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SmartDrive: Exploring the future of the car through big data

Takeshi Hirano 2014.02.22

See the original article in Japanese SmartDrive, a Japanese startup developing automobile hardware and providing big-data analytics, announced on February 18th that it has allocated shares to ANRI, with the fundraising amount expected to be in somewhere in the tens of millions yen (or a few hundreds thousands dollars). According to the CEO Retsu Kitagawa, the startup will strengthen its developer team (with iOS engineers in particular) with these funds. I confess, it’s actually a little difficult to write about this company as they are currently in stealth mode. Most information about the product is not disclosed. But I can’t help but get excited about what I’ve learned so far. SmartDrive can be said to be a player in the ‘Internet of Things’ space. When thinking about that sector, two things come to mind: big data and context. I’d like to convey SmartDrive’s vision by focusing on these two. Big data in transportation SmartDrive’s product is a hybrid system that makes use of both iOS and a terminal device in a car. Various data acquired through the terminal (such as the car’s speed and direction) are designed to be shown in the iOS app, in part to help to make…

See the original article in Japanese

SmartDrive, a Japanese startup developing automobile hardware and providing big-data analytics, announced on February 18th that it has allocated shares to ANRI, with the fundraising amount expected to be in somewhere in the tens of millions yen (or a few hundreds thousands dollars). According to the CEO Retsu Kitagawa, the startup will strengthen its developer team (with iOS engineers in particular) with these funds.

I confess, it’s actually a little difficult to write about this company as they are currently in stealth mode. Most information about the product is not disclosed. But I can’t help but get excited about what I’ve learned so far.

SmartDrive can be said to be a player in the ‘Internet of Things’ space. When thinking about that sector, two things come to mind: big data and context. I’d like to convey SmartDrive’s vision by focusing on these two.

Big data in transportation

SmartDrive’s product is a hybrid system that makes use of both iOS and a terminal device in a car. Various data acquired through the terminal (such as the car’s speed and direction) are designed to be shown in the iOS app, in part to help to make fuel consumption more efficient. Kitagawa described the product as a sort of upgraded Tesla Motors Dashboard. We’ll see how it looks when it’s release.

Reference: Tesla Mortors

When speaking of big data these days, Nest comes to mind, having been recently acquired by Google for $3 billion. What Google wants from that acquisition is obviously not just a thermostat, but also the data produced by individual households. Analyzing that data will help the company understand the overall picture of heating systems. The same sort of idea could be applied to the big data produced by cars.

The CEO Kitagawa is just 24 years old. After he interned at a startup in Japan he left for the USA. He took some lectures at MIT, and a year later, he went to Tokyo University to study science.

I had an interest in consumer electronics, biotech, and transportation. I decided to focus on the latter, and I came up with the idea for this business while studying at university. I adjusted my research plan to be more business oriented.

The context of the big data

SmartDrive’s terminal device is basically just a tool to acquire data. Kitagawa told us that he wants to make cars fully connected to the internet before Google takes over the connected-car market. The important thing, of course, is what they create with the data. Data itself doesn’t have value, but it needs a certain context to be utilized.

One interesting way to use the data would be to use it to address problems in transportation, such as traffic jams. The product can recognize location without GPS by using the other real-time data such as sudden the braking, direction, and rotation of the car. Through this new approach, which differs from existing vehicle information and communications system in Japan, SmartDrive hopes it can stand out. Kitagawa says it might even be possible to make suggestion about insurance services based on the data.

Kitagawa says that in the future, all car windows will be digital monitors, and cars will be sort of like smartphones. There will be thousands of ways to make use of such an interface.

Although the details about SmartDrive are currently secret, Kitagawa told us that he wants to release his product as early as this year.

The business for hardware startups is a lot more difficult than that of web startups because of the challenges involved in mass production. But yet, I think SmartDrive has the potential to show a whole new world to us.

We’ll have more details on this as we learn more.

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Meet Kamelio, Japan’s latest mobile news app

Takeshi Hirano 2014.02.20

See the original article in Japanese Tokyo-based startup Shiroyagi Corporation recently launched a news curation app called Kamelio. Here in Japan the competition between mobile news apps is heating up lately, and this is just the latest of entry. Similar services include Gunosy, SmartNews, NewsPicks, and Line News. Shiroyagi Corporation was previously chosen to participate in Movida Japan’s accelerator program, on Demo Day pitching their app under the name of Bizlio. Can Kamelio survive this competitive news app landscape in Japan? Let’s take a look at the application. Topics and timelines After login, the app asks you to type a keyword that you are interested in, and then related topics appear as well. When you choose a topic, you’ll see a preview news items around that theme. Topics are based on Wikipedia, and in total the app crawls amounts over 4000 news/media sites. On the preview page, you can follow a topic via the follow button in the upper right. You can keep following topics by typing other keywords or tapping on related topics. Trendy topics will be shown with the red “trending” mark, so you can what’s popular in real time. Another remarkable feature of this app is its…

See the original article in Japanese

Tokyo-based startup Shiroyagi Corporation recently launched a news curation app called Kamelio. Here in Japan the competition between mobile news apps is heating up lately, and this is just the latest of entry. Similar services include Gunosy, SmartNews, NewsPicks, and Line News.

Shiroyagi Corporation was previously chosen to participate in Movida Japan’s accelerator program, on Demo Day pitching their app under the name of Bizlio. Can Kamelio survive this competitive news app landscape in Japan? Let’s take a look at the application.

Topics and timelines

After login, the app asks you to type a keyword that you are interested in, and then related topics appear as well. When you choose a topic, you’ll see a preview news items around that theme.

Topics are based on Wikipedia, and in total the app crawls amounts over 4000 news/media sites.

On the preview page, you can follow a topic via the follow button in the upper right. You can keep following topics by typing other keywords or tapping on related topics. Trendy topics will be shown with the red “trending” mark, so you can what’s popular in real time.

Another remarkable feature of this app is its timeline. Each news article has a timeline in the upper right, and when you tap it, other related articles will appear in chronological order.

Serving user interest

The chief scientist at Shiroyagi Corporation, Akira Shibata, tells us that the potential of Kamelio lies in its ability to present what users are unaware of:

We are often unaware of what we are really interested in. With Kamelio, we’d like to help users find information about their interests. If a user likes music, he’ll be reminded when his favorite artist releases a new song. A user can keep up with a topic that interests him even when he doesn’t follow a certain media.

The early pioneer in mobile news curation in Japan is Gunosy, which goes beyond being just a news service. It matches individual users and information, and the company is now running a successful ad network.

Kamelio has the same potential as well. But the startup is behind the other major competitors. No matter how developed their recommendation system or algorithm are, if the app isn’t accepted by enough users, the business can’t move forward.

Stay tuned to this space, because it’s only going to get more interesting!

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Terra Motors drives brand Japan abroad

Rick Martin 2014.02.19

Japan-based electric motorbike startup, Terra Motors, has been a pretty busy company over the past year, with branches opened in Vietnam, the Philippines, and in India. In addition to those, the company is partnering with dealers all around the world, just last week announcing a big partnership to sell their bikes in Nepal. Ok, admittedly Nepal isn’t the biggest of markets. But when I visited their office earlier this week, Terra Motors’ overseas sales director Koshi Kuwahara told me why it is an ideal market for an electric vehicle company like theirs. He explained: There are several aspects to deciding whether or not to enter a market, whether or not to set up the company or a factory. Yes, there is a big market in China. Yes, there is a big market in Indonesia. But we have to consider the competition, how eager partners are, and we also have to consider the government. In the country’s where we have our own branches, local governments are very eager about electric vehicles. In Nepal, the reason they are so interested in EVs, is because Nepal has the highest petrol price in Asia. From a Western point of view, the decision to go…

Japan-based electric motorbike startup, Terra Motors, has been a pretty busy company over the past year, with branches opened in Vietnam, the Philippines, and in India. In addition to those, the company is partnering with dealers all around the world, just last week announcing a big partnership to sell their bikes in Nepal. Ok, admittedly Nepal isn’t the biggest of markets. But when I visited their office earlier this week, Terra Motors’ overseas sales director Koshi Kuwahara told me why it is an ideal market for an electric vehicle company like theirs. He explained:

There are several aspects to deciding whether or not to enter a market, whether or not to set up the company or a factory. Yes, there is a big market in China. Yes, there is a big market in Indonesia. But we have to consider the competition, how eager partners are, and we also have to consider the government. In the country’s where we have our own branches, local governments are very eager about electric vehicles. In Nepal, the reason they are so interested in EVs, is because Nepal has the highest petrol price in Asia.

From a Western point of view, the decision to go electric is often made with consideration to the environment. But Kuwahara showed me a list of countries, along with corresponding fuel prices and GDP per capita, noting that in places where gas prices are relatively high and GDP relatively low, it really has nothing to do with saving the earth.

It’s all about saving money.

Crowded Terra Motors press conference in Kathmandu

A huge gap in import duties for conventional versus electric bikes means that Terra Motors can sell for about $100 cheaper than their gas-guzzling competition. And they’re very optimistic about their prospects in Nepal, where gas and diesel prices have spiked in recent years [1]. The press conference for their opening in Katmandu attracted about 150 people from most major media, a reflection of that optimism and enthusiasm.

Katmandu is a small city spanning about 15 kilometers edge to edge, says Kuwahara, so a Terra Motors bike, which can get about 45 kilometers from a full charge is more than adequate for getting around. And the city’s notorious air pollution, which is among the worst of all the worlds cities, means that they will be very much welcome by the local government.

The startup is aiming to sell about 1000 bikes in the next year, and has already sold 500 from this new dealership. While most of the market conditions are great for Nepal, it is still a pretty tiny market with about 200,000 motocycles sold per year. But at this early stage for Terra Motors, it’s a perfect place to expand without overextending.

Currently the company’s headcount sits at 27, but they are hiring staff for local offices.

The Japan Advantage

Perhaps the most interesting aspect about Terra Motors, in my view, is how greatly it benefits just from being a Japanese company. Kuwahara explains that they are not the first company to push electric bikes in the markets where they operate, but coming from Japan carries credibility that serves them well. Many of their competitors quickly developed a bad reputation due to poor battery performance or some other quality issue. He adds:

[Those companies] just imported from China and then assembled bikes, and sold them. People were interested in electric motorcycles, but they were not satisfied with that quality. We are the only company manufacturing electric motorcycles from Japan. And people know Japanese cars andproducts are good. If some Japanese company manufactures some electric vehicles, then it must be good.

Even as many of Japan’s electronics giants flounder, the nation’s reputation for quality seemingly endures, with overseas business partners approaching cooperation without reservations. As I have written previously, this is an obstacle that China is still struggling to overcome, and will be burdened with for quite some time still.

Beyond Asia

In addition to its overseas offices, Terra Motors now has dealers in Singapore, Turkey, Mexico, Italy, Egypt, and Nigeria. And Kuwahara himself has been busy trying to expand that list in recent months:

I went to Africa for two months, with stops in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa. I’m a bit baked now. (laughs) My colleague went to South America, Guatemala, Peru, Columbia, where there are many three wheelers. So we are focusing on some other markets beyond Asia where we can sell our three wheelers.

Will we see Terra Motors bikes in the US anytime soon? Kuwahara tells me that America is not such an interesting market for them right now, since the motorcycle market is not so big and restrictions on bikes differ from state to state.

Asia certainly looks to be their primary focus, and with solid progress in India as well. The company was very well received when recently presenting at India’s biggest auto show, Delhi Auto 2014. Like Katmandu, Delhi is plagued with a pollution problem, so the Indian government is especially keen to increase the amount of electric vehicles on the roads, shooting for a 300% increase by the year 2020.

We look forward to watching Terra Motors as it grows outwards. It’s certainly one of the most interesting young Japanese companies out there, one that has wisely adopted an international strategy from the very start.

This according to some figures that Kuwahara presented, showing 2012 gas and diesel prices that are more than double those of a decade ago. Recent media reports reflect this as well. ↩

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8 Japanese startups join Orange’s new accelerator program

Masaru Ikeda 2014.02.17

Photo by Orange Labs Tokyo See the original article in Japanese Last November, we reported that the Japanese edition that France’s major telecommunications corporation Orange would launch a startup accelerator program in Tokyo. Dubbed Orange Fab, its first batch of participating startups was announced on February 12th. The eight startups below were selected out of a group of 50: Abeja: IT solution for stores that uses video recognition technology Jin-Magic: Internet traffic optimization technology. livepass: Push-ads platform Locarise: Analytics service for retail stores (Related) Mushroom: Telecommunications device for touch-screen devices NetLED: Network LED control system pigmal: Push button interface for smartphones (Related) sMedio: Screen-sharing service for smart devices These startups will have a three-month mentorship and the possibility to explore business collaboration with Orange group in the future. The batch is officially named “Orange Fab Asia 1st Season”. I asked Hiroshi Nishikawa, the partnership manager of Orange Labs Tokyo, why the name specifies Asia instead of Tokyo or Japan: The startups for this first batch are all Japanese startups. However, we plan to expand the program to the other Asian countries, so we called it Orange Fab Asia. Orange Labs Tokyo spans other Asian countries too, so in the future,…

Photo by Orange Labs Tokyo

See the original article in Japanese

Last November, we reported that the Japanese edition that France’s major telecommunications corporation Orange would launch a startup accelerator program in Tokyo. Dubbed Orange Fab, its first batch of participating startups was announced on February 12th.

The eight startups below were selected out of a group of 50:

Abeja: IT solution for stores that uses video recognition technology
Jin-Magic: Internet traffic optimization technology.
livepass: Push-ads platform
Locarise: Analytics service for retail stores (Related)
Mushroom: Telecommunications device for touch-screen devices
NetLED: Network LED control system
pigmal: Push button interface for smartphones (Related)
sMedio: Screen-sharing service for smart devices

These startups will have a three-month mentorship and the possibility to explore business collaboration with Orange group in the future. The batch is officially named “Orange Fab Asia 1st Season”.

I asked Hiroshi Nishikawa, the partnership manager of Orange Labs Tokyo, why the name specifies Asia instead of Tokyo or Japan:

The startups for this first batch are all Japanese startups. However, we plan to expand the program to the other Asian countries, so we called it Orange Fab Asia. Orange Labs Tokyo spans other Asian countries too, so in the future, we’d like to call on startups in countries like Korea and Taiwan to join the program.

While we have previously reported on the startup scene in Paris (for our Japanese edition), Japanese startups have little relatively little presence in Europe. Perhaps Orange Fab Asia can help Japanese startups establish more of a footprint in Europe.

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Japanese startup aims to disrupt market duopoly with razor subscription service

Tokyo Shave Club

SCORE 1,043

Junya Mori 2014.01.29

See the original story in Japanese. Shaving is regular part of most men’s daily routine. And now there’s a Japanese company trying to make that routine a little less troublesome. Tokyo-based startup OpenUp launched a subscription-based razor delivery service back in December. It’s called Tokyo Shave Club. When you sign up for the service on their website, a new razor blade will be delivered to you every month, and the payment will be automatically processed. This of course will remind many of our readers of a similar service from the US, Dollar Shave Club. According to a survey, Schick and Gillette own more than 80% of the Japanese razor market. The vision of this startup is to disrupt that market by providing consumers with more convenience. The company’s CEO Yusuke Ido believes that the current market duopoly limits the variety of shaving products available in stores, reducing the chance that consumers can buy a really good product. Patented six-blaze razor They deliver a patented six-blade razor product every month, produced by Korean maker Dorco. Generally speaking, the more blades, the better your shave. But the company provides two-blade and four-blade types as well. Premium plan: A six-blade razor with three…

See the original story in Japanese.

Shaving is regular part of most men’s daily routine. And now there’s a Japanese company trying to make that routine a little less troublesome. Tokyo-based startup OpenUp launched a subscription-based razor delivery service back in December. It’s called Tokyo Shave Club.

When you sign up for the service on their website, a new razor blade will be delivered to you every month, and the payment will be automatically processed. This of course will remind many of our readers of a similar service from the US, Dollar Shave Club.

According to a survey, Schick and Gillette own more than 80% of the Japanese razor market. The vision of this startup is to disrupt that market by providing consumers with more convenience.

The company’s CEO Yusuke Ido believes that the current market duopoly limits the variety of shaving products available in stores, reducing the chance that consumers can buy a really good product.

Patented six-blaze razor

They deliver a patented six-blade razor product every month, produced by Korean maker Dorco. Generally speaking, the more blades, the better your shave. But the company provides two-blade and four-blade types as well.

Premium plan: A six-blade razor with three spare blades for 800 yen/month (shipping and handling included)
Standard plan: A four-blade razor with three spare blades for 600 yen/month (S&H included)
Simple plan: A two-blade razor with four spare blades for 100 yen/month (requires 250 yen for S&H)

If you use a typical razor, you usually need to replace a blade every week or every ten days. Otherwise, it could irritate your skin. So in order to get more people to use the service, the company has to educate users about why they should a good razor, and assure them of the product’s quality and convenience.

Dollar Shave Club succeeded in their marketing efforts with a viral YouTube video starring their CEO (see below). In a similar way, Tokyo Shave Club has perhaps an even more attractive marketing effort (as you can see in the video above) to catch the eye of potential users.

This sector has been getting lots of attention since NY-based startup Harry’s recently took over a 93-year-old razor factory in Germany. That company was founded by Jeffrey Raider, co-founder of glasses e-commerce site Warby Parker.

So it will be interesting to see how Tokyo Shave Club can impact the market in Japan.

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Fabbit: A new incubation center set to open in Kitakyushu City, Japan

Junya Mori 2014.01.23

See the original article in Japanese An incubation center is set to open this spring in Kitakyushu City, in the south of Japan. The facility, when it opens, will be one of the biggest incubation centers in the country. It’s called Fabbit, and as you can probably imagine from its name, it is aimed at startups that digitally fabricate physical products 1. It aims to be a hub that will connect entrepreneurs and creators in a wide-range of fields like graphic design, illustration, video editing, and figure making. Its core concept is to provide a place to learn, meet, and create. The project is led by two companies, nomad inc. and Apamanshop Holdings. Digital Hollywood University will provide educational content, Tukuruba inc. is involved in designing the space, and ABBAlab offers support for digital fabrication and investors. It’s expected that Fabbit will play an important role in Kitakyushu City’s plan to promote developing startups. In addition to its collaborative workspace, Fabbit provides equipment and tools for 3D fabrication so that members can do their own work in the space. There’s also the ‘Fabbit library’ where people can find a variety of books on technologies and design. The facility also includes…

See the original article in Japanese

An incubation center is set to open this spring in Kitakyushu City, in the south of Japan. The facility, when it opens, will be one of the biggest incubation centers in the country.

It’s called Fabbit, and as you can probably imagine from its name, it is aimed at startups that digitally fabricate physical products 1. It aims to be a hub that will connect entrepreneurs and creators in a wide-range of fields like graphic design, illustration, video editing, and figure making. Its core concept is to provide a place to learn, meet, and create.

The project is led by two companies, nomad inc. and Apamanshop Holdings. Digital Hollywood University will provide educational content, Tukuruba inc. is involved in designing the space, and ABBAlab offers support for digital fabrication and investors.

It’s expected that Fabbit will play an important role in Kitakyushu City’s plan to promote developing startups.

In addition to its collaborative workspace, Fabbit provides equipment and tools for 3D fabrication so that members can do their own work in the space. There’s also the ‘Fabbit library’ where people can find a variety of books on technologies and design. The facility also includes a large space for events and seminars, equipped with a screen, projector, and sound system.

Digital Hollywood Studio, a place where users, can learn web and app development, will have a presence in the facility as well.

The representative director of Nomad Inc and Tsukuruba Inc, Osamu Ogasawara, told us a little more about the project:

fabbit is sort of a re-creation of an event with Taizo Son held last Feburary in Kitakyushu city. The event was called fabit Summit, and at that time we discussed about Monodukuri (the culture of Japanese manufacturing) with Iwasa-san from Cerevo and Ishida-san from Campfire. […] That event gave me lots of opportunities to connect with people involved with local startups, people from facility provider Apamanshop, and representatives from the Kitakyushu city office.

So Fabbit is a place to meet, learn and create with local people who share a common interest. I’d like to build a place that brings people together by providing educational programs for digital fabrication, access to equipment like 3D printers, and a shared library that offers membership to users who brings their own books.

Tukuruba CEO Hiroki Murakami and CCO Masahiro Nakamura elaborated on the design of the space:

Nakamura: “When designing fabbit, I aimed to renovate the place by taking advantages of the existing frame and room layout. […] Kitakyushu city has a strong connection with modern Japanese culture, with places like its Manga Museum. And I expect the openness will do good to the incubation.”

Murakami: “People from wide-ranging fields like 3D design, figure making, graphic design, and illustration can meet up at fabbit. Members can share knowledge and with the help of educational content from Digital Hollywood, the place will have great value. It’d be exciting if fabbit could represent a sort of a futuristic school. Kitakyushu city has history as an industrial area, so it would be interesting if it can create a new industry.”

Editor’s note: It’s actually ‘fabbit’, but for readibility purposes, I chose to capitalize it. –RM ↩

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Animal Buzz: Japanese startup launches website for viral animal videos

Junya Mori 2014.01.20

See the original article in Japanese On the Japanese edition of The Bridge, we recently reported about the launch of video-curation site Dropout. It follows the same sort of viral media strategy as Upworthy, a trend currently drawing attention in Japan as a new style of web media. And now Grood, the Japanese startup behind the voice crowdsourcing service Voip, has launched a viral media site called Animal Buzz, specializing in animal-related content. Yuuya Haraguchi, the CEO of Grood, said he decided to launch Animal Buzz since he thought the idea had much potential and possibilities to create positive business synergies in the future. He added: I think there are a few things very important concerning viral media. For example, if the title and the thumbnail image has enough impact to catch viewers’ attention, it has a better chance of being shared often as long as the content drives people to share and the topic is based on universal interests. Viral media is a field quite easy for many businesses to enter. In Japan, six viral media focused sites have been already released. I think that the number will grow even more. Narrowing the theme is important when it comes…

See the original article in Japanese

On the Japanese edition of The Bridge, we recently reported about the launch of video-curation site Dropout. It follows the same sort of viral media strategy as Upworthy, a trend currently drawing attention in Japan as a new style of web media. And now Grood, the Japanese startup behind the voice crowdsourcing service Voip, has launched a viral media site called Animal Buzz, specializing in animal-related content.

Yuuya Haraguchi, the CEO of Grood, said he decided to launch Animal Buzz since he thought the idea had much potential and possibilities to create positive business synergies in the future. He added:

I think there are a few things very important concerning viral media. For example, if the title and the thumbnail image has enough impact to catch viewers’ attention, it has a better chance of being shared often as long as the content drives people to share and the topic is based on universal interests.

Viral media is a field quite easy for many businesses to enter. In Japan, six viral media focused sites have been already released. I think that the number will grow even more. Narrowing the theme is important when it comes to launching viral media on your own. After I conducted a survey, I decided to go for with animal-focused media based on three reasons: 1) animal-related content is very popular when it comes to video, 2) a lot of people share such content with others, and 3) this content is relaxing and fun.

Animal Buzz aims to achieve 10 million page views per month within a half year.

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SunBridge Global Ventures invests in online tour platform AnyRoad

Rick Martin 2014.01.15

San Francisco-based AnyRoad, a web platform that connects tourists and tour guides, has just received investment from Tokyo-based SunBridge Global Ventures. The amount invested was not disclosed. AnyRoad offers a range of unique tours in cities around the world. For example, you might book a tour to go kayaking in Rio de Janeiro, explore baseball’s greatest dynasties in New York, or check out the world of Harajuku fashion in Japan. Aspiring tour guides can put together their own tour on the AnyRoad platform and earn money in the process. As for AnyRoad’s business model, it takes a 14% commission on bookings made through its platform. But it also donates 5% of its revenues to local non-profit organizations of the tour guide’s choosing. AnyRoad’s CEO is Jonathan Yaffe has spent considerable time in Tokyo in the past, cofounding the spectacular Midori.so coworking space as well as KAIS International School and Mirai Institute. We’ve reached out to both AnyRoad and SunBridge for more about this investment and the former’s future plans, so we’ll let you know if we learn more.

San Francisco-based AnyRoad, a web platform that connects tourists and tour guides, has just received investment from Tokyo-based SunBridge Global Ventures. The amount invested was not disclosed.

AnyRoad offers a range of unique tours in cities around the world. For example, you might book a tour to go kayaking in Rio de Janeiro, explore baseball’s greatest dynasties in New York, or check out the world of Harajuku fashion in Japan. Aspiring tour guides can put together their own tour on the AnyRoad platform and earn money in the process.

As for AnyRoad’s business model, it takes a 14% commission on bookings made through its platform. But it also donates 5% of its revenues to local non-profit organizations of the tour guide’s choosing.

AnyRoad’s CEO is Jonathan Yaffe has spent considerable time in Tokyo in the past, cofounding the spectacular Midori.so coworking space as well as KAIS International School and Mirai Institute. We’ve reached out to both AnyRoad and SunBridge for more about this investment and the former’s future plans, so we’ll let you know if we learn more.

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Traveloco matches first-time Japanese travelers with their countrymen abroad

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2014.01.10

Traveloco is a travel service for Japanese people who are traveling outside the country for the first time. It aims to connect Japanese travelers with Japanese residents at their travel destinations, so as to enhance their travel experiences. The site was launched in an early alpha phase back in May of 2013. According to the site, there are over one million Japanese people who reside outside of Japan, and over 17 million Japanese people travel to foreign countries. The common and unvoidable problem for these travelers is the language barrier that often restricts them from certain discoveries. To avoid such missed opportunities, Traveloco facilitates Japanese foreign residents to assist Japanese travelers. By registering on Traveloco, travelers can ask questions to local guides about local information. You can ask for general recommendations, or ask specific questions such as what dish is the best choice at certain popular restaurants. Sending private messages is free, but further assistance (such as a guided tour or acting as a translator) will require a premium user account that can be purchased with a credit card or by PayPal. Currently, there are 60 Japanese foreign residents on the service, spanning 30 major cities like New York and…

Traveloco is a travel service for Japanese people who are traveling outside the country for the first time. It aims to connect Japanese travelers with Japanese residents at their travel destinations, so as to enhance their travel experiences. The site was launched in an early alpha phase back in May of 2013.

According to the site, there are over one million Japanese people who reside outside of Japan, and over 17 million Japanese people travel to foreign countries. The common and unvoidable problem for these travelers is the language barrier that often restricts them from certain discoveries. To avoid such missed opportunities, Traveloco facilitates Japanese foreign residents to assist Japanese travelers.

By registering on Traveloco, travelers can ask questions to local guides about local information. You can ask for general recommendations, or ask specific questions such as what dish is the best choice at certain popular restaurants. Sending private messages is free, but further assistance (such as a guided tour or acting as a translator) will require a premium user account that can be purchased with a credit card or by PayPal.

Currently, there are 60 Japanese foreign residents on the service, spanning 30 major cities like New York and Paris. Traveloco aims to acquire as many as 1,000 registered local guides in over 100 cities by the end of 2014.

Traveloco is aspiring to be a sort of virtual Japanese town in the future. Let’s wait and see if it can succeed.

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Inside Beijing’s startup scene: TechTemple nutures up-and-coming Chinese startups

Masaru Ikeda 2014.01.07

Beijing Skyline See the original article in Japanese from last month Among the eight startups who pitched at a recent event at Beijing’s Tech Temple, the following four startups provide all provide really interesting mobile solutions. Considering Xiaomi’s recent growth, and I came away with the impression that it could be Chinese startups like these that step to the fore on the the world stage. Appbyme AppByMe Appbyme is a cloud platform for the development smartphone apps, targeting beginner developers. In the US, there are similar services like as Invision and Flinto that help users prototype smartphone apps. Not just with prototyping, Appbyme helps users until they complete developing an app and even monetizing from that. In China, many people operate Bulletin Board Sites (BBSs) using content management systems like Discuz, PHPwind and WordPress. Those BBS already have regular users, and if their operators produce an app, then naturally that app can pick up quite a few users as well. And with Appbyme, such users can create an app simply by choosing a template. Many features such as push-notification, location-based gaming, social media sharing, or group-buying can be easily added to the app. Before founding Appbyme, CEO Zhao Jian worked…

See the original article in Japanese from last month

Among the eight startups who pitched at a recent event at Beijing’s Tech Temple, the following four startups provide all provide really interesting mobile solutions. Considering Xiaomi’s recent growth, and I came away with the impression that it could be Chinese startups like these that step to the fore on the the world stage.

Appbyme

Appbyme is a cloud platform for the development smartphone apps, targeting beginner developers. In the US, there are similar services like as Invision and Flinto that help users prototype smartphone apps. Not just with prototyping, Appbyme helps users until they complete developing an app and even monetizing from that.

In China, many people operate Bulletin Board Sites (BBSs) using content management systems like Discuz, PHPwind and WordPress. Those BBS already have regular users, and if their operators produce an app, then naturally that app can pick up quite a few users as well. And with Appbyme, such users can create an app simply by choosing a template. Many features such as push-notification, location-based gaming, social media sharing, or group-buying can be easily added to the app.

Before founding Appbyme, CEO Zhao Jian worked as the technical officer of Yicha, a mobile search engine in China. He feels that it is getting more difficult to search for content as more services assume the form of a mobile apps. His vision is to make a better structure for content search on mobiles.

In this field, there are competitors already out there in China like AppCan and Zhuixin. But when it comes to the number of users and apps, Appbyme stands out. To date, 5400 webmasters are registered on Appbyme, and more than 50,000 apps have been released. The business model is based on a revenue share with developers and advertisers, charging bigger developers for a subscription.

The BBS community in China is very active, especially in cities. According to Zhao, local portal sites are popular, and they have their own business potential, the kind you cannot see for sites in larger, central cities. Appbyme hopes to take advantage of such local opportunities.

The company also plans to make the English, Japanese, and Korean versions so that it can expand overseas.

SayHi!

SayHi is a worldwide dating app with daily active amounting to about 650,000. It has many users in Middle Eastern countries and in Asia as well. Even though the app is developed in China, the service is not being provided there.

On SayHi, users can find other users nearby through GPS and then chat with them. But you need points to chat other members. For example, when a male user wants to chat with a popular female user, he has to pay one point for an hour. If you become a VIP member for a 6000 yen monthly fee, you can chat as much as you want.

According to Shi Yan, the CEO of Easyroid, the company has apps on iOS, Android and Windows Mobile. He says that 29% of their sales comes from Japanese market.

Shi Yan pitches SayHi

In China, there are other popular messenger apps with similar features, including Momo and iAround. Globally, Badoo and Skout are doing well. SayHi plans to add more entertainment and game features in the app in order to differentiate from competitors.

vWorld

vWorld’s CEO Gao Song once worked as the chief officer of Shangshuixuan Studio, the game department of Kingsoft (HKG:3888). Gao says that the number of smartphone users in China amounts to 354 million, and most are either students or white-collar workers. There are some common characteristics among them:

Since they literally grew up with games, they care much about the quality of games.
They are used to sharing content on social media.
They are keenly competitive.

vWorld is a game app where users compete to conquer actual places. It’s a bit different from Foursquare, where users become the mayor of a location by accumulating check-in points. On vWorld, one can become the leader of a location if they win a game against other users.

The company wants to create a user experience where once users conquer various locations in a city that they would actually be motivated to move on to a different city. The app uses GPS to find the actual location using Autonavi’s API.

vWorld CEO, Gao Song

App Annie

App Annie is an analytics platform that tracks downloads of mobile apps, and it’s a service we frequently reference here at The Bridge. You can easily get statistical information about iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Mac apps, giving you a good idea of which apps are popular in which market, popular and which ones are earning revenue.

App Annie has its headquarters in Beijing, but according to CEO Bertrand Schmitt, the company has 130 staff spanning across six cities. In September of 2013, the company raised $15 million in its series C round from Sequoia Capital, IDG Capital Partners, Greycroft Partners and Infinity Venture Partners.

App Annie CEO Bertrant Schmitt

Bertrant shared his insights into the recent trend of mobile apps in the world. For instance, while the iOS AppStore has been growing in China, Google Play has seen remarkable growth in the other BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia and India). When it comes to the revenue, the big money comes mostly from advanced countries, with Android doing especially well are in the US and Japan. For the Japanese market, sales on Android and iOS are relatively well balanced [1].

For app developers, if you don’t know how your apps are selling in certain markets, you cannot develop a strategy for your development and design. But by using the market data available on App Annie and by utilizing other growth hacking tools, developers can determine how to make a successful app much more efficiently than before.

App Annie publishes infographic overviews of some of their statistics.In this way, the site can attract future customers, offering more detailed data to user who pay for premium accounts. Many news media who struggle with monetization can learn much from this business model.

We will look at more Chinese startups in our next article, and examine some of the major internet trends among companies in China.

Many people in the Beijng startup community get together at this party. The entrepreneurs and investors I often meet in Beijing were all there. Even though it was soon after the facility opened, the place seemed to be quite well known in Beijing already.

The corner of the reception and the cafe. The coffee was incredible.

TechTemple is on the first and the second floor of the Tianhai Business Building in Beixinqiao, Beijing.

According to figures from September of 2013. ↩

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