See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based A.L.I. Technologies (formerly known as Aerial Lab Industries) gave the press a demonstration of the prototype of its hoverbike named Speeder today. This was the first tine to show the hoverbike capable of flying with a person while the company showcased a mock-up of it at press conference announcing the establishment of Drone Fund’s No.2 fund last year. Since the company thinks that it requires some time to realize a manned drone due to undeveloped legal system, it first aims the practical application of a hoverbike that can run on public roads floating in the air. They are currently in negotiation with tjhe Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the National Police Agency about the possible permission to ride a hoverbike with both a medium-sized motorcycle license and a drone license. The company also expects to ask purchasers of Speeder to get a lecture or training in advance at an authorized drone school for the consideration of safety. In the demonstration, they showed the hoverbike’s various functions working properly: altitude control by ultrasonic sensor, auto-attitude control by IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), buoyancy control by duct effect / ground effect as…
Tokyo-based A.L.I. Technologies (formerly known as Aerial Lab Industries) gave the press a demonstration of the prototype of its hoverbike named Speeder today. This was the first tine to show the hoverbike capable of flying with a person while the company showcased a mock-up of it at press conference announcing the establishment of Drone Fund’s No.2 fund last year.
Since the company thinks that it requires some time to realize a manned drone due to undeveloped legal system, it first aims the practical application of a hoverbike that can run on public roads floating in the air. They are currently in negotiation with tjhe Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the National Police Agency about the possible permission to ride a hoverbike with both a medium-sized motorcycle license and a drone license. The company also expects to ask purchasers of Speeder to get a lecture or training in advance at an authorized drone school for the consideration of safety.
Speeder, A.L.I.Technologies’ hoverbike under development Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
In the demonstration, they showed the hoverbike’s various functions working properly: altitude control by ultrasonic sensor, auto-attitude control by IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), buoyancy control by duct effect / ground effect as well as braking system. This prototype mounts a generic but customized engine but the detailed specification including how much power output it has was not disclosed.
A.L.I. Technologies starts taking orders for Limited Edition of Speeder Standard Model (only 100 will be sold) in early May while the finished product will be delivered in the first half of 2021. The expected price is $80,000 to $120,000. No down payment of deposit is needed but the firm plans to conduct pre-purchase examination for purchasers including license possession status in order to prevent the abuse of the product.
A.L.I. Technologies also plans to produce Speeder Sports Model targeting high-end users (the expected price is $300,000 to $500,000), although the production volume is still to be fixed. As for the mass production type of Speeder following Limited Edition, it will work using electric motors without gasoline engine and propeller but the company has not disclosed about how they will make it float in the air. In the demonstration event, Shuhei Komatsu (Chirman, A.L.I. Technologies), Kotaro Chiba (General Partner, Drone Fund / Managing Director & Investor, A.L.I. Technologies ) and Soichiro Imaeda (member of the House of Representatives, Diet Members Caucus supporting Drone Business) celebrated the hoverbike has stepped into the new development phase.
L to R: Kotaro Chiba (General Partner, Drone Fund / Managing Director, A.L.I. Technologies), Soichiro Imaeda (Member of the House of Representatives, Japan / Executive Director, Diet Members Caucus supporting Drone Business), Shuhei Komatsu (Chairman, A.L.I. Technologies) and Daisuke Kataoka (CEO, A.L.I. Technologies) Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese telexistence robotics startup Gitai (formerly MacroSpace) announced today that it has appointed humanoid scientist/engineer and former Founder/CEO of Schaft Yuto Nakanishi as COO. Schaft was founded back in 2012 and subsequently secured funding from TomyK and Tsuneishi Partners. It won the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge trials in 2013, and was later acquired by Google (name at the time of acquisition). Since then, Schaft had been developing robots at a new technology development company called X (formerly Google X) operating under Google’s stock holding company Alphabet, but the Schaft project shut down in November of last year. Gitai was initially focused on the telexistence technology which connects an operator and a robot in two different locations. Since its participation in the 9th batch of the Tech Lab Paak accelerator in 2017, it appears the company has been trying to shift the business to the space sector. The cost of operating the International Space Station (ISS) tops several trillion yen or more worldwide, with Japan supplying several hundred billion yen or more of the cumulative total. Around half of the cost comes from training astronauts, their travel between the Earth…
The Gitai Team – Back row, third person from the right: CEO Sho Nakanose ; front row, middle: COO Yuto Nakanishi Image credit: Gitai
Japanese telexistence robotics startup Gitai (formerly MacroSpace) announced today that it has appointed humanoid scientist/engineer and former Founder/CEO of Schaft Yuto Nakanishi as COO.
Gitai was initially focused on the telexistence technology which connects an operator and a robot in two different locations. Since its participation in the 9th batch of the Tech Lab Paak accelerator in 2017, it appears the company has been trying to shift the business to the space sector.
Yuto Nakanishi
The cost of operating the International Space Station (ISS) tops several trillion yen or more worldwide, with Japan supplying several hundred billion yen or more of the cumulative total. Around half of the cost comes from training astronauts, their travel between the Earth and the ISS, and transporting the necessary items to maintain life on the ISS.
As astronauts are human, the amount of time spent performing tasks and the range of such activities are limited, and since we cannot ignore the effects of weightlessness and space radiation, astronauts who reach a certain period of time on their mission must return to Earth. Additionally, a variety of tests are conducted on the ISS; however, there are limits to carrying out these experiments in each field and all alone as each astronaut specializes in different fields.
If robots can be sent to the ISS and remotely controlled from Earth, it is possible to reduce the number of astronauts sent. If the ISS robot operators work in shifts, experts in all fields are able to carry out their experiments remotely, all day, every day. If robots can replace some of the extremely costful industries being employed, perhaps there is room to turn this into a business. It seems Sho Nakanose, Founder & CEO of Gitai, thought so.
With the Trump administration in the US announcing a policy shift in the operation of the ISS to the private sector (from NASA to space startups), the US has seen a remarkable increase in the momentum of space startups. Following the US movement to contribute 80% of the ISS operating costs, Japan is also looking for ways to cooperate with space startups through JAXA, one example being the ISS experimental module “Kibou”.
Nakanose says,
For example, let’s say that the ISS mission, which had cost 40 billion yen so far, has to be able to operate on 4 billion yen. In this case, even if a robot is a bit expensive, we can look at it as a cost reduction tool for the entire mission, so the robot’s cost would be acceptable. […]
It may still take awhile for robots to operate autonomously, but if we can provide telexistence with detailed, high-definition but low-latency video and operability, it should be valuable enough.
Whether it is robots for businesses, or robots for consumers, an overwhelming reduction in cost is needed to bring it to the level of mass production that could cope with the widespread use of robots. As a matter of fact, this is probably the reason behind X’s abandoning Schaft’s operations. In contrast, a robot using telexistence for space missions would be able to make enough money for startups to continue doing business for as long as there is a demand.
6th prototype robot Image credit: Gitai
Nakanishi added,
The main focus for Google’s development of Schaft was to turn it into a business. Because we focused on how to do business with a bipedal robot, in order to do that we focused on the themes of low cost, low power consumption, and full autonomy. […]
Lower cost means that the profit rate for each robot is also lower, which makes mass production necessary, but it is still going to take time for a fully autonomous robot to reach the market. Google allowed me to do it for five years, and I feel like I took it as far as I could, but after reaching this conclusion I decided to move on.
Contrary to Nakanishi’s previous dealings in the world of cost consciousness, in the space robot market companies can make a profit by selling just one. Furthermore, since there is no requirement to be fully automatic from the beginning, Nakanishi judged Gitai as the place where he can make the most use of his knowledge as a humanoid engineer. According to him, the hardware and software for fully autonomous robots are still unable to keep up with the the abilities of humans and the speed of human movement.
Nakanishi continued,
As a robot researcher, if someone else is able to do this, I feel like I don’t want to admit it (laughs). But, if there is a place where you can accomplish what you want and get paid to do it, well, that’s the best. (If it’s not completely autonomous) Many people may place blame on it but you’d better ignore them (laughs). I want to produce a robot that can actually be used.
Nakanishi has been developing a robot that mimics the motions of the lower half of the human body at Schaft. But now he will work to produce a robot that produces movements as similar as possible to those of the upper human body at Gitai. The day when the technologies developed by the same humanoid scientist at different startups go on to be acquired by Google, uniting the upper and lower bodies in real life, may not be just a dream.
Gitai has enrolled several engineers from the Univesity of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Engineering, Nakanishi’s alma mater, such as CTO Toyotaka Kozuki (former mechanical engineer at Japanese personal mobility startup Whill) along with VP of Software Development Ryohei Ueda (formerly software engineer at Schaft). Gitai has transformed almost imperceptibly into an assembly point for some of the world’s top robotics authorities.
Gitai raised 15 million yen (about $134K US) from Skyland Ventures in a seed round in September 2016, and then raised $1.25 million US from ANRI and 500 Startups Japan (at that time) in a seed round in December 2017.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based MedTech startup Buzzreach announced today that it has fundraised 50 million yen (about $450,000 US) in a seed round. This round was secured in December of 2018 and led by KLab Venture Partners. The amount includes loans from financial institutions. The company offers a matchmaking platform called Puzz between clinical trial patients and pharmaceutical companies as well as a media portal called ‘Smt‘. Buzzreach was founded by Takateru Inokawa (current CEO) and Kiyoshi Aoyagi (current COO), both of whom had been previously involved in the foundation of two patient recruit organizations: Clinical Trial and Croee. In the increased globalization of the pharmaceutical industry and their drug discovery business, more new drugs are becoming in need of getting approved by authorities in each country before coming to the markets. To seek approval for drugs, it is necessary to conduct tests called clinical trials. Clinical trials are roughly classified into three phases: phase I: Conducting a trial to evaluate drug’s safety and toxicity to healthy persons phase II: Conducting a trial to examine usage / dosage with a smaller number of patients phase III: Conducting trial to assess drug’s effectiveness comparing to conventional drugs in…
The Buzzreach team, investors from KLab Venture Partners Image credit: Buzzreach
Tokyo-based MedTech startup Buzzreach announced today that it has fundraised 50 million yen (about $450,000 US) in a seed round. This round was secured in December of 2018 and led by KLab Venture Partners. The amount includes loans from financial institutions. The company offers a matchmaking platform called Puzz between clinical trial patients and pharmaceutical companies as well as a media portal called ‘Smt‘.
Buzzreach was founded by Takateru Inokawa (current CEO) and Kiyoshi Aoyagi (current COO), both of whom had been previously involved in the foundation of two patient recruit organizations: Clinical Trial and Croee.
In the increased globalization of the pharmaceutical industry and their drug discovery business, more new drugs are becoming in need of getting approved by authorities in each country before coming to the markets. To seek approval for drugs, it is necessary to conduct tests called clinical trials.
Clinical trials are roughly classified into three phases:
phase I: Conducting a trial to evaluate drug’s safety and toxicity to healthy persons
phase II: Conducting a trial to examine usage / dosage with a smaller number of patients
phase III: Conducting trial to assess drug’s effectiveness comparing to conventional drugs in a larger number of patients.
Out of all these phases, phase I trials are performed in a smaller group consisting of recruited subjects by giving compensation as we can occasionally see recruitment ads on job magazines. On the other hand, phase II and III trials must be performed in a larger group of patients with a specific disease.
This process in recruiting patients poses many difficulties. To participate a clinical trial for a new drug, patients are required to meet eligibility criteria set for each trial including health status or disease condition. Even if a patient meet the criteria, a pharmaceutical company would have to acquire the consent from the patient and cooperate with medical centers / clinics as well as principal investigators. If the pharmaceutical company could not have a sufficient number of patients, it would be forced to extend the period of the trial or increase the number of medical centers / clinics, which requires vast extra-budget before the application for marketing approval.
To solve these problems, Buzzreach has developed Puzz, the data management system of clinical trial subjects. Pharmaceutical companies, CRO (contract research organization) which monitors clinical trial process and SMO (site management organization) which owns data about medical centers / clinics capable of participating clinical trials are allowed to join Puzz and then can deliver clinical trial information to more than 2.5 million potential trial subjects, over 10 healthcare-related media outlets and 10 patient advocacy groups.
For subject candidates needing clinical trial information, Buzzreach offers a medical portal site called SMT, where users can search specific clinical trials with the criteria which their clinical condition and symptom meets. Although such information is also provided by Japic CTI (Japan Pharmaceutical Information Center), it is not so user-friendly; the website offers only smaller information only and no inquiry contact. SMT gives detailed information provided by pharmaceutical companies in addition to the quote from Japic CTI. By replying to questionnaires shown in search results, applicants can convey their intention to participate in a clinical trial to a pharmaceutical company.
smt Image credit: Buzzreach
Buzzreach makes money by charging fee to pharmaceutical companies using the platform on a monthly basis. The startup provides three pricing plans according to how many drug discovery pipelines the user company has or how much budget they have.
We have seldom seen KLab Venture Partners’ investment in a vertical SaaS (software as a service) startup. However, the VC firm may not help ignoring the existence of patients as consumers in the business model. Of course, such a service requires great care to handle information concerning users’ privacy, but Buzzreach has a great potential to create another value through the secondary use of such precious individual data.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Four Years From Now (4YFN for short) is a startup showcase event in Barcelona, annually taking place along with globally known tech conference MWC (previously known as Mobile World Congress). Launched back in 2013 by distinguished Israeli entrepreneur and investor Yossi Vardi, the conference now attracts about 20,000 attendees every year. Some of our readers may recall that 7 Japanese startups jointly set up their Japanese Pavilion booths by paying expense by themselves at 4YFN last year in response to a massive effort by Tomohiro Hagiwara, CEO of Japanese startup Aquabit Spirals. But this year, they have successfully obtained a financial support from JETRO, the Japanese government-backed trade promotion organization, and as many as 20 startups and SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) from Japan attended the event as exhibitors and speakers this year. Exhibitors from Japan are Infinitegra (developing high sernsitive wearable camera), Mitsuya (plating electronic parts), Kotozna (offering multi-language translation service using social network and technology), George and Shaun (developing loss prevention devices and predicting dementia patients), Spiral (developing indoor-use drones), Techno Labo (case forming for IoT sample devices), Pisces (developing a virtual office room connecting remote workers using augmented reality technology)、pop…
Four Years From Now (4YFN for short) is a startup showcase event in Barcelona, annually taking place along with globally known tech conference MWC (previously known as Mobile World Congress). Launched back in 2013 by distinguished Israeli entrepreneur and investor Yossi Vardi, the conference now attracts about 20,000 attendees every year. Some of our readers may recall that 7 Japanese startups jointly set up their Japanese Pavilion booths by paying expense by themselves at 4YFN last year in response to a massive effort by Tomohiro Hagiwara, CEO of Japanese startup Aquabit Spirals. But this year, they have successfully obtained a financial support from JETRO, the Japanese government-backed trade promotion organization, and as many as 20 startups and SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) from Japan attended the event as exhibitors and speakers this year.
Jun Yamadera of FUKUSHIMA Wheel was interviewed by a local press. Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Exhibitors from Japan are Infinitegra (developing high sernsitive wearable camera), Mitsuya (plating electronic parts), Kotozna (offering multi-language translation service using social network and technology), George and Shaun (developing loss prevention devices and predicting dementia patients), Spiral (developing indoor-use drones), Techno Labo (case forming for IoT sample devices), Pisces (developing a virtual office room connecting remote workers using augmented reality technology)、pop inc (developing image analysis SDK for mobile)、Sigma-SAR (satellite data analysis), Trigence (developing high quality semiconductors for audio equipment), FUKUSHIMA Wheel (ad platform by displaying the LED on the bicycle rim), Aquabit Spirals (developing the Smart Plate device which enables bookmarking on real objects using NFC-enabled IC chips), Empath (identifying people’s emotion from vocal patterns in real-time regardless of language), Mobilous (offering the AppExe cloud for mobile app developers), PicoCELA (developing the multi-hop technology which enables users to install a wide-area local area network without cable), Vanguard Industries (IoT venture builder), Soinn (developing neural network for machine learning), and Mira Robotics (developing remotely-controlled robots delegating housekeeping chores).
The Japan Innovation Showcase session was fully packed with an audience. A shot from PicoCERA’s pitch. Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Among all of them, Empath, FUKUSHIMA Wheel, George and Shaun, Kotozna, PicoCELA, pop inc, Aquabit Spirals, Techno Labo, and Tringence were invited to present onstage at Japan Innovation Showcase, the presentation session for Japanese startups at 4YFN where the venue for 200 people was all full with having some standing viewers. Compared to MWC where it’s harder to choose which exhibitors to check because of too many booths, more startups are concentrated in the 4YFN venue so that it’s more efficient for investors to look for good startups to invest in and for entrepreneurs to find enterprises in need of collaborating with startups. With the massive support from their government-backed startup support organizations, more than 100 companies from Korea and Taiwan were exhibiting at MWC and 4YFN, showing off more presence than local startups in Europe.
Participants were incessantly visiting the Japanese startup booth area. Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Hagiwara, who led the startup delegations to 4YFN this year, told us that his motivation for joining the event was triggered by meeting up with Visualead, the Israeli startup acquired by Alibaba in 2017.
The Visualead ream told me that seeking a way out of the country and making global expansion efforts to find the optimal market is not only fatal but also very normal for Israeli startups, which is contrast with Japan having a sufficient-sized market inside the country.
I think that even Japanese startups need to take the “Global First” approach rather than the “Global Expansion” one.
Since we’ve heard more startups and startup supporting organizations all across Japan are uniting with each other in this movement, more teams are expected to join the delegations and exhibit next year.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo- / Bangkok- / Shanghai-based Quan, the Japanese startup creating and offering character stickers for online messaging, announced today that it has raised 400 million yen (about $3.6 million) in the latest round. Participating investors are Nissay Capital, ABC Dream Ventures, OLM Ventures (a subsidiary of Imagica Group), Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital and CiP (Contents Innovation Program). The amount of the fund includes loans from Sumitomo Mitsui Bank and Mizuho Bank. This follows their funding from Japanese film and theater production company Toho back in 2017 (Nikkei reported it was about $450,000), several million dollars from six VC firms back in 2014, and an undisclosed sum from Netprice.com and East Ventures back in 2012. All these bring Quan’s total funding raised so far to about 800 million yen (about $7.2 million). With the latest funding, the firm focuses on establishment of character licensing business, acceleration of the merchandise business and character development for VTuber, blockchain, and other new technology-based services. Quan was founded by the current CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno in 2011. The firm initially focused on the Lounge message app targeting the Asian market but subsequently pivoted to the character sticker creation business…
Tokyo- / Bangkok- / Shanghai-based Quan, the Japanese startup creating and offering character stickers for online messaging, announced today that it has raised 400 million yen (about $3.6 million) in the latest round. Participating investors are Nissay Capital, ABC Dream Ventures, OLM Ventures (a subsidiary of Imagica Group), Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital and CiP (Contents Innovation Program). The amount of the fund includes loans from Sumitomo Mitsui Bank and Mizuho Bank.
This follows their funding from Japanese film and theater production company Toho back in 2017 (Nikkei reported it was about $450,000), several million dollars from six VC firms back in 2014, and an undisclosed sum from Netprice.com and East Ventures back in 2012. All these bring Quan’s total funding raised so far to about 800 million yen (about $7.2 million). With the latest funding, the firm focuses on establishment of character licensing business, acceleration of the merchandise business and character development for VTuber, blockchain, and other new technology-based services.
Quan’s characters Image credit: quan
Quan was founded by the current CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno in 2011. The firm initially focused on the Lounge message app targeting the Asian market but subsequently pivoted to the character sticker creation business in 2012. Their unique characters became popular as distributing them to major messaging apps like Line, Facebook (Facebook Messenger), WeChat and KakaoTalk. As of December of 2018, their stickers have been downloaded over 2.6 billion times while the total number of exchanged messages containing their stickers has exceeded 24 billion to date.
Gaining the popularity of their characters by distributing stickers foe free, Quan monetize through merchandising sales and letting enterprises to use these characters for their promotional activities. With the establishment of local subsidiaries in Thailand and China, the startup has begun their business operations in these markets since around 2017. Both of the heads of the two subsidiaries are still 26, and we could interview them to hear about their recent business development in each market.
LtoR: Masato Okugawa (Head, Quan Thailand), Kazuhiro Mizuno (CEO, Quan), Munetaka Sato (Head, Quan China) Image credit: Quan
Munetaka Sato was working for Quan while at Keio University in Japan but once left the company at the time of his graduation. After finihshing studying at Beijing University, he started his business and came back to Quan to support their sales force as an outsourcing contractor. Having been targeting the Chinese market since around 2013, Quan decided to appoint Sato as the head of Quan China (可澳恩信息技术) for their full-scale operation. Sato has been managing the startup’s business in China for two years.
While Quan China covers business in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the business movement has been moving northward from southern China. In Hong Kong, the startup succeeded to tie up with a local shopping mall while their flagship character was chosen for Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s online promotion campaign. The counterfeit goods problem is a major concern for IP (intellectual property) businesses in China, but Sato explains that IP business environment in China has been gradually improved and monetization has become easier in recent years as unlicensed products are being eliminated in the market. Since Alibaba established the Alifish copyright trading platform, Quan China became able to grasp the exact monthly sales numbers of their character goods on Taobao.
Team of Quan China Image credit: Quan
Since his graduation from Thammasat University in Bangkok, Masato Okugawa, had served Quan as a director of mobile game development. He was subsequently appointed as Quan’s business manager in the Thai market. In the Southeast Asian market where Quan Thailand covers, the Korean entertainment industry’s business expansion strategy, such as allowing local companies to use K-POP content for free at first but subsequently recouping the initial investment by monetizing through merchandise, is doing well. Since the character business born out of internet culture looks slightly challenging in the region it may be hard to make money with licensing deals only. They are looking to monetize by having their characters used for companies’ promotional activities.
Mizuno told us that some companies have been hiring Japanese advisors and introducing cartoon characters born out of internet culture such as Ali the Fox (阿狸) and Budding Pop (长草颜団子) but few companies have secured funding with the character sticker business in the Chinese market. He talked about a future plan to strengthen the startup’s sales department to monetize these opportunities, aiming to grow it as another Sanrio that can link online and offline businesses.
Team of Quan Thailand Image credit: Quan
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Rei Frontier, the Japanese startup behind AI-powered user location analytics platform called SilentLog Analytics/SDK, announced today it has raised 300 million yen (about $2.7 million US) from Mitsui & Co. The investment includes a strategic partnership, which lets the startup collaborate with the trading giant to offer various mobility services according to the user’s behavioral characteristics, create new means of mobility to alleviate traffic congestion by changing people’s behavior, and design an integrated system so that people can move seamlessly between multiple ways of transportation. The company provides a marketing service called Silent Log Analytics enabling a new type of activity analysis by analyzing customers’ location information with artificial intelligence (AI). Companies want to know about customers and customers want companies to make optimized proposal for each, but in reality, sometimes the problem occurs where products that were purchased offline are recommended online. To solve this, Silent Log Analytics acquires 40,000 users’ activity data per day, obtaining their consent. Using smartphone-mounted GPS and sensors, it determines users’ condition or social attribute. Rei Frontier gathers information and owns the accumulated knowledge that only requires 3% power consumption. The team aims to optimize recommendation or…
L to R: Kenshi Tamura (CEO, Rei Frontier), Michihiro Nose (Mobility Business Unit I, Mitsui & Co.) Image credit: Rei Frontier
Tokyo-based Rei Frontier, the Japanese startup behind AI-powered user location analytics platform called SilentLog Analytics/SDK, announced today it has raised 300 million yen (about $2.7 million US) from Mitsui & Co.
The investment includes a strategic partnership, which lets the startup collaborate with the trading giant to offer various mobility services according to the user’s behavioral characteristics, create new means of mobility to alleviate traffic congestion by changing people’s behavior, and design an integrated system so that people can move seamlessly between multiple ways of transportation.
The company provides a marketing service called Silent Log Analytics enabling a new type of activity analysis by analyzing customers’ location information with artificial intelligence (AI). Companies want to know about customers and customers want companies to make optimized proposal for each, but in reality, sometimes the problem occurs where products that were purchased offline are recommended online.
To solve this, Silent Log Analytics acquires 40,000 users’ activity data per day, obtaining their consent. Using smartphone-mounted GPS and sensors, it determines users’ condition or social attribute. Rei Frontier gathers information and owns the accumulated knowledge that only requires 3% power consumption. The team aims to optimize recommendation or customer notification by not sending entertainment information during work or not sending business information after work.
This Rei Frontier’s app allows users to monitor the fuel efficiency of their car on mobile. Image credit: Rei Frontier
SilentLog Analytics has two types of use cases: One is the public type offering an SDK (software developer kit) to mobile apps for consumers, and the other one is the private type for corporate users for their internal business use. Diversified in many fields, examples include integration with a health promotion app, a fleet management app as well as predicting how people move in town especially in the event of a disaster.
Since Mobility Business Unit I of Mitsui & Co. has railway companies, transport functions at mines and other assets in the overseas, Rei Frontier says they can expect to achieve a good result of the collaboration in the mobility sector.
SilentLog Analytics has expanded into the European Union and UK markets where GDPR has been effective and requires businesses strictly comply with local regulations on information handling. Rei Frontier CEO Kenshi Tamura told The Bridge that facility investment in such overseas markets is one of the reasons why they have decided to raise funds at this time.
Rei Frontier was chosen for the third batch of Tokyo Railway’s accelerator program back in 2017, won the Spring Up! sports-focused accelerator program by Japanese system integration company TIS back in 2018. The company raised an undisclosed sum from Adways and Inclusion Japan back in April of 2015, subsequently an undisclosed sum from Mizuho Capital and IID (TSE:6038) back in August of 2016, and also 140 million yen ($1.2 million US) from Iwagin Jigyo Sozo Capital and Energy & Environment Investment.
Their potential competitors include Sentinance (Belgium), Anagog (Israel), SafeGraph (US) and Factual (US), but there is no dominant player yet from the technology and data volume perspective. Our readers may recall that Tokyo-based VC Global Brain-backed startup Near, previously called AdNear and originated from India, has expanded into the Japanese market.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese financial inclusion startup Doreming Asia has developed a payroll system enabling calculation of the salary amount real-time before the closing date of companies, allowing workers to get paid before their payday. Last week the company launched the service in Vietnam through ViViet, the digital wallet app by the country’s leading retail bank Lien Viet Post Bank. Leveraging its propretary real-time payroll system, the firm gives Vietnamese workers an easy access to pro-rata payments or their monthly paycheck. Although it is the poor who really require financial services for a stable life and security, not enough such services are provided in emerging countries. If low-income people with poor credit ratings can receive loans, the service plans will be limited to ones with annual interests of 100%, 300% or even 1,600% due to the high probability of these becoming irrecoverable. By allowing workers get paid before their payday, Doreming Asia wants to prevent their unnecessary debt and to help them manage a better family budget. Doreming Asia signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lien Viet Post Bank and Mitsui Knowledge Industry for a PoC (proof of concept) study in Vietnam, which was conducted from…
Japanese financial inclusion startup Doreming Asia has developed a payroll system enabling calculation of the salary amount real-time before the closing date of companies, allowing workers to get paid before their payday. Last week the company launched the service in Vietnam through ViViet, the digital wallet app by the country’s leading retail bank Lien Viet Post Bank. Leveraging its propretary real-time payroll system, the firm gives Vietnamese workers an easy access to pro-rata payments or their monthly paycheck.
Although it is the poor who really require financial services for a stable life and security, not enough such services are provided in emerging countries. If low-income people with poor credit ratings can receive loans, the service plans will be limited to ones with annual interests of 100%, 300% or even 1,600% due to the high probability of these becoming irrecoverable. By allowing workers get paid before their payday, Doreming Asia wants to prevent their unnecessary debt and to help them manage a better family budget.
Doreming Asia signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lien Viet Post Bank and Mitsui Knowledge Industry for a PoC (proof of concept) study in Vietnam, which was conducted from September to December back in 2017. Subsequently, these three parties signed an agreement to roll out the total service in May of last year.
Vietnam is celebrating Lunar New Year’s Day called Tết today, having set the weeks from January 29 to February 12 the annual holiday season for the New Year celebration. The company could successfully launch the service before Vietnamese people may have unforeseen expenses or enjoy shopping sprees especially in the season.
Tokyo-based 600, the Japanese startup offering the kiosks-in-a-fridge service for offices, announced today that it has fundraised 100 million yen (about $920,000 US) from Asahi Media Lab Ventures (investment arm of Japanese leading newspaper publisher Asahi Shimbun and its affiliate TV broadcasters), SMBC Venture Capital, AG Capital as well as Apricot Ventures. Details of finantial terms have not been disclosed. Since its launch back in June of last year, the startup has been offering the service (dubbed an “unmanned convenience store” in Japanese) to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), startups, and large enterprises in Japan. The refrigerator is filled up with a variety of items from munchies and beverages to lunchbox and delicatessen for office employees while the variety can be added upon their request via the Line messenger app or Slack. The company uses the funds to strengthen its logistic network, aiming to serve 200,000 items to up to 500 offices within this year. The value proposition that the startup can provide is a new way to collect consumer behavior and marketing data in an area which has less access to neighboring retailers such as convenience stores on street corners. By intentionally placing items competing each other in the…
Image credit: 600
Tokyo-based 600, the Japanese startup offering the kiosks-in-a-fridge service for offices, announced today that it has fundraised 100 million yen (about $920,000 US) from Asahi Media Lab Ventures (investment arm of Japanese leading newspaper publisher Asahi Shimbun and its affiliate TV broadcasters), SMBC Venture Capital, AG Capital as well as Apricot Ventures. Details of finantial terms have not been disclosed.
Since its launch back in June of last year, the startup has been offering the service (dubbed an “unmanned convenience store” in Japanese) to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), startups, and large enterprises in Japan. The refrigerator is filled up with a variety of items from munchies and beverages to lunchbox and delicatessen for office employees while the variety can be added upon their request via the Line messenger app or Slack.
The company uses the funds to strengthen its logistic network, aiming to serve 200,000 items to up to 500 offices within this year.
The value proposition that the startup can provide is a new way to collect consumer behavior and marketing data in an area which has less access to neighboring retailers such as convenience stores on street corners. By intentionally placing items competing each other in the refrigerator, their brands can get insights from consumers to improve their products or create better new ones.
600 was launched by Kei Kubo who previously founded a payments solution called WebPay and subsequently sold it to messaging giant Line for an undisclosed sum in 2015.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup Cinnamon, developing a document reading engine and a voice recognition solution leveraging their proprietary AI technologies, announced it has closed a series B round. The total amount of funding in this round has reached about 1.5 billion yen (about $13.7 million). In addition to the investors revealed in the previous announcement, Mirai Creation Fund, Nomura Holdings, Sumitomo Corporation, SMBC Venture Capital (SMBC-VC), Sachio Semmoto (Co-founder of KDDI), Fujiyo Ishiguro (President of Netyear Group) participated in this round. All the investments including the one from SMBC-VC intend strategic partnerships. Flax Scanner, the RPA (robotics process automation) class 2 solution using the company’s own document reading engine Cinnamon AI, is widely used for handling documents such as contracts, resumes, sales progress reports, medical charts, handwritten application forms, real estate property information, receipts, etc. Rossa Voice, another flagship product from the company, is a voice dictation solution based on an automated word correction technology used for Flax Scanner. Among all the investors revealed at this time, it appears that Nomura Holdings will use Rossa Voice to streamline the call center operations at their brokerage services. Aiming to improve their service quality and prevent possible defects,…
Japanese startup Cinnamon, developing a document reading engine and a voice recognition solution leveraging their proprietary AI technologies, announced it has closed a series B round. The total amount of funding in this round has reached about 1.5 billion yen (about $13.7 million). In addition to the investors revealed in the previous announcement, Mirai Creation Fund, Nomura Holdings, Sumitomo Corporation, SMBC Venture Capital (SMBC-VC), Sachio Semmoto (Co-founder of KDDI), Fujiyo Ishiguro (President of Netyear Group) participated in this round. All the investments including the one from SMBC-VC intend strategic partnerships.
Flax Scanner, the RPA (robotics process automation) class 2 solution using the company’s own document reading engine Cinnamon AI, is widely used for handling documents such as contracts, resumes, sales progress reports, medical charts, handwritten application forms, real estate property information, receipts, etc. Rossa Voice, another flagship product from the company, is a voice dictation solution based on an automated word correction technology used for Flax Scanner.
Among all the investors revealed at this time, it appears that Nomura Holdings will use Rossa Voice to streamline the call center operations at their brokerage services. Aiming to improve their service quality and prevent possible defects, many brokerage firms record phone interactions between their agents and customers regarding deals. However, it would be impossible for humans to monitor in real-time or review all records. Rossa Voice can make these processes more efficient and labor-saving.
Through cooperation with Cinnamon, Sumitomo Corporatation aims to strengthen their Digital Transformation effort in the entire company. SMBC-VC, the investment arm of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, aims to improve the efficiency of the group’s financial subsidiaries including Sumitomo Mitsui Bank while Mirai Creation Fund (operated by Sparx Group, funded by Toyota Motor and Mitsui Sumitomo Bank) expects contribution to streamlining operations at Toyota.
Takeshi Niinami
With the latest funding, Cinnamon will be more focused on global expansion. In addition to AI development centers in Vietnam and Taiwan, the Tokyo-based startup will set up an office in the San Francisco Bay Area to expand into the US market. Since Rossa Voice has succeeded in attracting US companies through introduction at InsureTech conferences there, they have made up their mind to expand into the US which has higher demand than other markets.
In addition, the company announced it will appoint Takeshi Niinami, President of Suntory Holdings, as an advisor as of February 1st. With the help of Niinami who has demonstrated leadership at Japanese renowned companies like Mitsubishi Corporation and convenience store giant Lawson, Cinnamon expects to strengthen the structure of their team which is rapidly expanding. Going forward, the company plans to strengthen hiring representatives for business development, delivering AI solutions, and senior AI researchers.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese VC firm Global Brain held the its annual event called Global Brain Alliance Forum 2018 last month in Tokyo. In the pitch competition even, 10 participant startups from Japan and the rest of Japan gave excellent pitches in front of a big audience. This article introduces four award-winning teams from among them. The judges for the Pitch Battle were as follows: Yusuke Asakura (Co-founder, Signifiant) Nobuhiro Ariyasu (Entrepreneur / Angel Investor) Kiyo Kobayashi (Cofounder / CEO, Chomp) Masaki Sugiyama (Outside Director, Nikkatsu) Kotaro Chiba (Angel investor / Partner, Drone Fund) Pitch Panel Award winner: MeicalCare Station by Embrace Embrace develops a social network for physicians and nurses, named MedicalCare Station. Regarding medical practice, FAX or other methods had been conventionally used in communication between core hospitals and staffers. MedicalCare Station is a communication platform to digitalize this process where nurses can post clinical updates of each patient they are taking care of as a timeline and share them with other staffers. The platform is available for free for physicians and nurses but it’s not easy to introduce such a new tool to the medical front lines. That’s why the company has been focusing…
Japanese VC firm Global Brain held the its annual event called Global Brain Alliance Forum 2018 last month in Tokyo. In the pitch competition even, 10 participant startups from Japan and the rest of Japan gave excellent pitches in front of a big audience. This article introduces four award-winning teams from among them.
Pitch Panel Award winner: MeicalCare Station by Embrace
Embrace develops a social network for physicians and nurses, named MedicalCare Station. Regarding medical practice, FAX or other methods had been conventionally used in communication between core hospitals and staffers. MedicalCare Station is a communication platform to digitalize this process where nurses can post clinical updates of each patient they are taking care of as a timeline and share them with other staffers.
The platform is available for free for physicians and nurses but it’s not easy to introduce such a new tool to the medical front lines. That’s why the company has been focusing on promoting it through lobbying medical associations across the country for five years since its launch. Their efforts paid off, and 214 medical associations (one in four of all 891 medical associations in Japan) have agreed to introduce the platform for their use. It’s also used at 34,000 nursing facilities in Japan. Based on its user base, the firm has been monetizing their business by offering a SaaS (Software as a Service) for healthcare app development to medical device / pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Audience Award winner: Fermented products utilizing unused resources by Fermenstation
Some of our readers may recall Fermenstation, the fermentation technology-focused startup based out of Japan’s northern city of Iwate, won the Aomori Mayor’s Award at the Demo Day of JR East Startup Program’s 2nd batch. The firm asks local farmers to grow rice in fallow or abandoned rice fields, refines it into rice-derived fermented ethanol, and produces cosmetic products from them. The strained lees obtained in refining process are eventually returned to rice field and thereby the firm realized a sustainable business model.
This story of fermented products utilizing unused resources attracted the Japanese market and the firm has been receiving many OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) offers from major retail dealers. For example, Akomeya Tokyo is manufactured by Fermenstation but sold as one of Sazaby League’s beauty-care product lineups under their brand. The firm also utilizes strained lees of rice in various ways; the firm sells it as distiller as it is, uses it as cattle raising feed and sells the beef from them in crowdfunding, or uses it as poultry feed for chicken and returns their fowl droppings to rice fields as fertilizer. In addition, the firm started inspection tours for consumers after receiving the attention from them, resulting in contributing to the local economy.
GBAF Award winner: Visualization of hygiene factor by Okan
Some of our readers may also recall this startup. Okan provides special refrigerators with vacuum-packaged side dishes stocked to offices and allows employees there to purchase any of them for 100 yen (about $0.91) for each. This service has been introduced in more than 1,300 offices in total, and charges monthly fees from user companies according to the number of employees. For these companies, it works as a company benefit for employees.
The team had paid attention to Herzberg’s Two-factor Theory on job satisfaction caused by motivator factors and hygiene factors, in anticipation of future decline in the labor force population which may cause bankruptcy. Of the two factors, there are few approaches to reduce turnover rates by improving the hygiene factors. The firm plans to launch a beta service that visualizes assessment or problems of hygiene factors.
GBAF Award winner: Computer vision for autonomous driving by StradVision
Korea / the U.S.-based StradVision develops the SVNet computer vision engine for autonomous driving, enabling an accurate environment recognition. SVNet is able to perform effective processing in real-time even on low-specification chipsets and to detect objects using deep learning. Since the engine does not require higher specification for chipsets, users can introduce it into autos which they already own without replacing hardware.
StradVision takes mainly on sales of the product by OEM and has been providing its service in the U.S. and China. The firm had secured funds from HDTP Technology, Hyundai Motor, LGE, and Global Brain. In May of last year, it fundraised about 8 billion won (about $7 million US) from Hyundai Mobis, Korea’s leading auto parts manufacturer.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by Masaru Ikeda
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
