing expertise. The company says that the funds will be used to enhance system development and content production for such efforts.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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Japan’s Agrimedia secures $2.2M to help more people get involved in agriculture

Agrimedia

The Bridge 2017.11.02

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Agrimedia announced in late October that it has fundraised 250 million yen (about $2.2 million US) from Globis Capital Partners (GCP). Coinciding with this, the company also revealed that Minoru Imano, General Partner and COO at GCP, will join the management board of Agrimedia as an external director. Agrimedia has been offering three different types of business based on the concept of connecting city life with agriculture: giving people the chance to get involved in various agricultural experiences, cultivating human resources for agribusiness and building an agriculture-focused logistics network. The Tokyo startup provides vegetable gardens for rental in 70 suburban locations in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, called Share Batake, where urban gardeners can participate in growing vegetables without bringing their own tools to these gardens. Agri Navi, another service by the company, provides agriculture-related job opportunities to registrants who are mostly aged under 40s. In addition, they are also building a logistics and distribution platform leveraging Michi-no-eki (government-designated rest areas found along roads and highways) and farmer’s direct sales depots across Japan. Using the funds, Agrimedia will further develop web services and knowledge tools towards building a new platform for agribusiness, in…

Agrimedia’s Share Batake, a vegetable garden for rental in a suburb location
Image credit: Agrimedia

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Agrimedia announced in late October that it has fundraised 250 million yen (about $2.2 million US) from Globis Capital Partners (GCP). Coinciding with this, the company also revealed that Minoru Imano, General Partner and COO at GCP, will join the management board of Agrimedia as an external director.

Agrimedia has been offering three different types of business based on the concept of connecting city life with agriculture: giving people the chance to get involved in various agricultural experiences, cultivating human resources for agribusiness and building an agriculture-focused logistics network.

The Tokyo startup provides vegetable gardens for rental in 70 suburban locations in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, called Share Batake, where urban gardeners can participate in growing vegetables without bringing their own tools to these gardens. Agri Navi, another service by the company, provides agriculture-related job opportunities to registrants who are mostly aged under 40s. In addition, they are also building a logistics and distribution platform leveraging Michi-no-eki (government-designated rest areas found along roads and highways) and farmer’s direct sales depots across Japan.

Using the funds, Agrimedia will further develop web services and knowledge tools towards building a new platform for agribusiness, in addition to focusing on hiring new talents for business development.

See also:

Japan’s Culture Convenience Club selects 7 finalists for its first incubation program

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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India’s solar irrigation startup Claro Energy places first in AEA competition finals

AEA2017

The Bridge 2017.11.01

This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. All the pictures used in this article are courtesy of the AEA organizer. The sixth Asia Entrepreneurship Award (AEA) 2017 competition took place from October 25th to 27th, 2017 at the KOIL facilities on the University of Tokyo Kashiwa-no-ha Campus (located in Chiba Prefecture’s Kashiwa “Smart City”) northeast of the Japanese capital. 21 technology startups from 15 countries/regions mainly in Asia participated in the three-day event. Claro Energy from India, which avails a solar irrigation system for agriculture, won this year’s top award, while Singaporean image software firm ViSenze was runner-up as well as Audience Prize winner and engineering solutions provider Webgears WGT of Russia － offering Smart City programs － came in for the third-place finish. Claro Energy was established in early 2011 with the goal of disrupting the farm irrigation sector first on the Indian subcontinent, then around the rest of the world. Claro’s solar irrigation solutions to farmers should replace expensive Diesel engines/pumps. Besides being expensive Diesel-based pumps pollute extensively and use additional carbon footprint in the supply chains. Their intellectual property enables revectoring of horizontal solar solutions such as solar grids. Over the past six years…

This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. All the pictures used in this article are courtesy of the AEA organizer.

The sixth Asia Entrepreneurship Award (AEA) 2017 competition took place from October 25th to 27th, 2017 at the KOIL facilities on the University of Tokyo Kashiwa-no-ha Campus (located in Chiba Prefecture’s Kashiwa “Smart City”) northeast of the Japanese capital. 21 technology startups from 15 countries/regions mainly in Asia participated in the three-day event.

Claro Energy from India, which avails a solar irrigation system for agriculture, won this year’s top award, while Singaporean image software firm ViSenze was runner-up as well as Audience Prize winner and engineering solutions provider Webgears WGT of Russia － offering Smart City programs － came in for the third-place finish.

India’s Claro Energy wins the 1st prize.

Claro Energy was established in early 2011 with the goal of disrupting the farm irrigation sector first on the Indian subcontinent, then around the rest of the world. Claro’s solar irrigation solutions to farmers should replace expensive Diesel engines/pumps. Besides being expensive Diesel-based pumps pollute extensively and use additional carbon footprint in the supply chains.

Their intellectual property enables revectoring of horizontal solar solutions such as solar grids. Over the past six years they have deployed over 7,000 solar irrigation pumps across 15 states in India. They are also driving a lot of business model innovation in this space. Kartik Wahi, Co-founder and Director, made the presentation on behalf of Claro Energy.

ViSenze powers visual commerce at scale for retailers and image recognition for enterprises. Major shopping sites like the Japanese Rakuten Ichiba (ViSenze has Japan’s Rakuten as a corporate mainstayer too), the British ASOS and adidas, the globally-renowned German sportswear brand site, also use ViSenze to convert any UGC content into immediate product search opportunities, uplifting conversion rates.

Spun-off from the National University of Singapore in 2012 by web entrepreneurs and computer vision scientists, the company’s mission is to simplify the way people search and discover the visual world. ViSenze is venture-backed by WI Harper in addition to aforementioned Rakuten, and officially supported by MasterCard. CEO and Co-founder Oliver Tan gave his firm’s final pitch.

See also:

Russia’s Webgears WGT wins the 3rd prize.

Webgears is a software technology company focusing on novel web-based three-dimensional (3D) graphics for industrial applications, plus for gaming use. Their product is a graphics engine, which lets the clients extract significantly more value from 3D models as well as interactive 3D graphics by almost eliminating hardware requirements and moving interactive 3D content to the cloud.

The Russian outfit has been working closely with Dassault Systèmes of France, a global leader in the 3D field. These days coming to be well-recognized by the WGT brand mark among those in-the-know in the industry, Webgear is expanding its activities overseas, for example involving Smart City endeavors in Southeast Asia. According to CEO Larisa Dydykina who presented the Webgears pitch, they have just opened a new U.S. office in California where her son is located to further push business globally.

Participants at a mentoring session during the program.

This award competition has been held annually since 2012 aiming to realize an Asian ecosystem that generates innovation through collaborations of industry, government and academia. It has since then gathered together many young entrepreneurs from Asia not to mention from Oceania, in order to expand human networks through mentorship, discussion and mutual interaction.

With the particular focus this year being on support for business collaboration between technology startups and locally-rooted companies, AEA has for over half a dozen years been offering various schemes where the startups surroundings in each country and recent trends thereto can be studied in depth, not to mention learning more about the background of successful ecosystems.

Japan’s Genome Clinic wins the Kashiwa-no-ha Award.

As to the new Kashiwa-no-ha prize, established this year for a technology, product or service which could be useful in developing the Kashiwa-no-ha Campus as a smart city, this award was won by Genome Clinic of Japan, which as the name suggests is involved in genome medicine. In addition to the AEA 2017 prizes above, Thai startup AIM GLOBAL INNOVATION obtained the NanoCarrier Prize, named after one of the leading supporters of the competition; AIM produces cute robots for training of autistic children.

AIM Global Innovation wins the NanoCarrier Kashiwa-no-ha Award.

Further to support given by locally-headquartered bioventure NanoCarrier (TSE:4571) and others, kudos are due to real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan (TSE:8801), the University of Tokyo Division of University Corporate Relations, TX Entrepreneur Partners (an incorporated association) and The Japan Academic Society for Ventures and Entrepreneurs as the central backers (Co-Hosts) of AEA. As the driving force behind the “Kashiwa-no-ha” project, Mitsui Fudosan underscored the need to further push entrepreneurship for betterment of society.

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Korea’s Zoyi, analytics startup for retailers, gets $4M series B for massive Japan rollout

Masaru Ikeda 2017.10.27

See the original story in Japanese. Seoul-based Zoyi Corporation, the Korean startup providing the Walk Insights offline customer analysis service and the Channel.io online sales support service for customers, announced last week that it has fundraised 450 million yen (about $4 million US) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund (KOIF), which is jointly operated by Japanese VC firm Global Brain and Japanese leading telco KDDI, as well as Colopl Next, among others. Established in 2014, Zoyi raised about 300 million won (around $270,000 US) from Bon Angels and Fast Track Asia in 2014, and in its Series A round succeeded in fundraising a total of 2 billion won (about $1.8 million US) from Korea Investment Partners and Aju IB Investment. Global Brain has previously invested in Korean startups like TeamBlind, iDecca, 5Rocks (later acquired by Tapjoy), and Fluently, but this was only the second investment in a Korean startup by KOIF, with an investment in ESM Lab last August. Walk Insights can be described as an offline version of Google Analytics, and based on the WiFi and Bluetooth signal strengths of customer’s smartphones it can tell whether a customer is inside or outside of a store. If the customer is inside, it…

See the original story in Japanese.

Seoul-based Zoyi Corporation, the Korean startup providing the Walk Insights offline customer analysis service and the Channel.io online sales support service for customers, announced last week that it has fundraised 450 million yen (about $4 million US) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund (KOIF), which is jointly operated by Japanese VC firm Global Brain and Japanese leading telco KDDI, as well as Colopl Next, among others.

Established in 2014, Zoyi raised about 300 million won (around $270,000 US) from Bon Angels and Fast Track Asia in 2014, and in its Series A round succeeded in fundraising a total of 2 billion won (about $1.8 million US) from Korea Investment Partners and Aju IB Investment.

Global Brain has previously invested in Korean startups like TeamBlind, iDecca, 5Rocks (later acquired by Tapjoy), and Fluently, but this was only the second investment in a Korean startup by KOIF, with an investment in ESM Lab last August.

Walk Insights can be described as an offline version of Google Analytics, and based on the WiFi and Bluetooth signal strengths of customer’s smartphones it can tell whether a customer is inside or outside of a store. If the customer is inside, it shows where in the store they are and how long they spend there, and through cooperation with POS (point-of-sales) it can track the conversion (purchases). Up to now more than 2,000 stores, including eyeglasses retailer Amore Pacific and Samsung Electronics, have employed it, and recently, there has been a wide range of users’ business fields such as local governments interested in the trends of inbound tourists and railroad companies looking into how many people have visited sports facilities owned by their company in a given group of train passengers. Zoyi develops these businesses in the Japanese market together with Walk Insights, the joint venture company of Zoyi and Tokyo-based YSC International.

Channel.io functions as an online concierge service developed for e-commerce business operators. The operator can understand customer trends using the dashboard, call out to the website visitor, and easily add a function that accepts questions from visitors to the operator’s site. Since inquiries and exchanges can be done in real time, the company maintains that visitors are more likely to get immediate answers from online stores than through e-mails and the likelihood of conversion increases. If the visitor is logged in they can be identified, but even if they are not logged in, by asking for the name and telephone number it is possible to continue an exchange via SMS (short message service) even after the visitor leaves the e-commerce site.

According to Zoyi, as long as the website itself is trustworthy, about 80% of visitors are inputting names and telephone numbers without resistance. Currently, 90% of Channel.io users are Korean companies, but Zoyi will secure new Japanese sales representatives to strengthen sales development in Japan using the funds raised this time.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

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Famione wins Open Network Lab Demo Day with app that helps couples get pregnant

Open Network Lab

Masaru Ikeda 2017.10.26

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab earlier this month held Demo Day for its Seed Accelerator Program 15th batch. From among 89 teams both inside and outside of Japan which entered this batch, six teams were chosen to receive mentoring and various support over a three-month period. Of the six teams, two teams were not shown then and four teams gave pitches at the Demo Day. They were examined through voting by major mentors and audiences. The judges for the pitch were as follows: Kaoru Hayashi (CEO / Group CEO, Digital Garage) Shonosuke Hata (CEO, Kakaku.com) Atsuhiro Murakami (Director, Kakaku.com) Adam Lindemann (CEO, Mind Fund) Naofumi Tsuchiya (CEO, Goodpatch) Top Award: Famione by Famione Famione is a platform to support married couples trying to get pregnant. Assisted by staffers of the University of Tokyo and St.Luke’s International University, this service analyzes users’ lifestyle using its own algorithm which received high evaluation by learned societies, in addition to providing a chat-based communication support between husband and wife such as schedule arrangement for having sex. Famione has been running services focusing on the trying-to-conceive support including the community website Flipp or the owned media Famit, and…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab earlier this month held Demo Day for its Seed Accelerator Program 15th batch. From among 89 teams both inside and outside of Japan which entered this batch, six teams were chosen to receive mentoring and various support over a three-month period.

Of the six teams, two teams were not shown then and four teams gave pitches at the Demo Day. They were examined through voting by major mentors and audiences. The judges for the pitch were as follows:

Kaoru Hayashi (CEO / Group CEO, Digital Garage)
Shonosuke Hata (CEO, Kakaku.com)
Atsuhiro Murakami (Director, Kakaku.com)
Adam Lindemann (CEO, Mind Fund)
Naofumi Tsuchiya (CEO, Goodpatch)

Top Award: Famione by Famione

Famione is a platform to support married couples trying to get pregnant. Assisted by staffers of the University of Tokyo and St.Luke’s International University, this service analyzes users’ lifestyle using its own algorithm which received high evaluation by learned societies, in addition to providing a chat-based communication support between husband and wife such as schedule arrangement for having sex.

Famione has been running services focusing on the trying-to-conceive support including the community website Flipp or the owned media Famit, and holds 1,860 users related to these services. The team aims to monetize through charged program for trying-to-conceive, data sales for drug development and user transfer to medical organizations.

Audience Award: Logi-kura by NewRevo

The Logi-kura warehouse management platform tackles excessive stock problems at small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is supposedly 5.4 trillion yen in scale (approximation) in Japan. Many persons in charge of ordering at SMEs order merchandise depending on their experiences and feelings, and that causes excessive stock. Logi-kura provides a data-driven ordering environment through forecasting demand for merchandise based on economic trends, weather, competitor information or breakage rate.

Since there is no similar service covering from warehouse management to demand forecast in succession within Japan yet, Logi-kura is ensured of its superiority in that point. The team provides this service at 600,000 yen (about $5,200) annually at the lowest according to the scale, aiming at a 30% reduction of domestic excessive stock and the beta version of the service has already been introduced in 11 companies. In the future, the team plans to construct a marketplace function allowing trade of excessive stock / stock shortage between users.

Hideout Club by Hideout Club

Hideout Club is a community app for whisky lovers, where 12,000 users has already been attracted. The app was launched one year before by two whisky experts who formerly worked at Rakuten, aiming to bridge a gap between bars and users.

Users can gain a free drink on a day designated, from registered 80 bars in Shibuya, Shinjuku and Ginza, by paying 1,500 yen (about $13) monthly. For bar users, user retargeting becomes possible by registering new customers to the ledger, and bar information is displayed in users’ search results by registering whisky brands they can serve.

Most of its promotion activities to bars depend on introduction from other bar owners and the rate of successful acquisition of new bar users reaches 50%. Targeting 6.5 million whisky lovers in Japan, the team is going to expand the service coverage range to all parts of Japan, like inbound customers or high-grade resorts, aiming to acquire one million users by 2021.

Better Engage by BtoA

Better Engage supports preventing employees’ turnover by a data-driven approach. Linking with various cloud services and APIs, it acquires employees’ data about attendance, years of service, performance and survey results. Based on these acquired data, the service evaluates each employee’s engagement by five indices: relationship with superiors, relationship with co-workers, degree of satisfaction with work, degree of satisfaction with offices, and growth feels.

Among the five indices, relationship with superiors / co-workers are evaluated not only by surveillance but also communication log on in-house tools. Since its launch back three months before, this service has been introduced into 12 companies as trial and 25% of them indicate their intention to use the paid service. The monthly charge is 800 yen (about $7) per employee.

According to Masahiko Sarukawa, Director of DG Incubation organizing Open Network Lab, the accelerator has produced 85 startups in total with the completion of this 15th batch. The rate of successful fundraising by startups being produced through 14 batches reached 56.7%.

Coinciding with the holding of this 15th Demo Day, Open Network Lab hasstarted accepting applications to the 16th batch. It will provide 10 million yen (about $92,000) maximum as activity funding for this batch over three months. Also it plans to provide the right to use three bases (in Daikanyama of Tokyo and Kamakura, plus San Francisco) gratis for a year, and mentoring by managers of startups that came out of the past Seed Accelerator Program. The application deadline for the 16th batch is noon on November 27th.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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