Japanese startup 3.0 has been offering a subscription-based unlimited pass to nightclubs and discotheques in central Tokyo, called Neon. The company announced on Thursday that it has started selling a 7-day unlimited plan of the pass for 2,900 yen (about $27) on JAPANiCAN.com, a multilingual online travel booking site for international visitors run by Japanese travel agency giant JTB. The plan was initially launched back in June this year and gives purchasers a 7-day unlimited access to 16 selected spots in Roppongi, Shibuya, Aoyama and other Tokyo nightlife districts. Since it’s said that there are 90 nightlife spots all around Tokyo, the pass can give you an unlimited access to almost 20% out of all these for a flat-rate pricing. Neon was launched back in June of 2016 under its previous name of Live3S, aiming to connecting club go-ers seeking good spots and events with venue owners seeking new visitors. The team expects to revitalize the Japanese nightlife economy by pushing forward a nightclub culture in Tokyo where there are estimated 20,000 club go-ers. Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Japanese startup 3.0 has been offering a subscription-based unlimited pass to nightclubs and discotheques in central Tokyo, called Neon. The company announced on Thursday that it has started selling a 7-day unlimited plan of the pass for 2,900 yen (about $27) on JAPANiCAN.com, a multilingual online travel booking site for international visitors run by Japanese travel agency giant JTB.
The plan was initially launched back in June this year and gives purchasers a 7-day unlimited access to 16 selected spots in Roppongi, Shibuya, Aoyama and other Tokyo nightlife districts. Since it’s said that there are 90 nightlife spots all around Tokyo, the pass can give you an unlimited access to almost 20% out of all these for a flat-rate pricing.
Neon was launched back in June of 2016 under its previous name of Live3S, aiming to connecting club go-ers seeking good spots and events with venue owners seeking new visitors. The team expects to revitalize the Japanese nightlife economy by pushing forward a nightclub culture in Tokyo where there are estimated 20,000 club go-ers.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Wantedly, Japan’s social recruiting startup, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 14 September with plans to offer 50,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 19,500 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 80,000 shares. Daiwa Securities will lead the underwriting. Its share price range will be released on 28 August with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 7 September and pricing on 6 September. According to the consolidated statement as of August 2016, they posted revenue of 840 million yen (about $7.6 million) with an ordinary profit of 120 million yen ($1.1 million) and a net profit of 77 million yen ($700,000). Wantedly, the company’s flagship service offering business-centric social networking opportunities, has about 800,000 individual users and 23,000 corporate users. About 1.5 million unique users visit the platform a month while 27% of these users visit it at least once a month. Led by the company’s CEO Akiko Naka (69.98%), its major shareholders include CyberAgent (TSE:4751, 11.1%), Shogo Kawada (co-founder and advisor of DeNA, 6.38%), Shinji Kumura (Founder of AnyPay /…
At the press conference introducing Wantedly’s new contact management service Wantedly People in July. L to R: Akito Sakasegawa (New Business Development, Wantedly), Akiko Naka (CEO, Wantedly), Naoyoshi Aikawa (Lead Engineer, Wantedly)
Tokyo-based Wantedly, Japan’s social recruiting startup, announced today that its IPO application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has been approved. The company will be listed on the TSE Mothers Market on 14 September with plans to offer 50,000 shares for public subscription and to sell 19,500 shares in over-allotment options, for a total of 80,000 shares. Daiwa Securities will lead the underwriting.
Its share price range will be released on 28 August with bookbuilding scheduled to start on 7 September and pricing on 6 September. According to the consolidated statement as of August 2016, they posted revenue of 840 million yen (about $7.6 million) with an ordinary profit of 120 million yen ($1.1 million) and a net profit of 77 million yen ($700,000). Wantedly, the company’s flagship service offering business-centric social networking opportunities, has about 800,000 individual users and 23,000 corporate users. About 1.5 million unique users visit the platform a month while 27% of these users visit it at least once a month.
Led by the company’s CEO Akiko Naka (69.98%), its major shareholders include CyberAgent (TSE:4751, 11.1%), Shogo Kawada (co-founder and advisor of DeNA, 6.38%), Shinji Kumura (Founder of AnyPay / Das Capital, 4.13%), Yoshinori Kawasaki (CTO of Wantedly, 3.26%), Archetype (2.02%), Nihon Keizai Shimbun or simply The Nikkei (1.17%), Naoyoshi Aikawa (Lead engineer of Wantedly, 0.59%), Masanori Sugiyama (Chairman and President of Zappalas, 0.42%) and Kosuke Matsumoto (Managing Director of Enish, 0.42%).
Wantedly was founded back in 2010 under its previous name of Fuel by Naka who previously participated in launching Japanese operations of Facebook. Focusing on the potential of referral recruitment business, she launched the Wantedly social recruiting platform.
Wantedly Visit Image credit: Wantedly Singapore
By stepping into beyond just a recruiting platform, Wantedly has been a taking the position of a LinkedIn-like business-centric social network platform. In order to expand its business by increasing touch-points for businesspersons, the company has launched additional services such as Wantedly Visit (interview scheduling assistant between hiring companies and employee candidates), Wantedly People (business card management) and Wantedly Chat (group chat app).
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Copenhagen-headquartered app agency Nodes ( English / Danish ) for Europe Expansion. This acquisition makes Monstar Lab secure three Nodes’ office locations: Copenhagen (Denmark), Aarhus (Denmark) and London (UK), meaning that the Tokyo company now has 17 locations worldwide for sales and app development efforts. Financial details of the deal such as the investment ratio and the payment date have not been disclosed. When Monstar Lab acquired Manila-based Ideyatech, the former rebranded the latter into Monstar Lab Manila. It is still unclear if the Tokyo company intends to unify its brand with Nodes because the Danish company has a certain level of strong brand presence in the European market where it has clients of globally renowned companies like Samsung, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline. With the acquisition at this time around, Monstar Lab has their presence in three major economies: North America, Asia and Europe. The company claims that it will collect around half of all revenue from outside Japan in 2019. Node is a mobile app development agency founded back in 2008, employing 75 people…
Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Copenhagen-headquartered app agency Nodes ( English / Danish ) for Europe Expansion. This acquisition makes Monstar Lab secure three Nodes’ office locations: Copenhagen (Denmark), Aarhus (Denmark) and London (UK), meaning that the Tokyo company now has 17 locations worldwide for sales and app development efforts. Financial details of the deal such as the investment ratio and the payment date have not been disclosed.
When Monstar Lab acquired Manila-based Ideyatech, the former rebranded the latter into Monstar Lab Manila. It is still unclear if the Tokyo company intends to unify its brand with Nodes because the Danish company has a certain level of strong brand presence in the European market where it has clients of globally renowned companies like Samsung, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline. With the acquisition at this time around, Monstar Lab has their presence in three major economies: North America, Asia and Europe. The company claims that it will collect around half of all revenue from outside Japan in 2019.
Node is a mobile app development agency founded back in 2008, employing 75 people consisting of developers, designers and mobile consultants in three locations in Denmark and UK. Carnival.io, the mobile marketing-focused subsidiary of cloud-based customer relationship management platform developer Sailthru, has chosen Nodes as one of the top 12 European Mobile Agencies in 2017.
Regarding the reasons why Monstar Lab has chosen Nodes for acquisition, the Tokyo company answered that:
Nodes has established its brand in multiple countries in Europe
Nodes has talented engineers and designers
Nodes has a cultural background which may create synergy with Monstar Lab
Hiroki Inagawa, CEO of Monstar Lab, gave us a comment on the acquisition:
Nodes has excellent engineering skills and design capabilities, and is also one of the few companies that has successfully established a high position in the UK market. Our decisive factor was their young founders and management teams with high motivation for growth.
Going forward, we will aim to be Europe’s No.1 digital product developer with Nodes as our regional headquarters, and also aim to be the world’s No.1 digital product developer with all Monstar Lab group companies.
See the original story in Japanese. While Japan has seen the birth of various FoodTech startups, the majority of them have aimed to solve problems related to increasing productivity and the safety of food, or to making food distribution more efficient, as opposed to focusing on food itself. However, the startup this article introduces is edgy enough that we can describe it as being smack dab at the center of FoodTech. The FoodTech startup Comp is headquartered in Kanda, Tokyo and develops meal replacements. In general, it is difficult for humans to obtain all of our necessary nutrients with only one item of food. With the progression of changing nuclear families, people who live alone, and people who dine out or buy pre-packaged food, it is difficult to maintain well-balanced eating habits. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s “Dietary Requirements”, which is the dieticians go to handbook, a complete meal is one that mixes foods from the 6 food groups and 9 essential amino acids in a perfect balance. The inspiration for making the products comes from Comp’s CEO Yuta Suzuki’s own experiences. Suzuki thought a lot about the importance of consuming complete meals after having…
While Japan has seen the birth of various FoodTech startups, the majority of them have aimed to solve problems related to increasing productivity and the safety of food, or to making food distribution more efficient, as opposed to focusing on food itself. However, the startup this article introduces is edgy enough that we can describe it as being smack dab at the center of FoodTech.
The FoodTech startup Comp is headquartered in Kanda, Tokyo and develops meal replacements. In general, it is difficult for humans to obtain all of our necessary nutrients with only one item of food. With the progression of changing nuclear families, people who live alone, and people who dine out or buy pre-packaged food, it is difficult to maintain well-balanced eating habits. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s “Dietary Requirements”, which is the dieticians go to handbook, a complete meal is one that mixes foods from the 6 food groups and 9 essential amino acids in a perfect balance.
The inspiration for making the products comes from Comp’s CEO Yuta Suzuki’s own experiences. Suzuki thought a lot about the importance of consuming complete meals after having suffered a lapse in health due to poor eating habits brought about by losing himself in his work and hobbies. Overseas, although meal replacements such as Soylent have been sold for a while now, they are expensive to import individually, the shipping fee is high, and it is optimized for Westerners who make up the most users, all together making it difficult to obtain in Japan. Also, depending on the case, there are products with additives that are prohibited in Japan, and it is difficult to develop a large-scale parallel import business. Against such a background, Suzuki is striving to develop food products that meet the complete nutritional needs.
Comp developed a powdered meal replacement called Comp Powder and it went on sale in April of 2016. People without time for sleeping and eating, people who are deeply focused on something–specifically, they have received support from engineers living alone, creators, gamers, and men in academia, reaching about 10,000 members who purchase items on a subscription basis in a year and a half. The company does not employ large-scale advertisement, and most of the new customers are organic inflows through word of mouth and social media.
Comp is teaming up with Mikakuto, a big name confectionery manufacturer in Japan, and jointly developed a meal replacement gummy called Comp Gummy, which began selling on Comp’s website in July. Buyers can purchase one 53 gram pack for 250 yen, a sample set of 3 for 500 yen, or 20 packs for 5,000 yen on the website. Because the nutritional value per gram is 3.8 kcal, ingesting 3 packs is equivalent to that of a beef bowl in terms of calories. With Comp powder, users were predominantly men, in partnering with Mikakuto the company is looking to attract a wide range of female customers since Mikakuto has produced a number of gummy products popular among this demographic.
In terms of FoodTech startups in Japan also producing meal replacements, there is Basefood which developed “Complete Nutritive Pasta”. Comp’s competition along this vertical is set to increase, but Suzuki shared that the company’s brand and technology was established around the idea that “Diet, exercise, and rest foster good health,” and he hopes to continue one step ahead of the competitors.
See the original story in Japanese. Warrantee, the Japanese startup offering a cloud-based warranty management service, announced in early July during a joint press conference with Tokio Marine Nichido (TSE: 8766) held in Tokyo that they will develop an on-demand insurance service called Warrantee Now. In addition to Tokio Marine Nichido, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance are also participating as insurance underwriters in Warrantee Now, and through the use of Mitsuibussan Insurance, they have created an insurance subscription service that uses a smartphone app to offer the necessary insurance when it is needed. Warrantee Now creates an environment that makes it possible to sign up for or cancel insurance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week starting at just 10 yen (about 10 cents US) per day. Warrantee plans to begin the service by the end of August 2017, and is aiming for 100,000 subscribers in one year and 1 million by 2020. Warrantee is a startup founded in Osaka in October of 2013. By providing apps that manage consumer electronic warranty certificates on the cloud to users, it becomes possible for companies to track which households have what kind of products. For the user, there…
From left: Warrantee CEO Yusuke Shono, Tokio Marine Nichido Managing Executive Officer Yusuke Otsuka Image credit: Warrantee
Warrantee, the Japanese startup offering a cloud-based warranty management service, announced in early July during a joint press conference with Tokio Marine Nichido (TSE: 8766) held in Tokyo that they will develop an on-demand insurance service called Warrantee Now. In addition to Tokio Marine Nichido, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance are also participating as insurance underwriters in Warrantee Now, and through the use of Mitsuibussan Insurance, they have created an insurance subscription service that uses a smartphone app to offer the necessary insurance when it is needed.
Warrantee Now creates an environment that makes it possible to sign up for or cancel insurance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week starting at just 10 yen (about 10 cents US) per day. Warrantee plans to begin the service by the end of August 2017, and is aiming for 100,000 subscribers in one year and 1 million by 2020.
The companies listed by role as they prepare for the launch of Warrantee Now Image credit: Warrantee
Warrantee is a startup founded in Osaka in October of 2013. By providing apps that manage consumer electronic warranty certificates on the cloud to users, it becomes possible for companies to track which households have what kind of products. For the user, there are advantages such as the ability to browse the instruction manuals of products, second-hand purchase requests and repair requests. Merits for companies include the possibility of targeting advertisement and more effective marketing.
In April of this year, the company entered into a capital and business alliance with Autobacs Seven, which develops a car repair/purchase assessment network, and began an asset management service for automobiles. In May, they won the audience award at KDDI Mugen Labo 11th Demo Day with the automobile management service.
“Warrantee Now” mobile app Image credit: Warrantee
This development will probably be hailed as the first venture into InsureTech in Japan. It seems we finally know why Warrantee, a non-fintech startup born in Osaka, elected to establish their Tokyo headquarters in the Finolab FinTech hub.
The Nikkei reported early this morning that Tokyo-based Sansan, the company that operates the business card-based CRM (customer relationship management) solutions, has secured 4.2 billion yen (about $38 million) from Mirai Creation Investment Limited Partnership, the investment fund backed by Toyota Motor and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). DCM Ventures and Salesforce.com also participated in this investment. Sansan claims that the funds will be used to boost the Asia expansion of the company’s business card management app, especially in India and Singapore. The company recently unveiled that it has finally discovered monetization streams for its freemium business card management app Eight by allowing clients to insert their recruiting information and ads into the app’s timeline. Prior to this funding, Sansan previously fundraised $16.8 million in a series C round from DCM Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Nissay Capital, and others back in January last year. See also: Japanese CRM startup Sansan raises $14.6 million Business card-based CRM startup Sansan raises $5M, planning global expansion Tokyo Office Tour: Japan’s Sansan wants to evolve how the world does contact management
The Nikkei reported early this morning that Tokyo-based Sansan, the company that operates the business card-based CRM (customer relationship management) solutions, has secured 4.2 billion yen (about $38 million) from Mirai Creation Investment Limited Partnership, the investment fund backed by Toyota Motor and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). DCM Ventures and Salesforce.com also participated in this investment.
Prior to this funding, Sansan previously fundraised $16.8 million in a series C round from DCM Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Nissay Capital, and others back in January last year.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Preferred Networks (PFN), the Japanese startup offering deep learning technologies for Internet of Things (IoT), announced today that it would receive an additional 10.5 billion yen (about $95.4 million)investment from Toyota Motor (TSE:7203). The cash injection will make Toyota an eternal largest shareholder for PFN. Based on this, both companies will further work on the joint development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in autonomous driving and other mobility business fields. Since its launch back in March of 2014, PFN has been proposing Edge Heavy Computing, the distributed data processing scheme dealing with an enormous volume of data from various IoT devices, aiming to let devices interact each others so that each device can autonomously make a higher level decision making. The company has been focused on serving transportation, manufacturing and bio healthcare industries by partnering with Toyota, Fanac, National Cancer Center and other institutions. This funding from Toyota follows the previous one receiving 1 billion yen in December of 2015 after both companies started joint research back in October of 2014. According to the press release from PFN, the investment was led by Toyata’s understanding that object-recognition technology and analysis technology of vehicle…
Tokyo-based Preferred Networks (PFN), the Japanese startup offering deep learning technologies for Internet of Things (IoT), announced today that it would receive an additional 10.5 billion yen (about $95.4 million)investment from Toyota Motor (TSE:7203). The cash injection will make Toyota an eternal largest shareholder for PFN. Based on this, both companies will further work on the joint development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in autonomous driving and other mobility business fields.
Since its launch back in March of 2014, PFN has been proposing Edge Heavy Computing, the distributed data processing scheme dealing with an enormous volume of data from various IoT devices, aiming to let devices interact each others so that each device can autonomously make a higher level decision making. The company has been focused on serving transportation, manufacturing and bio healthcare industries by partnering with Toyota, Fanac, National Cancer Center and other institutions.
This funding from Toyota follows the previous one receiving 1 billion yen in December of 2015 after both companies started joint research back in October of 2014.
According to the press release from PFN, the investment was led by Toyata’s understanding that object-recognition technology and analysis technology of vehicle information, both of which have been co-developed by the two, is something essential for the motor company looking into the next-gen mobility society. PFN will use the funds to enhance computational environment and accelerate talent acquisition.
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. The Fintech Accelerator program run by Startupbootcamp, based in Singapore and lasting three months long, held its first ever Demo Tour in Asia. Commencing with its home base in Singapore on July 5th, the 10-day “Odyssey” of 11 participants from seven countries entailed visits to Chengdu and Hong Kong in China before winding up on July 14th in Tokyo, Japan (albeit on the final day only eight startups gave pitches, three firms of AIM from Korea, Fugle from Taiwan and Smartfolios from Russia being absent). In Tokyo, the Demo Tour was hosted by Finolab, with support from local partners. Startupbootcamp is the accelerator arm of venturebuilder/design studio/consultancy Rainmaking, which has 11 offices on three continents. In Asia they seek to promote entrepreneurial problem solving within corporate teams across multiple industries. The Tokyo visit was opened by a Startupbootcamp Asia representative who outlined the endeavor and paved the way for the startups that had made it to Japan, with the day being ended by the Startupbootcamp FinTech Program Director summing up the tour. See also: Startupbootcamp FinTech Singapore demo day showcases…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
Steven Tong, Managing Director of Startupbootcamp FinTech
The Fintech Accelerator program run by Startupbootcamp, based in Singapore and lasting three months long, held its first ever Demo Tour in Asia. Commencing with its home base in Singapore on July 5th, the 10-day “Odyssey” of 11 participants from seven countries entailed visits to Chengdu and Hong Kong in China before winding up on July 14th in Tokyo, Japan (albeit on the final day only eight startups gave pitches, three firms of AIM from Korea, Fugle from Taiwan and Smartfolios from Russia being absent). In Tokyo, the Demo Tour was hosted by Finolab, with support from local partners.
Startupbootcamp is the accelerator arm of venturebuilder/design studio/consultancy Rainmaking, which has 11 offices on three continents. In Asia they seek to promote entrepreneurial problem solving within corporate teams across multiple industries. The Tokyo visit was opened by a Startupbootcamp Asia representative who outlined the endeavor and paved the way for the startups that had made it to Japan, with the day being ended by the Startupbootcamp FinTech Program Director summing up the tour.
An overview of the pitches by the eight are as follows:
CherryPay (Singapore)
Singapore’s CherryPay presented their international Peer-to-Peer money transfer matching platform, which has the backing of Amazon Web Services as well as Cisco Systems. Chief Marketing Officer Kate Wu said her company provides reasonable rates and affordable service fees in addition to quick receipt of funds via local bank accounts through leveraging of its transborder network.
Smallticket (Korea)
Another businesswoman, who stood out in an attention-grabbing garb emblazoned with her company logo, was Julie Kim Jung Eun, Founder and the top officer at Smallticket of Korea. This online social insurance broker outfit, which minimizes risks using Peer-to-Peer rewarding platform, underscored the merits for micro-segment groups that utilize their system.
Vesl (the Philippines)
An all-Filipina management team as represented by the lady in charge of product development spoke on behalf of Vesl. It was noted that trade credit insurance at bite size was being availed to SMEs and others such as farmers cooperatives hitherto ineligible to gain access to cheaper financing. The startup from the Philippines now has an agreement with a global insurance broker.
Morakot (Cambodia)
Speaking of the Philippines, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Sophorth Khuon, of Cambodia’s Morakot offering microfinance, unveiled his company’s expansion plan into the island nation in 2018, following this year’s entry into Myanmar. He highlighted the problems faced by emerging markets, which his startup seeks to address with a business model based on core banking.
Scalend (India)
Regarding solutions for difficult challenges as exemplified with dealing with Big Data, Scalend showcased its AI-backed data and insights discovery platform for financial services companies. Ravi Madhira, who is one of the two co-founders, talked about how he and his business partner had over forty years of collective experience in building internet scale systems.
Jumper.ai (India)
As for AI, Jumper.ai co-founder Yash Kotak of jumper.ai outlined their social media-use e-commerce enabler which realizes Instant Checkout among other things. The auto-engage sales based on jumper tech can be used on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, with planned adoption on other social media like Line in the near future.
Tixguru (Singapore)
Another Artificial Intelligence user, Singapore-based startup Tixguru, focuses on quantitative trading recommendations for financial institutions. Its robot advisor, according to Chief Operating Officer James Ong, is grounded in a decade-long experience in this business sector.
Smart Trade (Japan / China)
Smart Trade, with a base in both Japan and China, is also involved in “quant trading” although in this startup platform’s case the target market comprises individual investors. CEO@Japan and co-founder Tomoyuki Uchida highlighted their Algorithm Store and Algorithm Factory lines. The company CMO and co-founder Guangzhen Li is also known for being active in this arena.
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Xenoma, developing a smart apparel product called E-skin, recently announced that it would start sales targeting individual users. E-skin has been sold for $1,000 targeting enterprise users in healthcare or sports training industries thus far, but the firm has established a mass production structure that makes it possible to provide the product at a lower price for individual users. The firm just kicked off a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter today and the product is priced at $479 for the first 100 orders. See also: 77: The Real Reason Japan Can’t Innovate & What to Do About It – Xenoma (Disrupting Japan) Xenoma was spun out from Someya Group of the University of Tokyo / JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency) ERATO Someya Bio-harmonized Electronics Project in 2015. In April of 2016, the firm fundraised 180 million yen (about $1.6 million) from Beyond Next Ventures and JST SUCCESS Program, and was chosen as an STS (Seed-stage Technology-based Startups) Support Program of NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization). E-skin consists of a compression-fit E-skin shirt with 14 stretch/strain sensors and a controller named E-skin Hub which is attachable to the shirt. These sensors…
Xenoma CEO Ichiro Amimori speaks at the press conference. Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Japan’s Xenoma, developing a smart apparel product called E-skin, recently announced that it would start sales targeting individual users. E-skin has been sold for $1,000 targeting enterprise users in healthcare or sports training industries thus far, but the firm has established a mass production structure that makes it possible to provide the product at a lower price for individual users. The firm just kicked off a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter today and the product is priced at $479 for the first 100 orders.
E-skin consists of a compression-fit E-skin shirt with 14 stretch/strain sensors and a controller named E-skin Hub which is attachable to the shirt. These sensors are directly mounted on shirts, so that it is lightweight and can detect the user’s motion accurately. The controller has a 3-axis accelerometer and is able to monitor overall body motion without requiring Lighthouse or other 3D scanner motion capture devices.
Additionally, Xenoma has developed apps for E-skin this time, and a case study combining the E-skin shirt and HoloLens was introduced at the press conference. The firm had initially been developing an app to provide a VR (Virtual Reality) experience, but slightly changed the concept of the app into one having more exercise factors rather than VR because the action experience wearing the shirt was more physically demanding than expected. If this crowdfunding campaign reaches its goal, the users will be rewarded with an E-skin shirt, an E-skin Hub controller and their choice out of the three mobile apps.
The users can enjoy the E-skin experience with using the app, as well as developing their own experience using SDK (Software Development Kit) provided by Xenoma. The supported platforms include Windows 10, Android, .NET C# and Unity as before, but in addition is to be available for Mac OS X, iOS 10, Java and Unreal Engine. For the convenience of developers, the firm provides the package in a form exportable to the TensorFlow deep learning library.
Xenoma is currently exhibiting these products at SIGGRAPH, the interactive technology show taking place in Las Vegas, aiming to draw the interest of early adopters from the US and global markets.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. In view of Panasonic celebrating its centennial in 2018, the Osaka electronic company has set up this July with startups Loftwork and Cafe Company – under the banner of “setting up an experimental space that seeks to enrich the world over the next hundred years” – a collaborative space in the area just south of Japan Railways Shibuya station. The three-story structure dubbed 100BANCH comprises the “Loft” collab space on the top floor supported by Panasonic and the “Garage” work space for members on the second floor. The ground floor will be occupied by “Kitchen” which will be a cafe space operated by Cafe Company. Shibuya is a hotbed of startup in Japan, and Panasonic, which started out small a century ago, wishes to support such companies taking on business challenges. The opening ceremony brought together some of the slated occupants of the building, ranging from an aquaponics venture with the backing of Assoc. Prof. Hiroyoshi Iwata of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Science, to a Non-Profit Organization project (Re:recipe) looking to invigorate regional cities…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
In view of Panasonic celebrating its centennial in 2018, the Osaka electronic company has set up this July with startups Loftwork and Cafe Company – under the banner of “setting up an experimental space that seeks to enrich the world over the next hundred years” – a collaborative space in the area just south of Japan Railways Shibuya station.
The three-story structure dubbed 100BANCH comprises the “Loft” collab space on the top floor supported by Panasonic and the “Garage” work space for members on the second floor. The ground floor will be occupied by “Kitchen” which will be a cafe space operated by Cafe Company. Shibuya is a hotbed of startup in Japan, and Panasonic, which started out small a century ago, wishes to support such companies taking on business challenges.
The opening ceremony brought together some of the slated occupants of the building, ranging from an aquaponics venture with the backing of Assoc. Prof. Hiroyoshi Iwata of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Science, to a Non-Profit Organization project (Re:recipe) looking to invigorate regional cities by introducing to travelers unique local dishes that can be found all over Japan.
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
The Bridge
