See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Soracom announced on Wednesday that it will commence full-scale service development of its mobile communication / management platform for Internet of Things (IoT) called Soracom Air in the US. US-based business operators can purchase data communication SIM cards at the US Amazon.com site from a single card unit and can use Soracom Air plus all of the other services in 120 countries / regions including the US although these have until now been provided only in Japan. In the US, users can use the AT&T and T-Mobile network (2G and 3G is available), and have to pay $5 for each SIM card (postage will be charged for Amazon) as the initial cost. Data communication fee is $0.08 by 1MB but this has volume discount settings. The basic fee is free for the first year (conventionally charged before starting communication), and is $0.06 per month or $1.8 per contiuous-use month after starting communication, which is cheaper than one set use in Japan. According to CEO of Soracom Ken Tamagawa, the aim of the free basic fee before starting communication is to reduce the risk of keeping a large number of devices in stock as…
“Soracom Air” Sim Card for US Image credit: Soracom
Japan’s Soracom announced on Wednesday that it will commence full-scale service development of its mobile communication / management platform for Internet of Things (IoT) called Soracom Air in the US. US-based business operators can purchase data communication SIM cards at the US Amazon.com site from a single card unit and can use Soracom Air plus all of the other services in 120 countries / regions including the US although these have until now been provided only in Japan.
In the US, users can use the AT&T and T-Mobile network (2G and 3G is available), and have to pay $5 for each SIM card (postage will be charged for Amazon) as the initial cost. Data communication fee is $0.08 by 1MB but this has volume discount settings.
As an IoT application using Soracom, the Kakaxi farm-monitoring device transmits on-farm information to consumers through time-lapse video and farm-data illustrations. Image credit: Kakaxi
The basic fee is free for the first year (conventionally charged before starting communication), and is $0.06 per month or $1.8 per contiuous-use month after starting communication, which is cheaper than one set use in Japan. According to CEO of Soracom Ken Tamagawa, the aim of the free basic fee before starting communication is to reduce the risk of keeping a large number of devices in stock as inserted SIM cards.
These charge settings all differ between the service in Japan and for global areas, and will be handled simultaneously (users are allowed to use global SIM cards in Japan but will be charged according to the global charging setting).
The firm plans to start selling global SIM cards in various countries around the world one by one.
Data visualization service “Harvest”
The “Harvest” user console screen Image credit: Soracom
Soracom also revealed another new service called Harvest on that day. This service provides accumulation / visualization of communication data; conventionally, user operators have to construct servers or dashboard by themselves in order to grasp data communication conditions of IoT devices utilized on the SORACOM platform.
Harvest enables quick and easy use (by the way, Soracom names its option services in alphabetical order as with Air, Beam and Canal, and H is used as the capital letter this time).
By setting the use of Harvest via user console and by sending data from IoT devices to designated end-points, the service accumulates data from each device such as location or temperature and visualizes them into graphs.
Since the acquired data is saved together with SIM card’s ID, users can know when and which device sent the data. These data are saved for 40 days and the data communication protocol supports HTTP, TCP and UDP.
Usage fee costs 5 yen per day for each SIM card, and charges 0.004 yen per request when the number of data writing exceeds 2,000 in a day.
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. This year, startups like Soracom took part in the professional broadcasters’ confab Inter Bee. Held from November 16 for three days at Makuhari Messe, the startup could be found at the joint Amazon Web Service (AWS) booth. Also, its evangelist Kazutaka Goto gave live streaming demonstrations at the Cloudpack corner using mobile routers at 4K size underscoring the usefulness of Soracom solutions even as broadcasting and telecommunications converge further. Dec 2 update: A sentence above was partially deleted due to our misunderstanding about which connectivity was being used in the Cloudpack booth. See also: Japan’s Soracom launches cellular network service for Internet of Things developers Inter Bee had some 38,000 people from over three dozen countries/regions converge at the Chiba waterfront convention center. It is considered to be a gathering which sets the trend for future media business, a field many startups are eyeing keenly. In Japan for example the Olympics slated for 2020 is seen by many to be one of the driving forces behind an expanding media market here and in the rest of Asia. This trendsetting aspect…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
Photo by Jerrey Suppan
This year, startups like Soracom took part in the professional broadcasters’ confab Inter Bee. Held from November 16 for three days at Makuhari Messe, the startup could be found at the joint Amazon Web Service (AWS) booth. Also, its evangelist Kazutaka Goto gave live streaming demonstrations at the Cloudpack corner using mobile routers at 4K size underscoring the usefulness of Soracom solutions even as broadcasting and telecommunications converge further.
Dec 2 update: A sentence above was partially deleted due to our misunderstanding about which connectivity was being used in the Cloudpack booth.
Inter Bee had some 38,000 people from over three dozen countries/regions converge at the Chiba waterfront convention center. It is considered to be a gathering which sets the trend for future media business, a field many startups are eyeing keenly. In Japan for example the Olympics slated for 2020 is seen by many to be one of the driving forces behind an expanding media market here and in the rest of Asia.
This trendsetting aspect of the Japan Electronics Show Association event can be highlighted by the fact that 4K size for the display will next being enhanced further by 8K. Should 8K come to largely supplant its predecessor size in the next few years, startups would need to adapt (let’s say in IoT solutions provider Soracom’s case, cloud-related systems) to the next standard.
The Japanese public TV operations NHK showcased more recent results of its technical laboratory efforts on “Augmented TV” development at this broadcaster’s booth, among the thousand booths that were found at this year’s event. This Augmented TV utilizes a “stretchable” vertical display to offer an experience tied in with digital signage. Being a public entity, of course many startups can explore the possibility of making use of this system once ready.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Dely, the video-centric culinary media startup offering Kurashiru, announced today that it has fundraised about 500 million yen (about $4.5 million) from YJ Capital, Gumi Ventures, United, as well as Yusuke Sato, managing director of Japanese adtech startup FreakOut (TSE:6094), and an unnamed angel investor. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan (TSE:4689). With the funds, the company plans to utilize mobile videos and video content from shops to measure the effectiveness of ads, etc., and it is said they are also considering overseas expansion for the future. Dely was established in April of 2014. In September of the same year they received funding from Anri and began a food delivery business as their inaugural service. However, after judging the outlook for such services difficult, around February of this year they pivoted to video curation media, which became the model for their current business. As of May, they have organized a team for producing 500 video clips per month. As mentioned in a previous interview, CEO Yusuke Horie is aiming for Cookpad (TSE:2193), the premiere recipe media site in Japan. He said: In terms of video clips, recipe content has gained…
Tokyo-based Dely, the video-centric culinary media startup offering Kurashiru, announced today that it has fundraised about 500 million yen (about $4.5 million) from YJ Capital, Gumi Ventures, United, as well as Yusuke Sato, managing director of Japanese adtech startup FreakOut (TSE:6094), and an unnamed angel investor. YJ Capital is the investment arm of Yahoo Japan (TSE:4689).
With the funds, the company plans to utilize mobile videos and video content from shops to measure the effectiveness of ads, etc., and it is said they are also considering overseas expansion for the future.
Dely was established in April of 2014. In September of the same year they received funding from Anri and began a food delivery business as their inaugural service. However, after judging the outlook for such services difficult, around February of this year they pivoted to video curation media, which became the model for their current business. As of May, they have organized a team for producing 500 video clips per month.
In terms of video clips, recipe content has gained attention, but no matter what you end up with clips that use flashy elements in order to become buzzworthy. But, what the user really wants is information for just a regular curry or stew. Since I was planning to use a stock content model like Cookpad’s from the beginning, of the 1000 or so videos for distribution a month, no more than about 90 are being used as video clips and distributed among social networks, etc.
According to Horie, nearly all of the employees, who have reached 60 people in total, work on video content production, making sure to take time to sort out the finer details such as caloric calculation and recipe description.
So what would happen if Cookpad begins put more stock into doing videos? Naturally, Horie also has various thoughts on this idea. To summarize his words, currently Cookpad is producing as little as 30 videos a month, and there is an inclination that video does not fit in with their original text and picture content format.
He added:
When Rakuten Recipe began, their strategy was to attract users with the incentive of Rakuten reward points. But, what’s on the horizon is a change in format. With the mobile communication environment improving, video is starting to have the competitive edge.
Of course, if Cookpad launches similar projects it could be a whole new game, but for now they are focused on separate problems, creating a prime opportunity for startups aiming to replace them.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab held the demo day for the 13th batch of their Seed Accelerator Program last month. 88 teams from Japan and the rest of the world applied for this batch (22 of these from abroad), with 5 teams selected to undergo a 3-month mentoring and support program. It should be noted that, from the 5 teams, 1 team disbanded before making it to the demo day, and 1 other team failed to meet the conditions set forth internally by Open Network Labs, resulting in 3 teams making pitches on demo day. In the previous demo day events by Open Network Lab the evaluation format was often based on a vote by key mentors as well as an audience. This time around, the winner was chosen based on examinations only by the following five judges: Kaoru Hayashi (President and CEO, Digital Garage) Tomoya Sasaki (Incubation Senior Marketing Director, DG Incubation / President & CEO, Open Network Lab) Masayuki Sarukawa (Managing Director, DG Incubation) Shonosuke Hata (President & CEO, Kakaku.com) Atsuhiro Murakami (Managing Director, Kakaku.com) Best Team Award winner: Comiru by Poper Comiru is an app that facilitates communication between cram…
Tokyo-based startup incubator Open Network Lab held the demo day for the 13th batch of their Seed Accelerator Program last month. 88 teams from Japan and the rest of the world applied for this batch (22 of these from abroad), with 5 teams selected to undergo a 3-month mentoring and support program. It should be noted that, from the 5 teams, 1 team disbanded before making it to the demo day, and 1 other team failed to meet the conditions set forth internally by Open Network Labs, resulting in 3 teams making pitches on demo day.
In the previous demo day events by Open Network Lab the evaluation format was often based on a vote by key mentors as well as an audience. This time around, the winner was chosen based on examinations only by the following five judges:
Kaoru Hayashi (President and CEO, Digital Garage)
Tomoya Sasaki (Incubation Senior Marketing Director, DG Incubation / President & CEO, Open Network Lab)
Comiru is an app that facilitates communication between cram schools and parents. Founder Shingo Kurihara, after a stint with Sumitomo 3M, went on to work as a web marketer for Opt (TSE:2389), followed in 2012 by a position as a lecturer in a cram school in Tokyo’s suburb of Saitama, all together forming a unique career. Through his 4 years of experience as a cram school teacher, information was managed using an analog system, meaning all paperwork, even progress reports that were handed to parents, were hand written onto paper. Thus, Kurihara became keenly aware of the negative effects this had on work efficiency. Cram school teachers and parents had already directed their attention to the fact that this is the digital age, so he devised a method to thoroughly digitize business processes and parent communication for cram schools. The average cram school instructor spends 70% of their working hours on tasks such as contacting parents, managing grades, class preparation, etc., but through the use of Comiru the team proposes it is possible to compress the time it takes to complete tasks outside of teaching hours to one tenth of what they have been.
During the pitch the team demo-ed that users who are cram school instructors can easily send quick emails to parents by using templates. They also gave an example using one of the most important jobs teachers must complete outside of the class: collecting the content of students’ report cards from schools, and how it could be completed within five minutes. It is also possible for parents to use their smartphones to respond to communications, and with the introduction of Comiru the recovery rate for collecting necessary data improved greatly from 40% to 90%.
Within half a year since their official release they have signed contracts with 21 one cram school companies, with the ID base responsible for managing cram school students reaching more than 2,000 users (with a price of 200 yen or about $2 US per month per student). As opposed to chain cram schools, they are targeting privately managed small-scale “strong cram schools” popular among parents and students. In the future, they will continue to not only provide communication support between cram schools and parents and operational support for teachers, but also aim to increase sales by providing information about courses to parents and teachers in the form of advertisements based on the data accumulated in accordance with the rise in users.
The judges evaluation was generally high since Comiru already has paying users and are able to validate user input, and also because of the idea that this service was born due to Kurihara having an outsider’s point of view (and would have been difficult for people who have been in the cram school world exclusively to understand). At their demo booth they introduced a feature that allows schools to use the FeliCa NFC (near field communication) technology to manage the arrivals and departures of students on a dashboard. This is useful in determining a child’s safety because notifications can be sent to a parents’ smartphones when students arrive at and depart from the school.
Foxsy by Xpresso
When talking about dating apps, Tinder is usually the first to come to mind. But, even in the US where Tinder is based, it has been reported that after using Tinder less than 0.1% of user pairs actually meet. According to Jin (Hitoshi) Tanaka of Xpresso, this low conversion rate is to due to the overwhelming low level of men taking action (amount of outgoing information) compared to the anticipated level of women seeking men (amount of information). In general women seek over 50 items of information about their potential male partners, including their profiles, personality information, and pictures, etc. A majority of men, on the other hand, do not understand what information women are looking for, or in many cases feel it is cumbersome and do not fill out their profiles.
Foxsy is a dating bot that supports encounters between men and women and is capable of cooperating with message apps such as Facebook Messenger, Kik, and Line. In the app, every user is requested to input his/her information based on questions from the bot. Using that information the bot introduces a female user to a male user. The bot asks questions about common topics, thereby activating communication between the male and female users. Thanks to this feature, from the start of the conversation until actually meeting face-to-face, the percentage of user pairs has risen to 40% with Foxsy.
Tanaka, having used Tinder more than 1,500 times, takes an interesting guerrilla-style user acquisition technique, and he declares that Foxsy has attracted users from Tinder. The number of users has reached 500 in the few months since launching, and it has led to 305 established matches. When referring to future aspirations, Tanaka said Foxsy can be used not only for dating support, but also for events, business, travel, etc. providing a variety of day-to-day opportunities by supplementing information and processes to encourage people to meet.
Senso by Appledore
Appledore was established by Tiffany Pang, previously a software engineer at the food delivery service Instacart, and Joh Cadengo, previously a software engineer for the P2P car sharing service Getaround. By making full use of image recognition technology and GIS (geographic information systems) they developed Outreach Grid as a means to assist the homeless by facilitating the sharing of information between social workers, police, public support institutions, and city hall, etc. As a means of shifting their focus, or perhaps as an additional alternative service, they pitched a separate project, Senso, during this demo day.
Senso uses emotion analysis as an advertising effectiveness measurement tool. With both Pang and Cadengo specializing in emotion recognition and computer vision, by measuring to what degree viewers felt emotion and relief they can understand whether the advertising and contents made an impression. Marketers can then analyze performance which leads to the creation of even better results. In fact, advertising campaigns are unable to meet expectations to increase performance, and the majority suspend their campaigns before making it to the end of the planned period of implementation. In using Senso, users can upload a test ad to the platform, measure the feelings of the testers who saw the ad, and marketers can choose the ad that made the largest emotional impact.
Unlike the slightly similar services, such as TVision Insights, etc. Senso does not apply only to TV audiences, but they have developed a system that through video analysis can measure how engaged viewers are. Even for ads where conversion cannot be measured, for example, CPV (cost-per-view) and CPC (cost-per-click) ads, they quantitatively analyze the extent of viewers’ levels of engagement, perhaps leading to the birth of completely performance-based billing for ads.
According to Open Network Lab’s Program Director Takayoshi Matsuda, with the completion of this 13th batch, Open Network Lab has produced 75 startups in total. In July Digital Garage (TSE:4819), along with Kakaku.com (TSE:2371) and Credit Saison (TSE:8253), began running a research organization for open innovation called DG Lab, and at this event guests from 40 VC firms and 30 companies watched on from the audience likely opening doors for follow-on investments and business collaborations.
In conjunction with the demo day for the 13th batch, they have begun accepting applications for the 14th batch. For teams participating in the 3 month batch, Open Network Lab provides up to 10 million yen (nearly $100,000 US) for running costs. In addition to providing free use of their facilities in Daikanyama, Kamakura, and San Francisco for one year, they plan to offer mentoring by the management of startups that previously graduated from Open Network Lab’s Seed Accelerator Program. The application deadline for the 14th batch is noon on November 28th.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based C Channel, the Japanese startup offering a video-based digital fashion media for young women under the same name, announced today that it has acquired Jakarta-based startup PT Media Makmur for an undisclosed sum. Since its launch back in April of 2013 as a local subsidiary of Japanese blog marketing company Rich Media, PT Media Makmur has been running Kawaii Beauty Japan, a fashion and beauty-focused media outlet for female consumers in Indonesia. According to SimilarWeb, the Indonesian beauty site has acquired more than 350,000 monthly visitors as well as nearly 1 million likes on the site’s Facebook fan page for local users. C Channel has been massively expanding to several Asian markets by partnering with Chinese video sharing site Todou (for Chinese expansion), Taiwanese beauty media outlet Niusnews and Taiwanese online-to-offline media outlet Maker (for Taiwanese expansion) as well as Thai e-publication and UGC (user generated content) media site Oookbee (for Thai expansion). Hence, the latest announcement means the Japanese beauty site has expanded to the fourth Asian market outside its home turf. You’ll be able to find the C Channel logo on the top page of the acquired company’s website. You’ll see signs of the owner’s effort trying…
Tokyo-based C Channel, the Japanese startup offering a video-based digital fashion media for young women under the same name, announced today that it has acquired Jakarta-based startup PT Media Makmur for an undisclosed sum. Since its launch back in April of 2013 as a local subsidiary of Japanese blog marketing company Rich Media, PT Media Makmur has been running Kawaii Beauty Japan, a fashion and beauty-focused media outlet for female consumers in Indonesia.
According to SimilarWeb, the Indonesian beauty site has acquired more than 350,000 monthly visitors as well as nearly 1 million likes on the site’s Facebook fan page for local users.
C Channel has been massively expanding to several Asian markets by partnering with Chinese video sharing site Todou (for Chinese expansion), Taiwanese beauty media outlet Niusnews and Taiwanese online-to-offline media outlet Maker (for Taiwanese expansion) as well as Thai e-publication and UGC (user generated content) media site Oookbee (for Thai expansion). Hence, the latest announcement means the Japanese beauty site has expanded to the fourth Asian market outside its home turf.
You’ll be able to find the C Channel logo on the top page of the acquired company’s website. You’ll see signs of the owner’s effort trying to associate it with a Facebook fan page for C Channel’s Indonesian version but will be actually redirected to the Japanese fan page for now. We are still unsure whether both teams are trying to launch a new site under the C Channel brand, otherwise the Indonesian startup’s existing media site will be merged into the brand.
See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s Arcterus, providing educational services including a notebook-sharing app named Clear, on Tuesday announced that it has reached a capital and business alliance agreement with The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun (belonging to the major daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun Company’s group) publishing newspaper for students “Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun” and “Asahi Chukosei Shimbun” and also with the correspondence education major Z-kai. As a result, Arcterus has secured a total of 110 million yen (about $992,000) from the two companies in its series B round, subsequent to the 130 million yen (about $1 million at the exchange rate then) raised during its series A round last July. With this business alliance, Arcterus starts providing news commentary on hot topics or articles related to past exam problems on a constant basis in Clear with the support from The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun as per a trial this May, in addition to Z-kai’s educational materials in accordance with the adaptive learning method. Although Clear had been provided for free until now and been profiting only from advertisements displayed on the app, it will commence premium services under the subscriptions model which utilizes the two companies’ content on a revenue-sharing basis….
Japan’s Arcterus, providing educational services including a notebook-sharing app named Clear, on Tuesday announced that it has reached a capital and business alliance agreement with The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun (belonging to the major daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun Company’s group) publishing newspaper for students “Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun” and “Asahi Chukosei Shimbun” and also with the correspondence education major Z-kai. As a result, Arcterus has secured a total of 110 million yen (about $992,000) from the two companies in its series B round, subsequent to the 130 million yen (about $1 million at the exchange rate then) raised during its series A round last July.
With this business alliance, Arcterus starts providing news commentary on hot topics or articles related to past exam problems on a constant basis in Clear with the support from The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun as per a trial this May, in addition to Z-kai’s educational materials in accordance with the adaptive learning method. Although Clear had been provided for free until now and been profiting only from advertisements displayed on the app, it will commence premium services under the subscriptions model which utilizes the two companies’ content on a revenue-sharing basis.
Arcterus was founded in 2010 October by Goichiro Arai (CEO) who has held various posts including Resort Business Manager at Japanese resort development / management major Hoshino Resort together with Yoshiki Shiraishi (COO/CFO) who was Arai’s classmate at Keio Business School. Besides Clear, Arcterus is handling a teaching tool for tutor school named Caiz or a individual tutoring cram school in the residential area of Ota City, Tokyo named Shiki Gakuin. Although it is a rare business form for startups, Arai decided to establish and manage a tutorial school by themselves in order to understand the actual front-line of education and to reinforce services.
Clear, launched in December of 2013, allows notebooks sorted by subject or educational unit to be shared with other users and is available for Android, iOS and web. After three years from launch, the number of current users in Japan has reached 970,000 and is close to marking the one million figure. Considering that the number of Japanese high and junior high school students is about 7 million, one in seven students are using Clear. In addition, it has 250,000, 20,000 and 10,000 users in Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea, respectively.
Arai explains about marketing in Asian countries:
We make teams by hiring local university students as interns. In countries having a culture of helping each other by borrowing and lending notebooks when studying together, Clear tends to be widely accepted.
In the above-mentioned countries, Clear’s development model and the students’ information sharing style fit perfectly, and contributed to user acquisition going well. In other words, the app has hardly made a dent in countries where a competitive culture is strongly reflected upon education, as in Singapore. Although Arcterus showed a willingness to advance into North America last year, it altered its plan by prioritizing user acquisition within “Asian countries with a notebook-sharing culture” due to the same reason as to entering Singapore or markets where several competitors exist.
Coinciding with this agreement, the Clear app has been updated for two functions. It enabled easier search of registered notebooks out of the 120,000 found on Clear’s platform according to textbook publisher or educational unit. Additionally, a Q&A function between users was added, allowing them to cover points hard to understand just through the checking of notebooks.
Arcterus won the second prize at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014, while also being selected as a finalist at ASIABEAT 2016 in Xiamen, obtaining international spotlight. Global development in the EduTech field which easily reflects language or culture barriers is said to be difficult; however, the firm aims to acquire cross-border users by setting Clear as an educational platform.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based LifeRobotics, the Japanese startup behind the Coro robot, announced on Monday that it has closed its series B round, having raised about 1 billion yen (about $9 million). This follows its series A round which raised about 500 million yen (about $4.4 million at the exchange rate then) upon closing in March this year. The latest round means that the company has secured a total of about 1.5 billion yen (about $13.4 million) within almost one year since they began raising funds last November. Participating investors in this round were Global Brain, Mitsui Fudosan (TSE:8801), Japan’s leading industrial electronics manufacturer Koden Holdings, Mizuho Capital, Golden Asia Fund as well as other unnamed Japanese businesses. Golden Asia Fund is a joint venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Industrial Technology Investment Corporation (ITIC), the investment arm of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Among these investors, Global Brain, Koden Holdings and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital participated in the previous series A round too. The series B round at this time around was led by Global Brain. LifeRobotics was founded in December 2007 by Dr. Woo-Keun Yoon, who has been studying robot arms at Japan’s National…
Tokyo-based LifeRobotics, the Japanese startup behind the Coro robot, announced on Monday that it has closed its series B round, having raised about 1 billion yen (about $9 million). This follows its series A round which raised about 500 million yen (about $4.4 million at the exchange rate then) upon closing in March this year. The latest round means that the company has secured a total of about 1.5 billion yen (about $13.4 million) within almost one year since they began raising funds last November.
LifeRobotics was founded in December 2007 by Dr. Woo-Keun Yoon, who has been studying robot arms at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and other research institutions for over 15 years. His team has been developing robots that allow users to “teach” the robot how to move using a 3D mouse or a game pad without complex programming skills. The company is developing the “co-robot” Coro for small manufacturing spaces where conventional robots are difficult to be placed, in addition to improving people’s productivity and promoting manufacturing automation.
According to Life Robotics, the Coro co-robot has been adopted by big Japanese companies like Toyota Motors (TSE:7203) and Omron (TSE:6645) as well as restaurant chain businesses such as Yoshinoya (TSE:9861) and Royal (TSE:8179). The company claims that they will use the funds to enhance mass-production/sales of the co-robot and improve follow-up services for users.
See the original story in Japanese. (Photographs in this articles are provided by Doki Doki for the most part.) Sekai Camera, Tab, Telepathy… the apps and devices made by this man has always been novel. Establishing another startup called Doki Doki last year and raising funds from Skyland Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures and Umeda Startup Fund earlier this year, “this man” — Takahito Iguchi — seemed to have wanted to start something different. He implied as much upon commencing development of an app for voice-based information sharing at Samurai Island Expo ’16 (SIE ’16), but the details were not specified then. Doki Doki pre-launched voice-chat social app Baby in the US last month, and held the app’s first showcase event in Japan at MTRL Kyoto (pronounced “Material Kyoto”). The app is available for iOS or later, and currently only with English (but no restriction as to input language). You can download it only from US iTunes AppStore, so it is available for anyone who has an US iTunes AppStore account. Social app to chat, not to meet Baby is a social app which allows users to share five-second voice messages and lets them chat with a new friend. The voice messages…
Doki Doki CEO Takahito Iguchi is seated second from the left.
Doki Doki pre-launched voice-chat social app Baby in the US last month, and held the app’s first showcase event in Japan at MTRL Kyoto (pronounced “Material Kyoto”). The app is available for iOS or later, and currently only with English (but no restriction as to input language). You can download it only from US iTunes AppStore, so it is available for anyone who has an US iTunes AppStore account.
Social app to chat, not to meet
Baby is a social app which allows users to share five-second voice messages and lets them chat with a new friend. The voice messages (aptly-named “voice”) from other users who are located nearby him / her are run on a timeline (dubbed “parade”), and one may “ping” favorite messages by right flicking or “ban” undesirable messages by left flicking, as with Tinder. If users ping voices to each others, they become friends and are allowed to have private voice chat rather than via parade. Users can check ten messages from other users in the order of proximity from him / her at one loading.
Iguchi explains the concept of the Baby app:
By being nearby each other, several problems can be solved. First of all, language trouble. Even if it were a worldwide service, there is a high probability that users being nearby converse in a common language. Considering the places or events where the users are located, common topics could be found as well.
Typical social apps can be roughly classified into two types: ones that let users who already met offline to meet online (such as Facebook or Line) and ones that let users who have not met yet to meet online / offline. However, although the Baby app allows user to find new friends online in order to share values or topics, it does not expect an offline meeting to take place, as in the case of a “dating” social app. The development of the app is grounded in Iguchi’s experience.
Iguchi explains how the service originated:
In San Francisco where I frequently stayed, I always felt alone. Was happy just to talk with someone. Having said that, I do not have close relationships with all friends in Facebook to allow me to talk freely. It is not easy to find new friends, or will cost in various ways if I did have a new friend. Many of the communication apps including Tinder or Happen apparently aim to just help arrange direct datinG […]
We had another problem, seen in HangOut or Whatsapp as well. In real-time voice communication, it is difficult to adjust idle time for each other. Therefore, I came up with an idea of dividing the time into five seconds and sharing them as short voice messages […]
Baby is regarded as an intermediate service between the text chat and the telephone. You cannot express your emotion by text, right? It cannot provide satisfaction or any feeling provided upon conversing, and thus cannot solve loneliness or ease pain. Phone communication is troublesome, so I looked to solve the problem. I prepared both public chats (the parade function) and private chats, so users can share their feelings albeit asynchronously.
Baby’s roots are found in San Francisco and Kyoto
Sawako Ono, Business Development Manager/Market at Doki Doki, recording her voice into the Baby app
This spring, Sawako Ono joined the Doki Doki team as a marketer. By conducting repeated hearings on students at UC Berkeley and reflecting said results on the Baby app’s function, she played a central role in realizing a service with a high degree of user satisfaction.
Ono analyzes the needs for the app:
tudents are all busy. Although busy, they want to communicate with someone through participation in some kind of community or party. Baby just matched their purpose. Some students had used the Nearby function of Wechat, but it only attracts users with dating in mind.
As an aside, no showcase event for the app has not been held in Tokyo unlike launch events of typical apps or services. Moreover, the app is not available in JP AppStore, so that the team’s attitude toward media / users appears unfriendly even though it is an opportunity to appeal to the Japanese users. At first glance it was thought to perhaps be a new type of marketing strategy set by Iguchi, but it turned out to be happenstance.
Iguchi explains the reason for service limitations in Japan:
We started prototyping Baby last December. When brought the prototype to San Francisco this May, I got a pretty good feedback, especially from men. I also had fun. What Baby can provide and the conventional apps cannot is “new meeting” with opportunities to find real friends.
Will it be available in Japan too? Of course it is, if you download from the US AppStore. But you may not receive much voice on parade due to the limited number of users in Japan at this time. I plan to establish use cases in the US first, then bring them back to Japan when completed.
The character of Baby, with changes in facial expression to voice tones or pitches.
Through the development of the Baby app, Iguchi is also considering linking startups communities in Kyoto and San Francisco. Not only because of his background of having spent his school days in Kyoto (he majored in philosophy at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto), he explains the reason that this city has a similar atmosphere with San Francisco which he finds dear.
He said:
Some VC firms are headquartered in Kyoto and have started business therein. Besides, most of Japanese culture which attracts inbound tourists seemingly can be found concentrated in Kyoto. In a city rich in capital, culture and academia, I feel I can start something new.
There will be lots of San Francisco workers hoping to work in Kyoto. Conversely, there will be cases which Kyoto startups looking to use San Francisco as a gateway. Kyoto has the most art schools in Japan, in addition to many universities suited for research and development, not to mention having freaks like me around.
An interesting point of the app is that it does not cooperate with Facebook or Twitter as typical communication apps do, but is completely dependent upon the network effect among users for improved user inflow. This specification is not just a chance happening but was greatly influenced by Iguchi’s philosophy as well.
I thought that Japanese people should establish their own communication platform by themselves. Not a few Japanese startups use API provided by major services in Silicon Valley upon starting something toward the global market. They are too careless, following blindly after someone’s service, such as Facebook or Line.
I think that it is important for us not only to use “Silicon Valley APIs” (APIs provided by tech giants in Silicon Valley) but have a platform for ourselves too.
In the past, some startups were forced to withdraw from native app business for iOS due to being shut out from the iTunes AppStore. That news suggested that there is always a risk of unexpected business closing against one’s will as long as one is dependent upon app stores on a third-party platform.
Come to think of it, since it has become a convenient era, it may be important especially for startups intending to compete in the global market to become platformers themselves without using an API.
By not considering online meeting while using media of voice as an ultimate context, can it grow into a global communication platform? We can look forward to the day when the Baby app become readily available in Japan.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. A product from Japan created quite the stir at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and CEATEC JAPAN in Tokyo this year. It is Laundroid. The “harmony” of clothing analysis, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics blend together to produce a “fully automatic clothes folding machine.” Japan technological alliance “seven dreamers laboratories’ is the developer. The product details have been released in various places, so I won’t get into that, but as the name says, “It’s a robot that folds clothes. No further explanation is needed.” The company announced a partnership with Panasonic (TSE:6752) and Daiwa House (TSE:1925) last year, and together established the joint venture Seven Dreamers Laundroid with plans to begin sales by reservation for their first machine “Laundroid 1” in March of 2017. The developer, Seven Dreamers, announced on November 14th the securement of 6 billion yen (around $60 million US) in funds from SBI Investment, in addition to Panasonic and Daiwa House. The shareholding ratios and payment date remain undisclosed. The concept began in 2005, and with the realization of “folding” from 2013, Laundroid was born. I heard from Seven Dreamers CEO Shin Sakane about the road it took to get…
The “harmony” of clothing analysis, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics blend together to produce a “fully automatic clothes folding machine.” Japan technological alliance “seven dreamers laboratories’ is the developer. The product details have been released in various places, so I won’t get into that, but as the name says, “It’s a robot that folds clothes. No further explanation is needed.”
The company announced a partnership with Panasonic (TSE:6752) and Daiwa House (TSE:1925) last year, and together established the joint venture Seven Dreamers Laundroid with plans to begin sales by reservation for their first machine “Laundroid 1” in March of 2017.
The developer, Seven Dreamers, announced on November 14th the securement of 6 billion yen (around $60 million US) in funds from SBI Investment, in addition to Panasonic and Daiwa House. The shareholding ratios and payment date remain undisclosed.
The concept began in 2005, and with the realization of “folding” from 2013, Laundroid was born. I heard from Seven Dreamers CEO Shin Sakane about the road it took to get here.
Seven Dreamers CEO Shinichi Sakane
The reason for creating something never seen before was “a comment from my wife”
I came today with the idea of asking straight out, “What happened to make robots fold the laundry?” So, what happened? (with a laugh)
Well, to be straight, “It’s now possible to recognize clothes using artificial intelligence,” is maybe the simplest answer I can give.
I see. Let’s go through the process. How did the idea first come to you?
Before that, first permit me to talk a little about what criteria the Seven Dreamers esteem. For us, there are three criterion for “Things that have not been realized yet but could change our lives, and also enrich them.” The technological hurdles are high and our policy is to clear them.
That’s true. You’ve made something that sets high hurdles.
Since first coming up with the idea, I was thinking about different markets to satisfy all the criteria. Looking around we see many products targeted at men. Starting now and into the future, ‘women’, ‘the elderly’, and ‘children’ are the keywords that will become important.
After thinking, the idea that maybe the answer lies within the home came to me and, while I don’t usually talk with my wife about work, I casually mentioned it to her. What do you wish you had? She came back just as fast, “Of course, it has to be a machine that folds the laundry.
Ah, so your wife is the reason!
The hurdle was higher than I had imagined (laughingly). But, if it’s something I can do, if I use the then current mechatronics and neural networks, which is what AI was called at the time, I thought it might be possible.
This was that same day, right?
Yes. It was in 2005. But, after a number of years passing it was really hard to hear “You still haven’t managed it?” (laughingly)
Seven Dreamers are the producers of “Things not already in this world”. L to R: “Landroid” laundry-folding robot, “Nastent” nasal strips for less snoring sleep, carbon golf shaft
A Decade of Development and the impact of “Lehman Shock”
After that development began. It took about 10 years, right?
Yes. After my wife said it I had an aha moment, and the next day I lightly searched through patents and things and while there was evidence of it, it seemed like no one had really followed through on it.
So you thought you had a chance.
At the time, on the homepage of a certain home appliance maker there was a corner for ‘appliances 30 years in the future’, and it was there, so maybe.
That’s 2035.
Even after looking through global patents, no one was doing it, so that’s it, I’ll do it. At the time I thought it would take 5 years to come together. However, that estimate was too optimistic. And also with the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2009, we had to reduce our personnel.
In the first place you needed funds. Lots of people begin by accumulating funds, what about Laundroid?
At the time, the business I had launched in the healthcare field was earning money for me. Up until very recently this continued to produce a fair amount of money, making it easier for me to start companies like Laundroid.
I see. To what extent had the development proceeded before the personnel reduction caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers?
We were able to fold t-shirts. However, this was the premise of (robots) being able to understand that the clothing was a t-shirt. But, yeah, there’s no real meaning in that. From that start I was thinking to incorporate this into a dryer, but it wouldn’t work if the robot couldn’t recognize the crumpled clothing. This is where I hit a wall.
Did you ever think about quitting after the overlap of technical difficulties and the shock of the fall of Lehman Brothers?
I suppose normally management would make the decision to stop. But I really thought we could do it. Also, I couldn’t stop after working on it for four years straight. We seriously debated this within the company. In the end, after two years the company saw a V-shaped recovery and we were able to increase staff again.
It took 10 years to realize the “clothing recognition” technology for Laundroid.
The Technical Team Overcomes the Barriers
About the problem of “recognizing crumpled clothing” that probably made the technical team want to pull their hair out, how did you clear this hurdle?
Even when laundry is all crumpled and mixed together, if you look at the collar you know what it is, right? Even I can do that, so a robot must be able to. We continued machine learning, but it was impossible.
Then I received a proposal from the development team, “Not mixed together, but if we try it one at a time we might be able to do it.”
Were you able to do it by separating them?
Because of that we changed our approach, but even then it was unrecognizable. There were too many patterns because of the flexibility (of clothing). We weren’t getting any closer to an answer.
It does seem impossible (with a laugh). How did you overcome it?
At the end of the process you come away with folded clothes, right? Then you can spread it out. This is what we needed to make recognizable. Then again and again we changed the circumstances. From here there were real challenges. (Writer’s note: The details are confidential here, so it will remain unwritten.)
From the folded state to the original crumpled state, one step at a time, it took 5 years. How many times did you have breakthroughs?
Hmm, about once every two years. Just as soon as we’d say, “Yes! We did it!” the next wall would come with an, “Ugh.” (laughingly)
That must have been difficult. But you did it. At what point were you able to say, “It’s folded! Yes!”
Actually it was done in stages, so it’s difficult to choose one point, but if we make it the day we were able to recognize a laid out t-shirt and then fold it, that was around the end of 2013. At that time, if we didn’t procure funds things would have become grave, so the day of the presentation for investors was unbearable. I was nervous about whether it would work well or not.
Thus, in May of 2014 with the first presentation of Laundroid they secured funds from their first outside shareholders. After this, they would go on to partner with Panasonic, Daiwa House, and SBI Investment, etc.
When users put the crumpled clothing into the lowest box on the machine it folds it for them. There are plans to integrate it into washing and drying machines in future versions.
A Judgement Just in Time, The Last Requirements
To wrap it up, in a situation where most people probably would have quit, you made a judgement and now have created “a world where robots can fold clothes.” What do you think is important when making such a decision?
I am, after all, a man of science, so I make sure to accurately look at the numbers. But, when trying to make something that has never been made before, there are many things that can not be judged by numbers.
In university a professor told me something. For example, today is a day in October, right? Up to this point the preceding researchers have illuminated a bright path. From here on out the road we will travel is going to be dark.
What direction should you choose to go in on a road bathed in darkness, and the professor asked me, “Shin, how are you going to decide?” Then I answered, “Umm, experience right?” and he replied, “That is the answer of someone traveling on the bright path.”
I understand.
The answer is intuition.
So it comes down to human power?
Of course it’s not merely intuition. We should exhaust our search of the bright path, exhaust our inspection of human wisdom. After accumulating this (knowledge), new knowledge is created. For example, if I decided I wanted to make shoes that fly right now, my intuition tells me, “It’s not possible yet.” That is important.
Thank you for your very interesting story. I’m looking forward to the official release and future versions (of Laundroid).
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Bridge, providing a mobile communication / retailer information service for international visitors to Japan called Trip Free, recently announced that it has fundraised from startup-focused fund iSGS Investment Works. The details of investment amount or payment date are undisclosed. Trip Free distributes 50MB data SIM cards for free to inbound tourists to provide them with tourist information via the company’s portal website. The SIM cards are also available for usual internet use as well. If the data communication amount exceeds the free capacity of 50MB, users will be charged for additional capacity, or obtain such capacity for free by booking a restaurant via the Trip Free website. According to Bridge CEO Yusuke Matsumoto, he has in mind a business model charging retailers for each completed reservation, aiming at information provision for 40 million inbound tourists in 2020, in line with the Japanese government’s goal for the Olympic year visitors. Matsumoto explains how the service commenced: Through questionnaires to foreign visitors to Japan, we found that many of them have trouble in terms of language, Internet environment and map understanding. So, I considered a kind of taxi service taking them directly to restaurants first….
Tokyo-based Bridge, providing a mobile communication / retailer information service for international visitors to Japan called Trip Free, recently announced that it has fundraised from startup-focused fund iSGS Investment Works. The details of investment amount or payment date are undisclosed.
Trip Free distributes 50MB data SIM cards for free to inbound tourists to provide them with tourist information via the company’s portal website. The SIM cards are also available for usual internet use as well. If the data communication amount exceeds the free capacity of 50MB, users will be charged for additional capacity, or obtain such capacity for free by booking a restaurant via the Trip Free website.
According to Bridge CEO Yusuke Matsumoto, he has in mind a business model charging retailers for each completed reservation, aiming at information provision for 40 million inbound tourists in 2020, in line with the Japanese government’s goal for the Olympic year visitors.
Matsumoto explains how the service commenced:
Through questionnaires to foreign visitors to Japan, we found that many of them have trouble in terms of language, Internet environment and map understanding. So, I considered a kind of taxi service taking them directly to restaurants first.
However, he gave up that method due to the bad cost balance to the service, and prioritized the improvement of Japan’s mobile Internet connectivity. That idea led to free SIM card provision; customer guidance was seen as a business opportunity that grasps the route of information provision which visitors are likely to use.
Matsumoto added:
We perform intermediation of guidance or reservation for restaurants because the restaurant side are concerned about last-minute cancellations by foreigners. Preventing the occurrence of cancellations by adopting advance payment with credit cards, we allow users to use this service for free by charging restaurants 10% of the sales amount as commission.
The additional capacity will be available with about 2,000 yen (about $18.7) per GB. Since the service adopted Soracom SIM card, Soracom’s price fluctuations might alter the final pricing.
Currently, it has been distributing SIM cards at about 10 hotels or youth hostels accepting inbound tourists in and around Tokyo, and been reaching 15,000 users.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
The Trip Free team (L to R): Rie Sakamoto (managing director), Yusuke Matsumoto (CEO), Yohei Someya (managing director)
Takeshi Hirano
The Bridge
Masaru Ikeda
