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Japan’s Gree unveils $100M investment plan for non-game businesses

Takeshi Hirano 2014.07.18

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014. Japanese internet company Gree unveiled that it will invest about 10 billion yen ($98.7 million) in non-game businesses in the coming 12 months. This was disclosed by the company’s managing director Naoki Aoyagi at his speech at B Dash Camp Fukuoka today. In his presentation about Gree’s recent efforts in new businesses, he pointed out that they need to assess the feasibility of each business as frequently as every three months, similar to what US-based incubator Y Combinator does in terms of frequency of feasibility assessment. In view of the mature state of the Japanese startup ecosystem, he said Gree should not launch a business to compete with other startups: We have to do something different from what other companies are doing. We have enough money since we’ve been providing social games for a long time. We’ll keep primarily investing in the gaming business, but we secured a $100 million budget for investing in non-game businesses. According to Aoyagi, this concept is called “the incubation and acquisition strategy” at GREE and a business scheme different from the company’s investment initiative Gree…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.

Japanese internet company Gree unveiled that it will invest about 10 billion yen ($98.7 million) in non-game businesses in the coming 12 months. This was disclosed by the company’s managing director Naoki Aoyagi at his speech at B Dash Camp Fukuoka today.

In his presentation about Gree’s recent efforts in new businesses, he pointed out that they need to assess the feasibility of each business as frequently as every three months, similar to what US-based incubator Y Combinator does in terms of frequency of feasibility assessment.

In view of the mature state of the Japanese startup ecosystem, he said Gree should not launch a business to compete with other startups:

We have to do something different from what other companies are doing. We have enough money since we’ve been providing social games for a long time. We’ll keep primarily investing in the gaming business, but we secured a $100 million budget for investing in non-game businesses.

According to Aoyagi, this concept is called “the incubation and acquisition strategy” at GREE and a business scheme different from the company’s investment initiative Gree Ventures.

Aoyagi introduced HotelQuickly, the Thai startup that Gree recently invested in.

news

Nobot founder launches tech talent marketplace Remotus to meet hiring needs of startups

Takeshi Hirano 2014.07.17

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014. Japanese serial entrepreneur Kiyo Kobayashi is best knwon for his successful exit by having sold his smartphone ad network startup Nobot to Mediba, the ad solution company of Japan’s second largest telco KDDI. His San Francisco-based new startup Chanoma unveiled the alpha version of remote hiring platform Remotus today. Kobayashi told us what has triggered him to launch the platform: The IT industry in the US is suffering from increasing labor costs of their engineers. To address this issue, our platform matches US companies in need of engineers with human resources outside the country. Especially for startups suffering from a lack of engineers, you can find potential employees who are ready to relocate to your location to work by presenting a wage proposal in the form of competitive bidding. This hiring process is same with US-based talent marketplace Hired which successfully fundraised $15 million in a series A round back in March. Hired takes a commission fee from a company when a hiring deal is done. Although Kobayashi didn’t disclose details, it seems he found a way to provide the service…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.

Japanese serial entrepreneur Kiyo Kobayashi is best knwon for his successful exit by having sold his smartphone ad network startup Nobot to Mediba, the ad solution company of Japan’s second largest telco KDDI.

His San Francisco-based new startup Chanoma unveiled the alpha version of remote hiring platform Remotus today.

Kobayashi told us what has triggered him to launch the platform:

The IT industry in the US is suffering from increasing labor costs of their engineers. To address this issue, our platform matches US companies in need of engineers with human resources outside the country. Especially for startups suffering from a lack of engineers, you can find potential employees who are ready to relocate to your location to work by presenting a wage proposal in the form of competitive bidding.

This hiring process is same with US-based talent marketplace Hired which successfully fundraised $15 million in a series A round back in March. Hired takes a commission fee from a company when a hiring deal is done. Although Kobayashi didn’t disclose details, it seems he found a way to provide the service for a lower fee than that of Hired. He explained:

After my relocation to San Francisco, I learned that many local startups and entrepreneurs have been suffering in the hiring of software developers, while big companies like Google or Facebook are keeping them by paying high salaries. So I wanted to solve problems of hiring for startups. Some startups using our service present a remote work style option.

While most companies prefer mid- or long-term employment (over six months), the fact is many projects are finished in less than a month. We want to provide a workaround to fill this gap via Remotus.

Talented workers are scattered all around the world, and wage ranges vary greatly. In the US, there’s no remote hiring platform other than Odesk, or you need to depend on someone’s introduction. I think hiring with a relocation package will become more common. We want to establish a platform that allows startups to hire talented people from around the world.

Many Japanese entrepreneurs who have made successful exits have launched other businesses, and obviously Kobayashi will follow them, but in the Silicon Valley. We’ll share more details about his business as they become available.

Disclosure: Kiyo Kobayashi is an advisor for The Bridge.

news

Japan’s B Dash Ventures to form $60M second fund by yearend

Takeshi Hirano 2014.07.17

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014. At the reception party for the B Dash event, we heard from the organizer and B Dash Ventures CEO Hiroyuki Watanabe that they are currently forming a new fund. He told us it will be valued at around 6 billion yen (about $59 million) and has secured almost 50% of funding towards its planned closing by end of 2014. Their previous fund formed in September 2011 was worth 2 billion yen ($20 million) and attracted investment from big companies like Docomo Ventures, Gree, Septeni, Biglobe, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. The have invested to date in startups including Gumi (game publishing), Gunosy (news curation app), Oh My Glasses (glasses-focused vertical e-commerce), and our readers may recall their portfolio startup ScaleOut was acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company, back in August last year. The Bridge: Are investors in the new fund the same as those for the previous one? Watanabe: We can’t disclose that yet. But our investors include internet companies and their executives. We’ll let more corporate investors join the fund from now on. The Bridge: Your portfolio companies range widely from…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2014.

At the reception party for the B Dash event, we heard from the organizer and B Dash Ventures CEO Hiroyuki Watanabe that they are currently forming a new fund. He told us it will be valued at around 6 billion yen (about $59 million) and has secured almost 50% of funding towards its planned closing by end of 2014.

Their previous fund formed in September 2011 was worth 2 billion yen ($20 million) and attracted investment from big companies like Docomo Ventures, Gree, Septeni, Biglobe, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.

The have invested to date in startups including Gumi (game publishing), Gunosy (news curation app), Oh My Glasses (glasses-focused vertical e-commerce), and our readers may recall their portfolio startup ScaleOut was acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company, back in August last year.

The Bridge: Are investors in the new fund the same as those for the previous one?

Watanabe: We can’t disclose that yet. But our investors include internet companies and their executives. We’ll let more corporate investors join the fund from now on.

The Bridge: Your portfolio companies range widely from undisclosed investees to rapidly growing companies like Gumi or Gunosy. Do you have a focus for the new fund?

Watanabe: While the previous fund was focused on seed-, early-, and later-stage companies, the fund will include middle-stage companies as our investee. Because of the huge funding needs from middle- and later-stage companies, we’ll invest several million dollars in them respectively, and strengthen relatively smaller investments in seed- and early-stage companies as well.

The Bridge: We’ve seen several exits like ScaleOut (acquired by Mediba) and FreakOut (recently IPO-ed) in the ad-tech space, and gaming publisher Gumi, one of your portfolio companies, is planning to go IPO by yearend. Do you have any focus on specific spaces to invest in?

Watanabe: I’m keeping my eyes on smartphone-based media startups like Gunosy and Iemo, as well as the other spaces like Adtech, gaming, and e-commerce. I’m sure that more new smartphone services will disrupt conventional businesses, so we’ll invest in various startups taking that approach.

The Bridge: Thank you.

news

Japan’s SmartDrive unveils vehicle analytics solution, poised for operational testing

SmartDrive

Takeshi Hirano 2014.07.15

This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese. Our readers may recall that we recently reported on Japanese stealth startup SmartDrive. The startup has been developing vehicle tracking and bigdata analytics solutions, and fundraised tens of millions yen (or a few hundreds thousands dollars) from Japanese startup investment fund Anri back in February. The company unveiled the details of their service and announced today that it will launch a test operation by nstalling their device in test vehicles next month. The test will be conducted for one month in Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City, a new city in suburban Tokyo. SmartDrive will distribute their device to about 20 testers in the area and ask them to track the condition of their cars and driving data, which will be used to improve the product. Health tracking app for your car Their solution is comprised of a small accessory and a smartphone app. By connecting the accessory to an OBD (on-board diagnostics) interface to a car, it will be synced via BlueTooth with the app on a smartphone. Various metrics, like fuel efficiency or engine stats, will then be transferred to your smartphone. This process is similar to health tracking apps…

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

Our readers may recall that we recently reported on Japanese stealth startup SmartDrive. The startup has been developing vehicle tracking and bigdata analytics solutions, and fundraised tens of millions yen (or a few hundreds thousands dollars) from Japanese startup investment fund Anri back in February.

The company unveiled the details of their service and announced today that it will launch a test operation by nstalling their device in test vehicles next month. The test will be conducted for one month in Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City, a new city in suburban Tokyo.

SmartDrive will distribute their device to about 20 testers in the area and ask them to track the condition of their cars and driving data, which will be used to improve the product.

Health tracking app for your car

Their solution is comprised of a small accessory and a smartphone app. By connecting the accessory to an OBD (on-board diagnostics) interface to a car, it will be synced via BlueTooth with the app on a smartphone. Various metrics, like fuel efficiency or engine stats, will then be transferred to your smartphone. This process is similar to health tracking apps that obtain data via body sensors.

We’ve seen several startups like Y Combinator-backed Automatic (launched in 2013) and New York-based Dash Labs (launched back in June 2013) as well as several Kickstarter campaigns like this and that providing similar tracking solutions using the OBD interface.

Bigdata solution on top of people’s driving records

SmartDrive does not have a clear business model, but CEO Retsu Kitagawa aims to monetize it via B2B2C.

For example, if an auto insurer, or a car dealer uses the SmartDrive solution and lets customers use it, they will be able to get details from customers’ vehicles and provide a cheaper insurance package or better follow-up services. US auto insurer Progressive provides an OBD device called SnapShot to better serve customers. The more types of cars these companies can acquire data from, the more fields the solution can be applied to.

SmartDrive is repeating stress tests to prepare for the operational test. We will feature them as soon as more details become available.

news

Japan’s Actcat launches automated platform for reviewing code on GitHub

SideCI

Junya Mori 2014.05.01

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based software development company Actcat announced yesterday that it has launched a source code review and bug detection platform called SideCI. It provides a continuous integration service aimed at reducing time-consuming work for system developers. The service can review a given Ruby on Rails project under development on GitHub, detects security holes, points out areas likely to contain bugs, and detects libraries in need of updating. When you push source code to a GitHub repository, SideCI will review it automatically. Using the dashboard provided, you can also easily check out how many discrepancies you have addressed and how many still remain. The team is planning to add testing and deployment features, as well as support for programming languages other than Ruby. They attended the pitch session at TechCrunch Tokyo 2013 and the sixth batch of Incubate Fund’s development camp program. The company is perhaps best known for having developed many web services and mobile apps in a range of programming languages and for different platforms. They plan to use this experience to improve the platform to better serve developers.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based software development company Actcat announced yesterday that it has launched a source code review and bug detection platform called SideCI.

It provides a continuous integration service aimed at reducing time-consuming work for system developers. The service can review a given Ruby on Rails project under development on GitHub, detects security holes, points out areas likely to contain bugs, and detects libraries in need of updating.

When you push source code to a GitHub repository, SideCI will review it automatically. Using the dashboard provided, you can also easily check out how many discrepancies you have addressed and how many still remain.

The team is planning to add testing and deployment features, as well as support for programming languages other than Ruby. They attended the pitch session at TechCrunch Tokyo 2013 and the sixth batch of Incubate Fund’s development camp program.

The company is perhaps best known for having developed many web services and mobile apps in a range of programming languages and for different platforms. They plan to use this experience to improve the platform to better serve developers.

news

Korean growth hacking tool 5Rocks comes out of beta, planning global expansion

5Rocks
Korea

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.06

See the original version of this article, written in Japanese We have mentioned 5Rocks, a Korean-based growth hacking tool for mobile apps many times before. In August of 2013, the startup raised $2.3 million from Japanese venture capital Global Brain, and it expanded the business to Japan [1]. The product has been adopted by many game developers such as Gumi, Pokelabo, MyNet, Mutations Studio, KLab and NewsTech. The beta version has been operating for more than a half year now, but recently on April 2nd, the official version of 5Rocks was finally released, and is available in five languages, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, English, and Russian. The pricing for the Japanese market was announced as well. There is a charge of one yen (about $0.01) is charged for each monthly active user for an app. If you have less than 10,000 MAU, then it’s free. The maximum fee would be 300,000 yen ($3000), for any app that has more than 30,000 MAU. 5Rocks offers a SDK as well, which game developers can implement into their app to acquire and analyze users activity data. In this new official version, 5Rocks added some new features based on the feedback from their beta phase,…

See the original version of this article, written in Japanese

We have mentioned 5Rocks, a Korean-based growth hacking tool for mobile apps many times before. In August of 2013, the startup raised $2.3 million from Japanese venture capital Global Brain, and it expanded the business to Japan [1]. The product has been adopted by many game developers such as Gumi, Pokelabo, MyNet, Mutations Studio, KLab and NewsTech. The beta version has been operating for more than a half year now, but recently on April 2nd, the official version of 5Rocks was finally released, and is available in five languages, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, English, and Russian.

The pricing for the Japanese market was announced as well. There is a charge of one yen (about $0.01) is charged for each monthly active user for an app. If you have less than 10,000 MAU, then it’s free. The maximum fee would be 300,000 yen ($3000), for any app that has more than 30,000 MAU.

5Rocks offers a SDK as well, which game developers can implement into their app to acquire and analyze users activity data. In this new official version, 5Rocks added some new features based on the feedback from their beta phase, including the ability to chart correlation of user activity (who log-in regularly) and sales.

The chart indicates the variation of users, according to frequency of gameplay

A chart showing sales

The chart showing the number of the users playing a game in real time was particularly interesting (see below). I hear that some game developers even project this chart on a big screen in their office just to help motivate employees.

A growth hacking tool needs more than just data acquisition and the analysis. It needs to let game developers take action based on results. For that purpose, 5Rocks provide two added features: promotion and push-notification. Both functions target specific clusters of users based on certain attributes and lets game developers to send messages to those users’ smartphones by uploading images or text to 5Rocks’ dashboard. These features are adopted in the SDK, so members in charge of marketing can proceed with promotions or A/B tests without requiring support from engineers.

Promotion page: Select user attributes on the left. The image on the right is the ad for the promotion.

The promotion displayed in the app

According to Japan country manager, Yasuo Sato, 5Rocks has been adopted by about 80 game developers in Korea and Japan and about 200 apps. The company plans to expand to elsewhere in Asia, with the goal of being used by 3000 apps by the end of this year.

The competition in this field is quite fierce, with Kaizen’s planBCD just announcing that it has raised $5 million, and will expand to the US. There’s also Singapore-based Unicon which operates Fello, and CyberAgent subsidiary Sirok which operates Growth Push, Growth Replay, and Growth Point.

The startup began as an online reservation application, but has since evolved to different business. ↩

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Japan’s wearable smart-toy Moff launches Kickstarter campaign, already near goal

Rick Martin 2014.03.12

Yesterday we mentioned Japan-based OpenPool, an interactive billiards kit that’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter, coinciding with their exhibition at SXSW. There are a number of Japanese companies pushing their wares at the Austin conference, and another one is smart-toy maker Moff, who we spoke with earlier in the month. Like OpenPool, Moff has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristband toy at SXSW, and as I write this, they’re almost at their fundraising goal, with more than $15,000 of their $20,000 goal raised. As part of their Kickstarter materials, Moff has laid out a development roadmap (see below) detailing plans to mass produce and ship their wristband this summer. Kickstarter backers who pitch in financially can get Moff wristbands as rewards, which certainly makes it worthwhile to support the project. If you’d like a more detailed overview of how Moff works, you can check out the Kickstarter promo video above.

Yesterday we mentioned Japan-based OpenPool, an interactive billiards kit that’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter, coinciding with their exhibition at SXSW. There are a number of Japanese companies pushing their wares at the Austin conference, and another one is smart-toy maker Moff, who we spoke with earlier in the month.

Like OpenPool, Moff has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristband toy at SXSW, and as I write this, they’re almost at their fundraising goal, with more than $15,000 of their $20,000 goal raised.

As part of their Kickstarter materials, Moff has laid out a development roadmap (see below) detailing plans to mass produce and ship their wristband this summer.

Kickstarter backers who pitch in financially can get Moff wristbands as rewards, which certainly makes it worthwhile to support the project.

If you’d like a more detailed overview of how Moff works, you can check out the Kickstarter promo video above.

news

Kamcord localizes SDK to Japanese, Namco Bandai first to use its game recording technology

Rick Martin 2014.02.18

Late last year in Kyoto we happened to run into Adi Rathnam, the co-founder of of Kamcord, who at the time was speaking to potential Japanese gaming partners for his company’s game recording platform. As you may recall, Kamcord offers an SDK that enables game developers to put a ‘movie’ button in game, and when it is pressed, they can then share video clips/replays of their game play. These can be shared directly to Kamcord where they can be viewed by other gamers, or they can be shared to places like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or even email. Back in December Adi informed us of plans to localize their SDK into Japanese, as well as a number of other Asian languages. That localization has now been realized, and Kamcord is also announcing that Namco Bandai’s title Gregg is the first game that takes advantage of that Japanese localization. Kamcord also tells us that they have also localized their SDK into Chinese, with Korean soon to follow. Unreal growth Adi says that they are experiencing huge growth right now, with a new video uploaded once every five seconds, and a total of two billion videos recorded in total. “We’re working hard to…

Late last year in Kyoto we happened to run into Adi Rathnam, the co-founder of of Kamcord, who at the time was speaking to potential Japanese gaming partners for his company’s game recording platform. As you may recall, Kamcord offers an SDK that enables game developers to put a ‘movie’ button in game, and when it is pressed, they can then share video clips/replays of their game play. These can be shared directly to Kamcord where they can be viewed by other gamers, or they can be shared to places like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or even email.

Back in December Adi informed us of plans to localize their SDK into Japanese, as well as a number of other Asian languages. That localization has now been realized, and Kamcord is also announcing that Namco Bandai’s title Gregg is the first game that takes advantage of that Japanese localization. Kamcord also tells us that they have also localized their SDK into Chinese, with Korean soon to follow.

Unreal growth

share_tab_japanese — Kamcord’s share tab

Adi says that they are experiencing huge growth right now, with a new video uploaded once every five seconds, and a total of two billion videos recorded in total. “We’re working hard to ensure our servers will scale,” he explains. “Our growth has been pretty exponential.”

Kamcord is also announcing today that it has joined the Unreal Engine 3 Integrated Partners Program. That program includes 25 other leading companies like Oculus VR, NaturalMotion, and Intel. The founder and CEO of Epic, the company behind the Unreal game engine, had this to say about the tie-up with Kamcord:

The Kamcord integration with Unreal Engine 3 provides awesome real-time video recording and social sharing functionality that developers can drop into their mobile games for added appeal. We’re proud that Kamcord has joined Epic’s Integrated Partners Program to bring their technology to Unreal Engine developers as seamlessly as possible.

This is an important step for Kamcord, because games using the Unreal engine typically have pretty stunning graphics (Infinity Blade is one of the best known examples), as well as a tendency to attract more hardcore gamers. It stands to reason that video recordings of such games would be extremely sharable.

Kamcord will also be making an effort to bring independent developers into the fold as well, and to that end they have already landed Limbic’s Tower Madness 2 (shown in the video above) and PennyPop’s Battle Camp as users of their technology.

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Pirate3D to bring its Buccaneer 3D Printer to Japan

Rick Martin 2014.01.30

We have written about a number of fun Japan-based 3D printing projects. In a country like this one known for creative product design, 3D fabrication already off to a promising start. But in order for this space to thrive on a large scale, printers need to be accessible and affordable. We’ve previously written about a number of shared workspaces, including CUBE and FabCafe, which are helping in this regard. We’re also pleased to see more printers going on sale here in Japan, including the Buccaneer 3D printer, whose parent company, Singapore-based Pirate3D, has just signed a distribution deal for Japan with Keienu Trading Company. Its printers are set to go on sale in the country in late May or early June. It’s a little surprising to me to see that Pirate3D really didn’t waste any time moving in on the Japan market, seeing as how they are still just in the pre-order phase elsewhere. So I asked the company’s management engineer Evgeny Lazarenko why Japan represented such an important market for them. He explained: Japan is arguably the most developed consumer market in Asia in terms of purchasing power. […] The nation is quick to experiment with new products, and…

We have written about a number of fun Japan-based 3D printing projects. In a country like this one known for creative product design, 3D fabrication already off to a promising start. But in order for this space to thrive on a large scale, printers need to be accessible and affordable. We’ve previously written about a number of shared workspaces, including CUBE and FabCafe, which are helping in this regard.

We’re also pleased to see more printers going on sale here in Japan, including the Buccaneer 3D printer, whose parent company, Singapore-based Pirate3D, has just signed a distribution deal for Japan with Keienu Trading Company. Its printers are set to go on sale in the country in late May or early June.

It’s a little surprising to me to see that Pirate3D really didn’t waste any time moving in on the Japan market, seeing as how they are still just in the pre-order phase elsewhere. So I asked the company’s management engineer Evgeny Lazarenko why Japan represented such an important market for them. He explained:

Japan is arguably the most developed consumer market in Asia in terms of purchasing power. […] The nation is quick to experiment with new products, and 3D printing is all about experimentation. The ‘monozukuri’ philosophy is deeply ingrained into Japanese mentality. This nationwide maker spirit is exactly what Pirate3D is looking for. We believe that 3D printing market in Japan is going to explode very soon, and cultural element will be one of the major contributing factors to this.

He adds that because Japan cares about inspired product design, that the Buccaneer 3D printer will “resonate with tastes” in Japan.

For those not familiar with Pirate3D and its Buccaneer 3D printer, we should point out that the product is still pretty young, having launched a very successful Kickstarter campaign last summer that raised $1.4 million. The product itself focuses on ease-of-use, sporting a minimalist design without any buttons, just a light indicator. It can print continuously for over 200 hours, and can even function as a server through wireless connection with PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

While the they hesitate to make any sales projections, Evgeny says maybe they can move hundreds of units per month by September. A representative from their Japanese distributor, Keienu Trading, says that they have seen “explosive growth” in Japanese demand for 3D printers in the past year, and so far their distribution partners have all shown a “significant and promising” reaction to the Buccaneer 3D printer and its potential.

Check out the video above for an overview of the Buccaneer 3D. Pirate3D was backed by Red Dot Ventures and incubated by the Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES).

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Japan’s Showcase Gig secures series A funding, starts nationwide operations

Takeshi Hirano 2014.01.29

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based digital marketing startup Showcase Gig, the startup behind ‘O:der’ (apparently pronounced ‘order’), announced today that it has raised funds from Nissay Capital and Nippon Venture Capital. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed but we understand that the amount is in the millions (US dollars). According to the startup’s CEO Takefumi Nitta, this is series A funding to follow their angel round secured at the company’s began back in February of 2012. Since the launch of O:der back in July, the company has been providing a suite of CRM solutions for small-sized retailers, comprising of two iOS apps, one for consumers and the other for merchants. The consumer app has a mobile wallet feature that lets you pay by credit card before picking up a product at the shop. Nitta told us they have implemented their solutions at 25 stores to date, and they expected to expand to 50 stores by the end of February. They’ve taken their time to carefully select stores to implement their solution. About 70% of their initial users have used the tool more than twice, which convinced them that it was a solid CRM tool for…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based digital marketing startup Showcase Gig, the startup behind ‘O:der’ (apparently pronounced ‘order’), announced today that it has raised funds from Nissay Capital and Nippon Venture Capital. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed but we understand that the amount is in the millions (US dollars).

According to the startup’s CEO Takefumi Nitta, this is series A funding to follow their angel round secured at the company’s began back in February of 2012.

Since the launch of O:der back in July, the company has been providing a suite of CRM solutions for small-sized retailers, comprising of two iOS apps, one for consumers and the other for merchants. The consumer app has a mobile wallet feature that lets you pay by credit card before picking up a product at the shop. Nitta told us they have implemented their solutions at 25 stores to date, and they expected to expand to 50 stores by the end of February.

They’ve taken their time to carefully select stores to implement their solution. About 70% of their initial users have used the tool more than twice, which convinced them that it was a solid CRM tool for small businesses. With the funds raised this time around, the company plans to expand their operations beyond Tokyo prefecture. Nitta adds:

Rather than expanding our business, we are currently focusing on validating our product with stores that are more conscious about digital technologies for retail sales. In addition to small independent stores, we’d like to acquire larger store chains to use our solutions in the future.

Our readers may recall that he has been involved in notable offline businesses too, producing Tokyo Girls Collection, one of the country’s biggest fashion events, and mixiXmas, a campaign run by Mixi.

B Dash Camp

Japan’s Gree unveils $100M investment plan for non-game businesses

Nobot founder launches tech talent marketplace Remotus to meet hiring needs of startups

Japan’s B Dash Ventures to form $60M second fund by yearend

Japan’s SmartDrive unveils vehicle analytics solution, poised for operational testing

Health tracking app for your car

Bigdata solution on top of people’s driving records

Japan’s Actcat launches automated platform for reviewing code on GitHub

Korean growth hacking tool 5Rocks comes out of beta, planning global expansion

Japan’s wearable smart-toy Moff launches Kickstarter campaign, already near goal

Kamcord localizes SDK to Japanese, Namco Bandai first to use its game recording technology

Unreal growth

Pirate3D to bring its Buccaneer 3D Printer to Japan

Japan’s Showcase Gig secures series A funding, starts nationwide operations

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