news

Japanese flea market app Fril to be acquired by Rakuten: Nikkei

Takeshi Hirano 2016.09.03

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Fablic, the Japanese startup behind flea market app Fril, will be acquired by Rakuten for several billion yen (or several tens of million US dollars) and turned into an affiliate, as Nikkei reported early this morning. Combining with its own existing flea market app Rakuma, the e-commerce giant expects to grow its total trading volume up to about 3 billion yen (about $30 million). Founded in April of 2012, Fablic was born out of the 4th batch of the Open Network Lab accelerator and launched the app in September of the same year. The company introduced the concept of ‘flea market app’ for the first time in Japan. Followed by unveiling their trading volume hitting 500 million yen back in July of 2014, they secured a $10 million funding from Cookpad, Colopl and Jafco in October of said year. Fablic recently launched a new flea market app focused on trading motorcycles between individuals, called Ride, in an attempt to expand beyond fashion item peer-to-peer trading. While the app has been seeing a good growth, Mercari… another marketplace app from Japan launched in July of 2013… leapt forward and opened up a lead by…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Fablic, the Japanese startup behind flea market app Fril, will be acquired by Rakuten for several billion yen (or several tens of million US dollars) and turned into an affiliate, as Nikkei reported early this morning. Combining with its own existing flea market app Rakuma, the e-commerce giant expects to grow its total trading volume up to about 3 billion yen (about $30 million).

Founded in April of 2012, Fablic was born out of the 4th batch of the Open Network Lab accelerator and launched the app in September of the same year. The company introduced the concept of ‘flea market app’ for the first time in Japan. Followed by unveiling their trading volume hitting 500 million yen back in July of 2014, they secured a $10 million funding from Cookpad, Colopl and Jafco in October of said year.

Fablic recently launched a new flea market app focused on trading motorcycles between individuals, called Ride, in an attempt to expand beyond fashion item peer-to-peer trading. While the app has been seeing a good growth, Mercari… another marketplace app from Japan launched in July of 2013… leapt forward and opened up a lead by reaching 10 billion yen (about $100 million) in deals through the platform.

See also:

CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Mobile C2C flea market apps – Fril and Mercari

We’ve contacted Fablic for comment and will update when we hear back.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

fablic-ceo-shota-horii — Fablic founder and CEO Shota Horii

news

Japan’s cloud-based personnel management tool SmartHR secures $5M from WiL, others

Kufu
SmartHR

Takeshi Hirano 2016.08.30

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based Kufu, the company behind cloud-based personnel management platform SmartHR, announced today that it has fundraised about 500 million yen (about $5 million) in the latest round. This round was led by WiL (World Innovation Lab) with participation from Beenext and 500 Startups Japan as well as three angel investors: Kotaro Chiba (co-founder of Japanese mobile gaming developer Colopl), Yu Akasaka (CEO and co-founder of Japanese dating app developer Eureka) and Jun Nishikawa (COO and co-founder of Eureka). The company plans to use the fund to expand the team of 20 people to 35 people. See also: Japan’s Eureka, developer of dating and couple apps, acquired by Match Group According to Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata, Akasaka and Nishikawa (of Eureka) were the first paying enterprise user for SmartHR while they and Chiba have been playing a mentor-like role for Kufu who has had no angel investor aboard his company. Founded in January of 2013, the company fundraised the first funding from Tokyo-based startup accelerator Open Network Lab, followed by a $300,000 seed funding in July of last year as well as a $400,000 additional seed funding from East Ventures,…

kufu-shoji-miyata — Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Kufu, the company behind cloud-based personnel management platform SmartHR, announced today that it has fundraised about 500 million yen (about $5 million) in the latest round. This round was led by WiL (World Innovation Lab) with participation from Beenext and 500 Startups Japan as well as three angel investors: Kotaro Chiba (co-founder of Japanese mobile gaming developer Colopl), Yu Akasaka (CEO and co-founder of Japanese dating app developer Eureka) and Jun Nishikawa (COO and co-founder of Eureka).

The company plans to use the fund to expand the team of 20 people to 35 people.

See also:

Japan’s Eureka, developer of dating and couple apps, acquired by Match Group

According to Kufu CEO Shoji Miyata, Akasaka and Nishikawa (of Eureka) were the first paying enterprise user for SmartHR while they and Chiba have been playing a mentor-like role for Kufu who has had no angel investor aboard his company.

Founded in January of 2013, the company fundraised the first funding from Tokyo-based startup accelerator Open Network Lab, followed by a $300,000 seed funding in July of last year as well as a $400,000 additional seed funding from East Ventures, DG Incubation (the incubation arm of Japanese internet service company Digital Garage) and Beenext in January of this year.

While Kufu had been engaged in entrusted system development for a time being since launch, their cloud-based management tool SmartHR was unveiled in November of 2015 and became a smash hit. The company claims that the tool has acquired 1,700 corporate users in nine months since launch.

The fee pricing depends on how many employees a corporate user wants to manage using the platform. Miyata declined to disclose how many people they are dealing with through the platform as a whole, but he said that they are adjusting pricing plans so that a corporate user can use it for about $5 per employee.

Starting off at Open Network Lab, Kufu has been sweeping many startup competitions in Japan, with such winnings as gaining the top prize at TechCrunch Tokyo, B Dash Camp as well as Infinity Ventures Summit.

Based on the market size of cloud-based accounting services in Japan, Kufu estimates there are about 200,000 potential enterprise users for SmartHR. Despite the high user persistency rate of 98%, it’s true that the company is receiving feedback from some small businesses that do not think the service is beneficial, so they still have to keep working to improve it.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japan’s VRize launches 360-degree VR ad network in closed beta

Takeshi Hirano 2016.08.12

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based VRize, developing ad business in the virtual reality (VR) space, last week announced the closed beta launch of a VR ad network named VRize Ad. With the network, ads can be distributed in three different formats: 360-degree video ad, over 150-inch large-screen feel video ad and 3DCG video ad. The VRize team started looking for developers to try out closed beta, and plans an official launch this fall. Participant developers can start distributing ads by integrating VRize’s SDK (software developer kit) into their gaming or other mobile apps. The pricing is based on CPM (cost per mille) while most of ads distributed through the network may be initially treated as a kind of “pure ads” due to the limited number of advertisers. Well, an aggressive startup has appeared. VR advertising is a solution to help VR content and game developers better monetize. The idea was brought in from ad network in the web field to the VR field, and some cases like Immersv have already been appearing overseas. In Japan, although Japanese gaming developer Colopl (TSE:3668) had set up a 360-degree video distribution platform named 360channel, this VRize Ad may be the first…

vrize_featuredimage — Image credit: VRize

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based VRize, developing ad business in the virtual reality (VR) space, last week announced the closed beta launch of a VR ad network named VRize Ad. With the network, ads can be distributed in three different formats: 360-degree video ad, over 150-inch large-screen feel video ad and 3DCG video ad. The VRize team started looking for developers to try out closed beta, and plans an official launch this fall.

Participant developers can start distributing ads by integrating VRize’s SDK (software developer kit) into their gaming or other mobile apps. The pricing is based on CPM (cost per mille) while most of ads distributed through the network may be initially treated as a kind of “pure ads” due to the limited number of advertisers.

Well, an aggressive startup has appeared.

VR advertising is a solution to help VR content and game developers better monetize. The idea was brought in from ad network in the web field to the VR field, and some cases like Immersv have already been appearing overseas. In Japan, although Japanese gaming developer Colopl (TSE:3668) had set up a 360-degree video distribution platform named 360channel, this VRize Ad may be the first case of as a true VR ad network in Japan.

According to VRize CEO Hideyuki Shoda, the large-screen ad with more than 150-inch feel is close to Immersv’s creation while the 3DCG video ad is close to Budweiser’s one by Jaunt (see below video clips).

Immersv is a VR-only ad network established by the founder of mobile app monetization platform Tapjoy, proposing a style of letting users watch ads of movies or games in immersive environment while equipping head-mounted display (HMD).

Budweiser’s ad by Jaunt is more optimized to VR spaces, having a feature which enables experiences that approximate sojourns at actual locations. The excellence of each ad can be experienced by equipping HMD.

The market for VR or 360-degree content is expected to grow over the next few years from now. Highly-functional HMDs like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStationVR have fully entered the market, leading some people to call 2016 ‘the commencement year for VR.’

vr-landscape-july-602x504 — Image credit: The Virtual Reality Fund

On the other hand, in an early stage of the market as shown above in the VR/AR industry landscape, tools which back the industry such as dedicated hardware or authoring tools precede as to business formation. Generally, realization of content or ad-network monetization takes a while.

Shoda answered the question as to whether it is too early in terms of timing: he had chosen to drive the field as a pioneer after understanding this point.

Exactly two years ago, Shoda had launched a flea marketplace app called 10sec which enabled product exhibits via Instagram. He went over to the US to take on challenges, but unfortunately it was not easy to succeed there. He gave up the next fundraising and returned to Japan. After dissolving that company, he took on this new challenge.

Inviting patrons again, he restarted by raising funds from TLM (run by venture capitalist Keisuke Kogure), East Ventures and other individual investors.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japan’s curated news app SmartNews secures $38 million in series D round

SmartNews

Masaru Ikeda 2016.07.08

Tokyo-based SmartNews, the startup offering curated news apps both in Japan and the US, announced today that it has fundraised 3.8 billion yen (about $37.8 million) in the latest round, meaning the total of their previous funds has reached over 9.1 billion yen (equaling to about 80 million to 90 million in US dollars but depends upon the exchange rate when each funding round was secured). This round was led by the Development Bank of Japan with participation from other investors including SMBC Venture Capital and Japan Co-invest Limited Partnership in addition to Kotaro Chiba, a notable angel investor and co-founder of Japanese mobile game company Colopl (TSE:3668). The company isn’t disclosing its valuation but TechCrunch reports that it is between $500 million and $600 million, in post money. The company issued a statement saying that the funds will be used to strengthen human resources, product development and marketing efforts in Japan as well as the rest of the world. They also announced that the news app has surpassed 18 million downloads globally. See also: CNet Japan Startup Award nominees: Mobile news services Gunosy and Smartnews Japan’s SmartNews invites former WSJ Online executive on board, poised for US expansion Japan’s…

Tokyo-based SmartNews, the startup offering curated news apps both in Japan and the US, announced today that it has fundraised 3.8 billion yen (about $37.8 million) in the latest round, meaning the total of their previous funds has reached over 9.1 billion yen (equaling to about 80 million to 90 million in US dollars but depends upon the exchange rate when each funding round was secured).

This round was led by the Development Bank of Japan with participation from other investors including SMBC Venture Capital and Japan Co-invest Limited Partnership in addition to Kotaro Chiba, a notable angel investor and co-founder of Japanese mobile game company Colopl (TSE:3668).

The company isn’t disclosing its valuation but TechCrunch reports that it is between $500 million and $600 million, in post money.

The company issued a statement saying that the funds will be used to strengthen human resources, product development and marketing efforts in Japan as well as the rest of the world. They also announced that the news app has surpassed 18 million downloads globally.

See also:

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japan’s Recruit holds Tech Lab Paak Demo Day, teams from 3rd batch exhibit outcomes

Masaru Ikeda 2016.04.11

See the original story in Japanese. TECH LAB PAAK in Shibuya, Tokyo is a community space only for member IT creators, established by Recruit Holdings (TSE:6098, hereinafter called Recruit) in November of 2014. The facility is managed by Recruit’s R&D headquarters, and works as an incubator to support tenant startups. The tenant teams are roughly classified into ‘community members’ and ‘project members’ according to maturity of their developing services. Last month, a Demo Day was held for four teams from community member and six teams from project members to exhibit a half year’s outcome since they moved in. Below, we introduce what kind of services were or are going to be born out from TECH LAB PAAK, with a focus on prize winners. The following are judges for the pitch competition in the event. Yohei Sawayama, Managing Partner, 500 Startup Japan Kotaro Chiba, Co-founder and Executive Director, Colopl Ken Nishimura, Editor-in-Chief, TechCrunch Japan Shinichiro Isago, Evangelist, Microsoft Japan Yoichi Aso, Head of Media Technology Labs, Recruit Holdings TECH LAB PAAK award winner: RE:GAIN Supplemental prize: Amazon gift card worth 30,000 yen (about $270) RE:GAIN is an online matching platform for rehabilitation. By summarizing information about diagnosis or healthcare of employees in…

See the original story in Japanese.

TECH LAB PAAK in Shibuya, Tokyo is a community space only for member IT creators, established by Recruit Holdings (TSE:6098, hereinafter called Recruit) in November of 2014. The facility is managed by Recruit’s R&D headquarters, and works as an incubator to support tenant startups.

The tenant teams are roughly classified into ‘community members’ and ‘project members’ according to maturity of their developing services. Last month, a Demo Day was held for four teams from community member and six teams from project members to exhibit a half year’s outcome since they moved in.

Below, we introduce what kind of services were or are going to be born out from TECH LAB PAAK, with a focus on prize winners. The following are judges for the pitch competition in the event.

Yohei Sawayama, Managing Partner, 500 Startup Japan
Kotaro Chiba, Co-founder and Executive Director, Colopl
Ken Nishimura, Editor-in-Chief, TechCrunch Japan
Shinichiro Isago, Evangelist, Microsoft Japan
Yoichi Aso, Head of Media Technology Labs, Recruit Holdings

TECH LAB PAAK award winner: RE:GAIN

Supplemental prize: Amazon gift card worth 30,000 yen (about $270)

RE:GAIN is an online matching platform for rehabilitation. By summarizing information about diagnosis or healthcare of employees in companies, it matches those having a disorder and physical therapists. It has already been running in the US and yielded $6,000 as a net profit just in two months since launch last October, under which 170 rehab specialists have been registered.

Based on a B2B2E (business-to-business-to-employee) business model, it targets 4,000 US companies providing health plans with more than 1,000 employees, or 1,500 Japanese companies having an internal health insurance association. It has been used by Hawaii Pacific Health or sports club members at the University of California. In Japan, DeNA (TSE:2432) is going to start utilization from March as well, and other IT or healthcare companies are also considering adoption.

Microsoft Japan award winner: LandSkip

Supplemental prizes: choice sirloin of Oumi beef for BBQ and Microsoft Azure credit worth $120,000

LandSkip is a video distribution platform providing scenery videos from all over the world with 4K high-definition. Gathering video content owned by tourism industries including local governments or resort owners, this service distributes such online. User companies can display three-minute endless video clips on a large screen in office as an interior object.

The team plans to construct a system capable of distributing to more than 30,000 clients by cooperating with Japanese signage ad network company Microad Digital Signage (MADS). With most of the content being purchased from freelance filmmakers or others, alongside consumer plan users can utilize HD video distribution for free but are charged with that of 4K videos. As for a business plan, only 4K video distribution will be offered and be charged 30,000 yen (about $280) for monthly fee. In the future, it will enhance collection of overseas scenery videos.

TechCrunch Japan award winner: Lifilm by aba

Supplemental prizes: a pair meal ticket for the Azure 45 restaurant at Ritz Carlton Tokyo and an exhibition right at the TechCrunch Tokyo 2016 conference

Lifilm is an excretion sensor device designed for the elderly or the handicapped in need of nursing care. Most of bedridden people receiving nursing care wear diapers. However, caregivers cannot change diapers whenever necessary because excretion timing of care receivers cannot be known, so that caregivers do so at an undetermined time regardless of presence / absence of excreta. It has not been excreted (missing) at about 20% of the regular changing of diapers, and the loss time is a heavy burden on caregivers.

Lifilm detects the presence / absence of excreta using its own unique algorithm and notifies caregivers via tablets; it was developed by diverting inexpensive sensors from existing air cleaners, wherein the electrical resistance changes in accordance to odor or gas component changes. This device had been chosen for James Dyson Award Top 20, in addition to IoT Lab Selection by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. The team has already tied up with product manufacturers, and plans to start selling the products by early 2017 (the current expected price is about 50,000 to 60,000 yen, or about $500).

500 Startups Japan award winner: DAncing Einstein

Supplemental prizes: three meal tickets at house-boat Funasei; boarding with participants of Geeks on a Plane East Asia tour in April

DAncing Einstein, a startup focused on neuroscience, aims to develop more effective learning methods through clarification of the brain mechanism. Also, it has been holding seminars for enterprises or educators about learning based on MPS (memory platform system).

Colopla award winner: MagicPrice

Supplemental prizes: two coupons for choice portion of unfarmed tunas and boiled snow crabs

MagicPrice is an AI-powered strategic pricing platform which enables hotels or airline companies to propose optimal pricing at the time, neither too high for providers nor low for customers. Importing client companies’ data such as reservation history and crawling competitors’ data such as those of neighboring competitor hotels, it learns and computes the prices in real-time. The prices will be reflected on companies’ website or ticket reservation / OTA (online travel agent) website via ‘site controller’ systems.

The service eliminated functions requiring tech literacy, and was designed to automate operations as much as possible, for workers in hotels or airline companies are extremely busy. Leveraging the founder’s AdTech knowledge from previous positions, it provides the service in form of API (application programming interface). Currently, four companies are considering adoption.

Audience award winners: MagicPrice and Subot

Supplemental prizes: membership of TECH LAB PAAK as project members (tenant right for half a year) and AppleStore gift card worth 10,000 yen (about $93)

(MagicPrice explanation omitted since it has already been provided above.)

Subot is a scheduling robot that can be integrated with the Slack business chatting tool. When scheduling of a meeting is needed, you will need to search Google Calendar for participants’ spare time and present several choices. But this new tool improves working efficiency 2 to 10 times more compared to conventional manual scheduling with Google Calendar.

The beta version will be launched in early April. Although it supports only the combination of Google Calendar and Slack for the time being, further integration with other calendar and communication tools is planned for future.

TECH LAB PAAK has started accepting the 4th batch of tenants, and will start recruiting the 5th membership batch soon. Regardless of whether a corporation or an individual, and presence / absence of products, one can apply. Please check out the details at the TECH LAB PAAK website.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japan’s Yamap raises $1.5M series A funding to develop gamified experiences for hikers

Sefuri
Yamap

Masaru Ikeda 2016.03.14

See the original story in Japanese. Fukuoka-based Sefuri, the Japanese startup that provides the Yamap app for mountain climbers and hikers, announced today that it has fundraised 170 million yen (about $1.5 million) in series A funding round. This round was led by Japanese mobile gaming publisher Colopl (TSE:3668), with participation from Daiwa Corporate Investment and Fukuoka-based VC firm Dogan. Sefuri claims that they will continue being focused on improving their services rather than pursuing profitability for over an year from now at least, so the funds will be used for operation during the period. Yamap is a mobile app that allows users to check where they are without mobile data access as well as provides a platform for sharing posts and updates about mountain climbing and hiking with other users. Since its launch back in March of 2013, the app has acquired 260,000 downloads, 160,000 registered users, 2.2 million photos and 9 million monthly page views to date. In July, the company launched an insurance service for hikers, Yamap Geers (a price comparison site that reviews outdoor gears), and .Hyakkei (an online media site focused on outdoor activities). They recently partnered with manufacturers of camera, smartphones and smartwatches to…

See the original story in Japanese.

Fukuoka-based Sefuri, the Japanese startup that provides the Yamap app for mountain climbers and hikers, announced today that it has fundraised 170 million yen (about $1.5 million) in series A funding round. This round was led by Japanese mobile gaming publisher Colopl (TSE:3668), with participation from Daiwa Corporate Investment and Fukuoka-based VC firm Dogan. Sefuri claims that they will continue being focused on improving their services rather than pursuing profitability for over an year from now at least, so the funds will be used for operation during the period.

Yamap is a mobile app that allows users to check where they are without mobile data access as well as provides a platform for sharing posts and updates about mountain climbing and hiking with other users. Since its launch back in March of 2013, the app has acquired 260,000 downloads, 160,000 registered users, 2.2 million photos and 9 million monthly page views to date. In July, the company launched an insurance service for hikers, Yamap Geers (a price comparison site that reviews outdoor gears), and .Hyakkei (an online media site focused on outdoor activities). They recently partnered with manufacturers of camera, smartphones and smartwatches to diversify revenue streams.

The user community of the Yamap platform recently participated in a joint development project of camera accessories for outdoor use in association with Olympus’ open-platform camera Air A01(as showcased at CP+ show in Yokohama, for example). In addition, the Yamap app will be pre-installed on Kyocera’s outdoor smartphone Torque and Casio’s smartwatch WSD-F10 (on sale in late March).

yamap-on-torque — The Yamap app preinstalled on Torque.

yamap-on-wsd-f10 — The Yamap app preinstalled on WSD-F10.

Yoshihiko Haruyama, CEO of Sefuri, claims that they have categorized their business development phases into three categories: 1. offering easy-to-use and convenient measures, 2. offering exciting and novel experiences, and 3. becoming a good partner for users. They will be focused on Phase 2 from now on where his team wants to add new functions like giving users stickers upon reaching the top of a mountain or access a FireChat-like streetpass communication among users. We expect that Sefuri will soon add geolocation-based gamified experiences to the app with support from Colopl which is novel in this category.

Furthermore, Sefuri has been conducting a field test in Niseko, a renowned ski resort on the northernmost island of Hokkaido, in partnership with a local tourism association where the company is offering visiting skiers an offline map through the app to prevent them from straying off a set course (especially back country ones) in aaddition to letting them enjoy discovering as to how they may typically enjoy experiences in the resort by leveraging big data analysis. Since these updates are provided in English as well, more than 400 updates have been posted by domestic and inbound overseas visitors.

Upon this funding, The Bridge asked Haruyama about his business exit strategy. He told us that he’s aiming at an IPO by summer of 2020, however he will be exploring other exit options including M&A while considering a way to provide a positive impact on their users and services. He said the company wants to get involved in supporting inbound tourism demands at globally popular destinations in Japan such as another renowned ski resort Hakuba Area and the southern world heritage Yakushima Island.

See also:

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japan’s Nine matchmaking app connects users through best nine Instagram photos

Lip
Nine

Masaru Ikeda 2016.02.01

See the original story in Japanese. Did you know that a photo-sharing campaign called #2015bestnine has swept the social media sphere around the world? It allows users to curate the year’s top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline and put them into a collage image to share on social media with other users. Since this service has penetrated worlwide in a winkling of an eye, about 15 million people including celebrities like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Michelle Obama and Donald Trump, have been reportedly enjoying its use. The campaign was conducted by Tokyo-based Lip, a Japanese startup also known for its matchmaking apps like Lemon and 5pm, aiming to tether a new mobile app just launched globally today. The company launched a mobile app called Nine for iOS, which is available on iTunes AppStore worldwide. Thanks to the successful result of the #2015bestnine campaign, the app went live today but has already acquired 130,000 users worldwide, especially from New York City and Los Angeles. See also: This Japanese duo launches limited-time-period matching app ‘5pm’ in San Francisco Japan’s Lip drops new app Lemon, AI-curated social network for university students Nine is a mobile matchmaking app for…

See the original story in Japanese.

Did you know that a photo-sharing campaign called #2015bestnine has swept the social media sphere around the world? It allows users to curate the year’s top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline and put them into a collage image to share on social media with other users. Since this service has penetrated worlwide in a winkling of an eye, about 15 million people including celebrities like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Michelle Obama and Donald Trump, have been reportedly enjoying its use.

nine-cereblities-profiles — More than a few celebrities enjoyed #2015bestnine.

The campaign was conducted by Tokyo-based Lip, a Japanese startup also known for its matchmaking apps like Lemon and 5pm, aiming to tether a new mobile app just launched globally today. The company launched a mobile app called Nine for iOS, which is available on iTunes AppStore worldwide. Thanks to the successful result of the #2015bestnine campaign, the app went live today but has already acquired 130,000 users worldwide, especially from New York City and Los Angeles.

See also:

Nine is a mobile matchmaking app for Instagrammers, allowing them to curate top nine photos having acquired most ‘likes’ on their Instagram timeline over the past year and put them into a collage image to be placed on their profile page. Users can connect with others who may have a similar feeling by repeating flick-right to connect or -left to pass, much in a manner similar to the Tinder app.

MG_2402 — From the left: Lip’s Yusuke Matsuura and Mai Sekiguchi

Thanks to the appeal of simplicity in expressing someone’s inner character and outer appearance with as little as nine pictures, Nine’s user base is rapidly increasing by the day. Lip co-founder Mai Sekiguchi told us that 75% of their users are females, which is very unlikely for this kind of apps. In proportion to the geographical demographics of Instagram users, the Nine app has 40% of their users in the US, followed by Indonesia and UK. Due to acquisition of a huge user base in Android-dominant markets, the team plans to release an Android version in mid-February.

The app is based on an remarkably interesting idea but I’m curious as to how they will make money. In response to this my question, Lip co-founder and CEO Yusuke Matsumura explained:

We will provide a premium plan for a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 or 1,200 yen. It will provides three premium functions: Unlimited Likes, Neighborhood Discovery and Unlimited More Photos.

Unlimited Likes and Unlimited More Photos will allow users to display photos from a wider variety of those in an archive than the maximum limit for the freemium edition. Neighborhood Discovery will allow users to connect with other users in the same city or town while the default freemium setting will connect users with each others within 50 kilometers. Lip thinks they will flexibly alter these settings or criteria for the premium menu while analyzing user behaviors.

Founded in November 2014, Lip raised an undisclosed amount of funding in November 2015 from CyberAgent Ventures, Venture United, Incubate Fund and Primal Capital, in addition to accepting individual investment from Japanese mobile gaming developer Colopl’s co-founder Kotaro Chiba.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

Japan’s Farmnote raises $1.7M, developing wearable sensors for dairy livestock

Farmnote

Masaru Ikeda 2015.08.27

See the original story in Japanese. Farmnote is based in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and has been developing a cloud-based solution for dairy farmers. The company announced today that it has fundraised 210 million yen (about $1.7 million) from Tokyo-based trading company Kanematsu (TSE:8020), Kanematsu Agritech, Japanese mobile gaming company Gree (TSE:3632), Colopl (TSE:3668) co-founder and executive vice president Kotaro Chiba, Six Apart CTO Daiji Hirata as well as an undisclosed Japanese company. Farmnote will use the funds to strengthen the development of wearable devices and peripherals for monitoring livestock, specifically collecting daily performance data on dairy cows. Incorporated in November 2013, Farmnote has been developing sensor devices and cloud-based systems focused on streamlining dairy and livestock farming operations since June 2014, leveraging a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, called the Supporting Industry initiative. The company won the top prize at Zenkoku Startup Day (literally meaning “All-Japan Startup Day”) held in Hokkaido in September 2014 despite the fact that it had been only a few months since they started working on the project. Farmnote founder Shinya Kobayashi is also known for managing Skyarc, a Hokkaido-based company providing system integration services using content management system…

See the original story in Japanese.

Farmnote is based in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and has been developing a cloud-based solution for dairy farmers. The company announced today that it has fundraised 210 million yen (about $1.7 million) from Tokyo-based trading company Kanematsu (TSE:8020), Kanematsu Agritech, Japanese mobile gaming company Gree (TSE:3632), Colopl (TSE:3668) co-founder and executive vice president Kotaro Chiba, Six Apart CTO Daiji Hirata as well as an undisclosed Japanese company. Farmnote will use the funds to strengthen the development of wearable devices and peripherals for monitoring livestock, specifically collecting daily performance data on dairy cows.

Incorporated in November 2013, Farmnote has been developing sensor devices and cloud-based systems focused on streamlining dairy and livestock farming operations since June 2014, leveraging a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, called the Supporting Industry initiative. The company won the top prize at Zenkoku Startup Day (literally meaning “All-Japan Startup Day”) held in Hokkaido in September 2014 despite the fact that it had been only a few months since they started working on the project.

Farmnote founder Shinya Kobayashi is also known for managing Skyarc, a Hokkaido-based company providing system integration services using content management system Movable Type. Paying attention to the fact that 93% of livestock farmers in Japan are small-scale and keep less than 100 heads of cattle, Kobayashi has been providing these farmers with the Farmnote cloud platform for free, allowing them to manage their livestock individually via smartphone. While farmers feeding more than 100 heads of cattle have to subscribe to the premium plan, the freemium business model has made the company successful in attracting farmers. We were told that almost 3% of the entire population of dairy and livestock farmers in Japan are using Farmnote.

Kobayashi explained:

Farmnote CEO Shinya Kobayashi delivers a pitch at Zenkoku Startup Day in Sapporo, Hokkaido. (September 2014)

We are currently developing sensor devices collecting data on the cattle. Unlike typical wearable devices for humans, our unit has to be fault tolerant with a long-lasting battery because it is attached to animals, meaning difficulty attaching and removing them. We are spending our time and money to develop such a device to conduct a field test on an actual ranch.

We will provide dairy and livestock farmers using our cloud service with these sensor devices. We are not yet sure if we can sell it via one-time payment or need to adopt a monthly subscriptions model. However, our device at any rate will be easy to install so that livestock owners can handle them by themselves, without professional set-up.

The wearable devices will transmit behavioral data using radio waves while the company is not yet to announce which wireless technology will be adopted. Users have to place ‘gateway’ station equipment in multiple locations on their ranch so that signals from the devices can be appropriately captured regardless of how much their livestock moves about. While it’s typically difficult to gain access to power supply or internet on a ranch, it seems the company is addressing the issue in developing a signal-collections platform. If they can establish a technology enabling users to collect data from sensors in a field environment like on a ranch at a reasonable price, that can be applied to the entire agricultural industry beyond dairy or livestock farming and bring data-driven approaches to their businesses. Farmnote is focused on developing sensors devices and peripherals, with shipping slated from next Spring.

Kobayashi added:

The Japanese livestock market is larger than rice farming and valued about $20 billion. Consolidated with other businesses like feed producers or distribution channels for livestock, the market can be considered three or four times bigger. Starting with the services for the livestock industry, we want to collect data on animals and crops in the global farming market of the future.

The global population explosion will cause a widespread scarcity of food and farmlands in the future. To avoid this, we need to further streamline the food production process. As the streamlining efforts based on gene modification technologies are being made in the world, we would like to contribute to the improvement of food productivity, by providing methods to better manage livestock and farm products as well as helping farmers keep doing business with less dependency on their intuition.

While Farmnote has been focused on developing the cloud system, they want to hire data scientists as well as software engineers since they have some good prospects on the development of sensor devices. These positions as available not only in Tokyo but also several locations in Hokkaido. If one is interested in serving the livestock and farming industry leveraging IT skills, you can contact them to get hired.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

news

This Japanese duo launches limited-time-period matching app ‘5pm’ in San Francisco

Junya Mori 2015.07.09

See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s LIP, a startup developing communications services, started providing a smartphone app called ‘5pm’ in San Francisco last week. The app is available for iOS on the iTunes AppStore and for Android on Google Play. At the same time the company also announced that they had fundraised in January an undisclosed amount from Venture United, CyberAgent Ventures, Prime Capital and Incubate Fund, in addition to Kotaro Chiba, co-founder of Japanese mobile gaming company Colopl (TSE:3668). LIP was founded in November 2014 by Yusuke Matsumura, who is an entrepreneur-in-residence at San Francisco-based growth marketer school Tradecraft and had been involved in development of artificial intelligence, and Mai Sekiguchi, former producer of a ‘pure-love app’ called One Heart (no longer available in the AppStore) for love declaration arrangement on Facebook. Matsumura had once participated in Incubate Camp 7th, a startup bootcamp program by Japanese startup-focused investment firm Incubate Fund, where she presented a business plan for an online dating service as well. There he met Sekiguchi through mutual friend Takahito Iguchi, a serial Japanese entrepreneur well known for having developed Sekai Camera, founded LIP soon after and subsequently launched the first product. Limited-time-period matching app ‘5pm’…

yusuke-matsumura-mai-sekiguchi — From the left: Yusuke Matsumura, Mai Sekiguchi

See the original story in Japanese.

Japan’s LIP, a startup developing communications services, started providing a smartphone app called ‘5pm’ in San Francisco last week. The app is available for iOS on the iTunes AppStore and for Android on Google Play.

At the same time the company also announced that they had fundraised in January an undisclosed amount from Venture United, CyberAgent Ventures, Prime Capital and Incubate Fund, in addition to Kotaro Chiba, co-founder of Japanese mobile gaming company Colopl (TSE:3668).

LIP was founded in November 2014 by Yusuke Matsumura, who is an entrepreneur-in-residence at San Francisco-based growth marketer school Tradecraft and had been involved in development of artificial intelligence, and Mai Sekiguchi, former producer of a ‘pure-love app’ called One Heart (no longer available in the AppStore) for love declaration arrangement on Facebook.

Matsumura had once participated in Incubate Camp 7th, a startup bootcamp program by Japanese startup-focused investment firm Incubate Fund, where she presented a business plan for an online dating service as well. There he met Sekiguchi through mutual friend Takahito Iguchi, a serial Japanese entrepreneur well known for having developed Sekai Camera, founded LIP soon after and subsequently launched the first product.

Limited-time-period matching app ‘5pm’

LIP expressed their intention to develop a communications service which deepens human relationships. Their first product ‘5pm’ is an online matching app for arranging one to meet somebody after work.

The time frame available for matching is only 20 minutes after 5 pm. By limiting user conditions including the matching time and place, not to mention the meeting time, the waiting time and efforts spent before the meeting are reduced; such things have formed a hurdle for existing online meeting services.

LIP launched their service in San Francisco because it is quite popular to build new human relationships via internet there. According to findings by The University of Chicago researchers, one-third of new marriages in the U.S. today initially began over an online meeting service.

By improving the product in reflection while obtaining feedbacks from San Francisco users who tend to be cosmopolitan, the team plans to localize it for use in multinational settings in the future.

Matsumura explains that fields related to actual human interactions are very interesting, yet important. Not only does LIP focus on this kind of dating service, but it also plans to develop various services covering the communications sector.

By deepening human relationships, LIP supports construction of better friendships as well as chance creation of romance. Moreover, it offers an approach as to the issue of improving the marriage rate, one of Japan’s major social issues today.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Proofread by Masaru Ikeda

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Japan’s outsourced logistics platform OpenLogi secures $500,000 funding round

SCORE 1,229

Takeshi Hirano 2015.03.04

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese. Tokyo-based OpenLogi, a startup that provides an outsourced logistics platform focused on SMEs and freelancers, announced today that it has fundraised about 60 million yen ($500,000) from Japanese investment fund Infinity Venture Partners (IVP) and Kotaro Chiba, executive vice-president of Japanese mobile game company Colopl (TSE:3668). Upon this funding round, Masashi Kobayashi, managing partner at IVP, and Kimiyuki Suda aka Sudax, who has been serving as an auditor for recently-IPOed Japanese companies such as Bengo4.com (legal consulting platform) and Crowdworks (crowdsourcing platform), joined the board of management. The company also invited Star Mica (TSE:3230) Chairman Masashi Mizunaga as an advisor. OpenLogi is an outsourced logistics service offering affordable rates that leverages unused warehouse assets and downtime of logistic facilities. The company plans to use the funds to enlarge their four-person management team and to strengthen system development. In accordance with the company’s business expansion, IVP intends to make an additional investment of several million dollars. OpenLogi was founded in December 2013 by Hidetsugu Ito, who was previously involved in launching Japanese magazine subscription service Fujisan.co.jp. Based on his experience in discussing and negotiating with logistics companies, he founded OpenLogi…

This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based OpenLogi, a startup that provides an outsourced logistics platform focused on SMEs and freelancers, announced today that it has fundraised about 60 million yen ($500,000) from Japanese investment fund Infinity Venture Partners (IVP) and Kotaro Chiba, executive vice-president of Japanese mobile game company Colopl (TSE:3668).

Upon this funding round, Masashi Kobayashi, managing partner at IVP, and Kimiyuki Suda aka Sudax, who has been serving as an auditor for recently-IPOed Japanese companies such as Bengo4.com (legal consulting platform) and Crowdworks (crowdsourcing platform), joined the board of management. The company also invited Star Mica (TSE:3230) Chairman Masashi Mizunaga as an advisor.

OpenLogi is an outsourced logistics service offering affordable rates that leverages unused warehouse assets and downtime of logistic facilities. The company plans to use the funds to enlarge their four-person management team and to strengthen system development. In accordance with the company’s business expansion, IVP intends to make an additional investment of several million dollars.

OpenLogi was founded in December 2013 by Hidetsugu Ito, who was previously involved in launching Japanese magazine subscription service Fujisan.co.jp. Based on his experience in discussing and negotiating with logistics companies, he founded OpenLogi to address logistics solutions for small e-commerce players.

Looking at the recent upward trend in the C2C business in Japan thanks to instant e-commerce platforms like Base or Stores.jp, as well as resale shopping app Mercari, C2C-based commerce businesses have become more common, so logistics services for professional use lags behind those for small commerce business players in terms of service flexibility.

In view of the fabless business concept, OpenLogi is very similar to online printing startup Raksul or online laundry startup Lenet, where they have no assets to provide services. Upon signing up with OpenLogi platform, it provides management features on a dashboard, such as warehouse inspection, warehouse storage, shipping, and management of returned merchandise at affordable rates.

Since its launch in beta in June 2014, OpenLogi has successfully attracted many SMEs and freelancers because of its price transparency and affordable rates, and is seeing a 400% growth on a month-to-month revenue basis. While planning to expand the service to warehousing of frozen foods and hazardous materials, they are working on the launch of a cross-border shipping service to serve international e-commerce businesses, and is expected to launch in April.

openlogi-hidetsugu-ito-kimiyuki-suda — L to R: OpenLogi CEO Hidetsugu Ito and newly-appointed auditor Kimiyuki Suda aka Sudax

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson

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