See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Spectee, the startup behind the artificial intelligence(AI)-powered platform offering news materials based on social media analytics, announced today that it has fundraised 260 million yen (about $2.3 million US) in a series B round. This round was led by YJ Capital with participation from Kyodo News Images, Mizuho Capital, Arco Partners, Quaras (an ad agency of Japanese media conglomerate Fuji Sankei Group), Makoto Naruke (former president of Microsoft Japan, angel investor now), and an unnamed angel investor. This follows the company’s series A round conducted back in July of 2016. Spectee was founded in February of 2014 (previously Euclid Lab), and it graduated in October of 2015 from the 11th batch of Open Network Lab’s incubation program. The team has been offering a service called Spectee (previously known as Newsdeck), curating images and video clips for live events from social media and offering copyright clearance for use by broadcasters and news organizations, similar to Banjo in the US. A patent has been filed for the AI technology for analyzing curated image and video clips. See also: Japan’s Spectee files patents for news writing bot In Japan, Spectee is currently serving almost 100 companies…
Tokyo-based Spectee, the startup behind the artificial intelligence(AI)-powered platform offering news materials based on social media analytics, announced today that it has fundraised 260 million yen (about $2.3 million US) in a series B round. This round was led by YJ Capital with participation from Kyodo News Images, Mizuho Capital, Arco Partners, Quaras (an ad agency of Japanese media conglomerate Fuji Sankei Group), Makoto Naruke (former president of Microsoft Japan, angel investor now), and an unnamed angel investor. This follows the company’s series A round conducted back in July of 2016.
Spectee was founded in February of 2014 (previously Euclid Lab), and it graduated in October of 2015 from the 11th batch of Open Network Lab’s incubation program. The team has been offering a service called Spectee (previously known as Newsdeck), curating images and video clips for live events from social media and offering copyright clearance for use by broadcasters and news organizations, similar to Banjo in the US. A patent has been filed for the AI technology for analyzing curated image and video clips.
In Japan, Spectee is currently serving almost 100 companies including 86 TV broadcasters plus 4 newspaper publishers, such as Nippon TV, TV Asahi, TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), Fuji TV and Yomiuri Shimbun. We were told that they have a project collaboratively being worked on with a certain Japanese public broadcaster but details were not disclosed. As a news distributor based on the social media-based aggregation technique, the company claims it has a 92% market share in Japan based on the number of clients.
In June, Spectee launched news video distribution via Associated Press’ Video Hub targeting the global market, seeing a steady growth and trying to expand it further. The company also got a subscriptions contract with New York Times because of the partnership with the global news agency. Kenjiro Murakami, co-founder and CEO of Spectee, told The Bridge that they expect sales expansion through news material sales on the global market while securing stable revenue through subscriptions contracts with media companies and news publishers in Japan.
Murakami explained:
With the personnel in Berlin and Los Angeles in addition to Tokyo, we are running a 24-hour nonstop operations such as the distribution of news materials on platform and gaining approvals from social media users who posted images of live events that are likely to be used by news media outfits.
However, video editing and distributing operations are still centralized to our Tokyo office. Because of a fierce competition with other news video providers on AP Video Hub, we want to increase the operating weight at overseas locations to provide news materials as fresh as possible. To make this possible, we expect to focused on securing new staffers at these locations.
AP Video Hub Associated Press
Spectee is now selling video materials to 33 markets, including the US, UK, Thailand and Brazil in order from the top. The company’s global sales still depends on AP Video Hub but Spectee is considering build-up of their own video sales portal for global media publishers because the agreement with Associated Press is not exclusive.
It is interesting to see how they can expand globally from here.
See the original story in Japanese. Fukuoka-based Skydisc, a Japanese startup focused on developing and offering a one-stop solution from artificial intelligence to IoT (Internet of Things), announced today that it has fundraised 740 million yen (about $6.5 million) in the latest round. It’s supposed to be a series A round. Investors participating in this round are Nissay Capital, DG Daiwa Ventures (the joint venture of Digital Garage and Daiwa Securities), Energy & Environment Investment, Yamaguchi Capital (the investment arm of Yamaguchi Financial Group), Kaga Electronics (TSE:8154), Dogan Beta (the investment arm of a Fukuoka-based financial consulting firm) and Archetype Ventures. For Skydisc, this follows their seed round raising 100 million yen (about $855,000) back in January of 2016 which Nissay Capital, Dogan and Archetype previously participated in too. See also: Startups spring into action to secure apex access Myojo Waraku: Japan’s rendition of SXSW begins in Fukuoka with showcasing prominent startups Since its launch back in October of 2013, Skydisc has been developing a variety of detachable sensor devices and the cloud for storing, then analyzing data from these devices. Offering products including SkyLogger (previously known as Ginga Box), the company’s flagship sensor product line-up, that allow users to…
Fukuoka-based Skydisc, a Japanese startup focused on developing and offering a one-stop solution from artificial intelligence to IoT (Internet of Things), announced today that it has fundraised 740 million yen (about $6.5 million) in the latest round. It’s supposed to be a series A round. Investors participating in this round are Nissay Capital, DG Daiwa Ventures (the joint venture of Digital Garage and Daiwa Securities), Energy & Environment Investment, Yamaguchi Capital (the investment arm of Yamaguchi Financial Group), Kaga Electronics (TSE:8154), Dogan Beta (the investment arm of a Fukuoka-based financial consulting firm) and Archetype Ventures. For Skydisc, this follows their seed round raising 100 million yen (about $855,000) back in January of 2016 which Nissay Capital, Dogan and Archetype previously participated in too.
Skydisc founder and CEO Osamu Hashimoto was onstage at the Toryumon startup event in Fukuoka in September. Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
Since its launch back in October of 2013, Skydisc has been developing a variety of detachable sensor devices and the cloud for storing, then analyzing data from these devices. Offering products including SkyLogger (previously known as Ginga Box), the company’s flagship sensor product line-up, that allow users to choose up to three detachable sensors out of 14 different sensors to plug into a circuit board. Data acquired with these sensors can be monitored on SkyAnalyzer (previously known as Ginga Cloud), the company’s data management and analysis platform. In particular for the agricultural industry, Skydisc has already started offering an optimized package called Hatamori, literally meaning vegetable field keeper.
Starting off with connected sensors and the analytics cloud, the firm’s services have been further evolved so that they are playing an important role in automated oeprations, especially in the industries suffering from the lack of successors of skilled workers.
In the factory safety sector, Skydisc has introduced an AI- and IoT-powered machine fault detection system to a major power plant, succeeded in detecting faults with 95% accuracy. The firm, together with Kyushu University, has been conducting a joint research of automated fault detections around factory equipments and ball bearings, with the aim to improve the detection accuracy. The firm claims their technology is highly evaluated because of succeeding creating fault case data model by simulating from normal time data, which it’s told is the most difficult in the AI technique.
In the field of mechanical safety, Skydisc released a mobile app called Smart Choshinbo, literally meaning a smart auscultation rod, which allows users to predict possible faults and failures based on the sound collected with a smartphone. Going forward, the firm plans to provide it as part of a service package that enables users to predict possible faults and failures based on fluctuation data of vibration and electric current. They are collaborating with Kyushu Institute of Technology for a research applying AI and IoT into nursing care services.
Screenshots of Smart Choshinbo, the “smart auscultation rod” mobile app
Thanks to a high reputation to SkyAI, Skydisc’s IoT data analytics cloud, the company was recently approved by Nvidia, the world’s leading chip maker, as a partner for the latter’s AI and deep learning-focused startup incubator Nvidia Inception Program.
Skydisc uses the funds to secure AI engineering experts and business developers from Japan and the rest of the world, aiming to assign them to collaborative research and development with Kyushu University and Kyushu Institute of Technology.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Styler, the Japanese startup offering an O2O (offline to online) support service for fashion and apparel stores under the same name, announced on Wednesday that it has rebranded the service to Facy. In conjunction with this, the Facy app will employ a new function that allows users to complete purchases and payments online. Styler’s founder and CEO Tsubasa Koseki says that the reason for rebranding is that the previous service name was often misidentified as a “styling service” by new users. The new service name was chosen with the intention of offering a real life purchasing experience to online customers, with “Facy” stemming from “face-to-face”. The company name will remain Styler. With the addition of the e-commerce function to Facy, it will allow physical fashion and apparel stores to easily set up their online storefront. For this function, Styler takes care of everything from the delivery of goods to the settlement of payments for online customers of shops on Facy. From the shops’ point of view, it is similar to Uber Eats’ system. Styler provides a series of services for shops and in return takes 20% of the price of items sold (with…
Tokyo-based Styler, the Japanese startup offering an O2O (offline to online) support service for fashion and apparel stores under the same name, announced on Wednesday that it has rebranded the service to Facy. In conjunction with this, the Facy app will employ a new function that allows users to complete purchases and payments online.
Styler’s founder and CEO Tsubasa Koseki says that the reason for rebranding is that the previous service name was often misidentified as a “styling service” by new users. The new service name was chosen with the intention of offering a real life purchasing experience to online customers, with “Facy” stemming from “face-to-face”. The company name will remain Styler.
With the addition of the e-commerce function to Facy, it will allow physical fashion and apparel stores to easily set up their online storefront. For this function, Styler takes care of everything from the delivery of goods to the settlement of payments for online customers of shops on Facy. From the shops’ point of view, it is similar to Uber Eats’ system. Styler provides a series of services for shops and in return takes 20% of the price of items sold (with the current campaign it is 10%).
Koseki explained:
When customers want fashion items they are going to physical stores. But, the user experience at these stores is not necessary high.
Meanwhile, using online search engines to meet the abstract needs of fashion is also not suitable. Stores are accustomed to proposing products that suit the needs of these customers.
With Facy, we want to connect the good points of online and offline, so that purchasing can be completed there.
Using their own media to address fashion related topics, Facy’s website has 15 million unique users (UUs) a month, including 500,000 monthly active users (MAUs) who use the mobile app to interact with shops or browse interactions between shops and other users. The company intends to raise it to about 1 million MAUs by the end of the year through various measures.
Koseki added:
About 250 stores are currently using Facy. As our presence in the industry has increased, there have been increasing cases of major companies approaching us asking, ‘Won’t you join us?’
One of the reasons they have been afforded such a reputation is Facy’s high conversion rate as that of an O2O app. One example given to us of the power of Facy was that of Journal Standard, a fashion brand/retailer as well as a client of Facy, which put on a campaign offering, “Buy 10,000 yen, get 1,000 yen off,” and revealed that 22% of the customers that made purchases were from Facy. Putting aside rewards like discount campaigns, this performance is more than ten times better than the number of O2O customers driven from social network service-based interactions.
As for the future of Styler, in order to secure the scalability of the media operation, the company is looking into using artificial intelligence based on fashion information transmitted by stores and the posted contents of users to automatically write articles. Because it is funded by Transcosmos (TSE:9715), a leading BPO (business process outsourcing0 provider in Japan, it may be possible to operate a chatbot for stores that performs the function of a call center, etc. In terms of overseas deployment, Styler has been developing services for Asia from an office in Vietnam for some time. The company has started recruiting for jobs in Taipei, and has begun operating a Chinese Facebook page. Based on this knowledge, it seems that a service launch in Taiwan can be expected in the not so distant future.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG, TSE:8316) earlier this month launched their first open-innovation base named Hoops Link Tokyo in central Shibuya, Tokyo. The group utilizes the venue to hold pitch events, meet-up, and seminars tying up with external organizations related to the startup ecosystem. At the beginning of the press conference held on the launch day, Jun Ota (Executive Vice President, SMFG) who presides over open-innovation activities of the group made an opening speech. Since established IT Innovation Department in SMFG two year ago, the group has been financially participating various new business where synergy effects with financial service can be expected, in order to activate the whole digital transformation within the group: SMBC GMO Payment (payments processing joint venture with GMO Payment Gateway), Brees (barcode-based payment service developing together with NEC), Polarify (biometric authentication system jointly developing with NTT Data and Daon), Financial Link (artificial intelligence- and robotic process automation- powered business process outsourcing service jointly developing with NEC, to be soon rebranded into NCore). The group has been mainly cooperating with large enterprises so far, but aims strengthening of coordination with startups on the occasion of the establishment of Hoops Link. Also,…
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG, TSE:8316) earlier this month launched their first open-innovation base named Hoops Link Tokyo in central Shibuya, Tokyo. The group utilizes the venue to hold pitch events, meet-up, and seminars tying up with external organizations related to the startup ecosystem.
Jun Ota (Executive VP / Chief Digital Innovation Officer, SMFG makes opening speech at the press conference
At the beginning of the press conference held on the launch day, Jun Ota (Executive Vice President, SMFG) who presides over open-innovation activities of the group made an opening speech. Since established IT Innovation Department in SMFG two year ago, the group has been financially participating various new business where synergy effects with financial service can be expected, in order to activate the whole digital transformation within the group: SMBC GMO Payment (payments processing joint venture with GMO Payment Gateway), Brees (barcode-based payment service developing together with NEC), Polarify (biometric authentication system jointly developing with NTT Data and Daon), Financial Link (artificial intelligence- and robotic process automation- powered business process outsourcing service jointly developing with NEC, to be soon rebranded into NCore). The group has been mainly cooperating with large enterprises so far, but aims strengthening of coordination with startups on the occasion of the establishment of Hoops Link.
Also, on the same day, SMFG announced the cooperation with Work-Bench running accelerator for enterprises in the US and StartX, the accelerator of Stanford University. SMFG also unveiled it will start a startup acceleration program in 2018. The detail of the program is still under consideration but is expected to partly adopt conventional activities including Mirai Hackathon or the Mirai incubation initiative which were presented by SMFG or Mitsui Sumitomo Bank.
As open-innovation venues run by major banks, there are some similar cases within Japan, such as The Garage by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG, TSE:8306) and Diagonal Run Tokyo by Fukuoka Financial Group (FFG, TSE:8354). In addition, open-innovation activities can be seen recently in the whole financial service industry; Mizuho Bank established a lab within Finolab partnering with NTT Data for its open-innovation support program, Credit Saison (TSE:8253) launched DG Lab jointly with Digital Garage (TSE:4819) and others, JCB started operation of an acceleration program JCB Payment Lab supported by Quantum.
Interview with SMFG’s Goya Furukawa, Manager of Hoops Link Tokyo
Please tell us the history about how SMFG came to start Hoops Link Tokyo:
Goya Furukawa (IT Innovation Dpt., SMFG)
I had been sent to Los Angeles to study abroad until last year. In that neighborhood, there is Silicon Beach known as casual business base including Snapchat but I had received few information that startup business has become active in the Japanese financial industry.
By contrast, I daily heard news about the startups leading fintech or the fintech buyout by banks, such as Venmo known for the P2P money transfer.
Having an awareness of the problem about the difference between Japan and the US, I was assigned to a department in charge of fintech. The Japanese banks are still exclusive and our information given from Otemachi (where Sumitomo Mitsui Banking headquarters and fintech hub exist) will not reach to rising startups which we really deliver it to. To be closer with these startups, I thought we should establish a base in Shibuya.
What will you do in Hoops Link Tokyo?
The pure investment work is not main mission in Hoops Link Tokyo. Its first aim is to broaden business range or to be a base to create new business. Although we have a system covering strategic investment, I think it is important whether a startup deserves collaboration with us. Anyway, since our possible partners have not recognized it yet, our immediate aim is to meet them and stay close with them.
We will support doing something together or matching with another. If we received requests to collaborate with bank or group companies, Hoops Link Tokyo works as the window, as one and more SMFG staffers always stay there. We are also considering Office Hour-like service (walk-in consultation in the business hour) inviting staffers from group companies.
Geodesic Capital (the fund known as being founded by ex-the US Ambassador to Japan John Roos) and ERA (Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator) are in cooperative relationship with us and will introduce us investment / support targets in the US. I want to realize cooperative activities centered on Hoops Link Tokyo; we have these funds to introduce startups having technologies / idea adoptable to our service or we can support these startups when they advance into the Japanese market.
Can you tell us the hours of operation and the frequency of events?
The hours of operation of Hoops Link Tokyo is from 9am to 9pm on weekdays. We plan to hold about three events in a week, mostly at night. Setting the third week of September as “executive week”, we will provide sessions over five consecutive nights having guests who performs as mentors in Hoops Link Tokyo (accepting reservation for participation on the website).
We have to take priority of holding events initially, but I want everyone to recognize where we are and which kind of network we have. I will be glad if they think that bank is an open environment than expected or are concerned about the possibility of collaboration.
Do you have KPI (key performance indicator)-like measure for Hoops Link Tokyo?
We did not set KPI for Hoops Link Tokyo. However, it would be meaningless if it does not achieve any long-term outcome. To stretch a point, the final KPI of Hoops Link Tokyo will be the exit how we succeeded in business creation.
Photos of Hoops Link Tokyo
You can mark Shibuya West Branch of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, next to Mega-Donki. Hoops Link Tokyo is on the 6th floor of the building.Exiting the elevator, you can see the entrance decorated with photographs in sepia tone, bringing back memories of old good days.Under the theme of challenges in difficult situations, Hoops Link Tokyo is designed in the motif of a bar in 1920s during prohibition. The bookshelf works as a hidden door.Each meeting room is named after cocktails such as Grasshopper or Bluesky.Kitchen will be useful in events, stocking a large amount of liquers.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Regulus Technologies, providing a AI-powered personal assistant chatbot named Autok and Autok Biz capable of schedule arrangement for plural attendants, announced on Wednesday that it had raised a seed funding from 500 Startups Japan and KLab Venture Partners. The secured amount was not disclosed but is estimated at several tens of millions of yen (several hundreds of thousands of dollars). Regulus Technologies was founded in December of 2016 by Tsubasa Ito (CEO) who formerly worked at We-b (currently known as Div running a programming course, TECH:CAMP) and Keisuke Tsukayoshi (Chief Design Officer). They had developed Autok for individual users and Autok Biz for enterprise users, and officially launched them this July. Integrating with Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, Autok enables meeting date arrangement automatically just by sharing a unique URL with the persons to make an appointment with. Autok Biz has a function to collect user’s profile such as their name, desired location to work or working hours, realizing a reduction of workload at call centers for employment interview arrangement by companies which often hire part-time workers; this service has already been introduced to several Japanese listed enterprises including Neo-career. With the fund…
L to R: Keisuke Tsukayoshi (Chief Design Officer), Tsubasa Ito (CEO) Image credit: Regulus Technologies
Tokyo-based Regulus Technologies, providing a AI-powered personal assistant chatbot named Autok and Autok Biz capable of schedule arrangement for plural attendants, announced on Wednesday that it had raised a seed funding from 500 Startups Japan and KLab Venture Partners. The secured amount was not disclosed but is estimated at several tens of millions of yen (several hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Regulus Technologies was founded in December of 2016 by Tsubasa Ito (CEO) who formerly worked at We-b (currently known as Div running a programming course, TECH:CAMP) and Keisuke Tsukayoshi (Chief Design Officer). They had developed Autok for individual users and Autok Biz for enterprise users, and officially launched them this July.
Integrating with Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, Autok enables meeting date arrangement automatically just by sharing a unique URL with the persons to make an appointment with. Autok Biz has a function to collect user’s profile such as their name, desired location to work or working hours, realizing a reduction of workload at call centers for employment interview arrangement by companies which often hire part-time workers; this service has already been introduced to several Japanese listed enterprises including Neo-career.
With the fund secured at this time, the team is going to enhance human resources recruitment for engineers, sales staffers and marketers, in addition to speeding up service development and business growth. Furthermore, the team will add various functions in the future with the aim to monetize through driving user traffic to meeting space rentals or restaurants, as well as advertising for an available time slot on their calendar.
Image credit: Regulus Technologies
In the field of auto-schedule arrangement with chatbot, there are some similar services: “M” of Facebook (available only in the US), X.ai which recently raised $10 million in series B round with a view to linking with Slack or Alexa (led by Fenox Venture Capital with participation from Silicon Valley Bank and DCM Ventures), and Kono provided by Korea-based Kono Laboratories. In Japan, there was a similar app named Subot shown in the Tech Lab Paak accelerator 3rd batch but the team has already ended its service.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Preferred Networks (PFN), the Japanese startup offering deep learning technologies for Internet of Things (IoT), announced today that it would receive an additional 10.5 billion yen (about $95.4 million)investment from Toyota Motor (TSE:7203). The cash injection will make Toyota an eternal largest shareholder for PFN. Based on this, both companies will further work on the joint development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in autonomous driving and other mobility business fields. Since its launch back in March of 2014, PFN has been proposing Edge Heavy Computing, the distributed data processing scheme dealing with an enormous volume of data from various IoT devices, aiming to let devices interact each others so that each device can autonomously make a higher level decision making. The company has been focused on serving transportation, manufacturing and bio healthcare industries by partnering with Toyota, Fanac, National Cancer Center and other institutions. This funding from Toyota follows the previous one receiving 1 billion yen in December of 2015 after both companies started joint research back in October of 2014. According to the press release from PFN, the investment was led by Toyata’s understanding that object-recognition technology and analysis technology of vehicle…
Tokyo-based Preferred Networks (PFN), the Japanese startup offering deep learning technologies for Internet of Things (IoT), announced today that it would receive an additional 10.5 billion yen (about $95.4 million)investment from Toyota Motor (TSE:7203). The cash injection will make Toyota an eternal largest shareholder for PFN. Based on this, both companies will further work on the joint development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in autonomous driving and other mobility business fields.
Since its launch back in March of 2014, PFN has been proposing Edge Heavy Computing, the distributed data processing scheme dealing with an enormous volume of data from various IoT devices, aiming to let devices interact each others so that each device can autonomously make a higher level decision making. The company has been focused on serving transportation, manufacturing and bio healthcare industries by partnering with Toyota, Fanac, National Cancer Center and other institutions.
This funding from Toyota follows the previous one receiving 1 billion yen in December of 2015 after both companies started joint research back in October of 2014.
According to the press release from PFN, the investment was led by Toyata’s understanding that object-recognition technology and analysis technology of vehicle information, both of which have been co-developed by the two, is something essential for the motor company looking into the next-gen mobility society. PFN will use the funds to enhance computational environment and accelerate talent acquisition.
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. The Fintech Accelerator program run by Startupbootcamp, based in Singapore and lasting three months long, held its first ever Demo Tour in Asia. Commencing with its home base in Singapore on July 5th, the 10-day “Odyssey” of 11 participants from seven countries entailed visits to Chengdu and Hong Kong in China before winding up on July 14th in Tokyo, Japan (albeit on the final day only eight startups gave pitches, three firms of AIM from Korea, Fugle from Taiwan and Smartfolios from Russia being absent). In Tokyo, the Demo Tour was hosted by Finolab, with support from local partners. Startupbootcamp is the accelerator arm of venturebuilder/design studio/consultancy Rainmaking, which has 11 offices on three continents. In Asia they seek to promote entrepreneurial problem solving within corporate teams across multiple industries. The Tokyo visit was opened by a Startupbootcamp Asia representative who outlined the endeavor and paved the way for the startups that had made it to Japan, with the day being ended by the Startupbootcamp FinTech Program Director summing up the tour. See also: Startupbootcamp FinTech Singapore demo day showcases…
This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.
Steven Tong, Managing Director of Startupbootcamp FinTech
The Fintech Accelerator program run by Startupbootcamp, based in Singapore and lasting three months long, held its first ever Demo Tour in Asia. Commencing with its home base in Singapore on July 5th, the 10-day “Odyssey” of 11 participants from seven countries entailed visits to Chengdu and Hong Kong in China before winding up on July 14th in Tokyo, Japan (albeit on the final day only eight startups gave pitches, three firms of AIM from Korea, Fugle from Taiwan and Smartfolios from Russia being absent). In Tokyo, the Demo Tour was hosted by Finolab, with support from local partners.
Startupbootcamp is the accelerator arm of venturebuilder/design studio/consultancy Rainmaking, which has 11 offices on three continents. In Asia they seek to promote entrepreneurial problem solving within corporate teams across multiple industries. The Tokyo visit was opened by a Startupbootcamp Asia representative who outlined the endeavor and paved the way for the startups that had made it to Japan, with the day being ended by the Startupbootcamp FinTech Program Director summing up the tour.
An overview of the pitches by the eight are as follows:
CherryPay (Singapore)
Singapore’s CherryPay presented their international Peer-to-Peer money transfer matching platform, which has the backing of Amazon Web Services as well as Cisco Systems. Chief Marketing Officer Kate Wu said her company provides reasonable rates and affordable service fees in addition to quick receipt of funds via local bank accounts through leveraging of its transborder network.
Smallticket (Korea)
Another businesswoman, who stood out in an attention-grabbing garb emblazoned with her company logo, was Julie Kim Jung Eun, Founder and the top officer at Smallticket of Korea. This online social insurance broker outfit, which minimizes risks using Peer-to-Peer rewarding platform, underscored the merits for micro-segment groups that utilize their system.
Vesl (the Philippines)
An all-Filipina management team as represented by the lady in charge of product development spoke on behalf of Vesl. It was noted that trade credit insurance at bite size was being availed to SMEs and others such as farmers cooperatives hitherto ineligible to gain access to cheaper financing. The startup from the Philippines now has an agreement with a global insurance broker.
Morakot (Cambodia)
Speaking of the Philippines, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Sophorth Khuon, of Cambodia’s Morakot offering microfinance, unveiled his company’s expansion plan into the island nation in 2018, following this year’s entry into Myanmar. He highlighted the problems faced by emerging markets, which his startup seeks to address with a business model based on core banking.
Scalend (India)
Regarding solutions for difficult challenges as exemplified with dealing with Big Data, Scalend showcased its AI-backed data and insights discovery platform for financial services companies. Ravi Madhira, who is one of the two co-founders, talked about how he and his business partner had over forty years of collective experience in building internet scale systems.
Jumper.ai (India)
As for AI, Jumper.ai co-founder Yash Kotak of jumper.ai outlined their social media-use e-commerce enabler which realizes Instant Checkout among other things. The auto-engage sales based on jumper tech can be used on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, with planned adoption on other social media like Line in the near future.
Tixguru (Singapore)
Another Artificial Intelligence user, Singapore-based startup Tixguru, focuses on quantitative trading recommendations for financial institutions. Its robot advisor, according to Chief Operating Officer James Ong, is grounded in a decade-long experience in this business sector.
Smart Trade (Japan / China)
Smart Trade, with a base in both Japan and China, is also involved in “quant trading” although in this startup platform’s case the target market comprises individual investors. CEO@Japan and co-founder Tomoyuki Uchida highlighted their Algorithm Store and Algorithm Factory lines. The company CMO and co-founder Guangzhen Li is also known for being active in this arena.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Sansan, the company offering cloud-based business card management platforms, announced on Thursday that a major update will be given to its app Eight, implementing the “company page” which displays user company content receivable on the feeds of Eight. Company users having their own pages will be allowed to place ads or recruiting information to targeted users based on their business card profiles on Eight. The next version of the Eight app having this function is planned for launch in late June, and will be available for desktop, iOS and Android from June 28th at the earliest. Eight is the business card management app for individuals officially launched in 2012. The app is provided in the freemium model; users can use basic functions for free except for data export function and so on. The number of users surpassed the million mark in 2015, while Sansan added functions such as feed (similar to timeline) or group message in order to promote communications between users. The current number of users has exceeded 1.5 million. The business card data registered by users is linked with company information on Eight. Based on the linked information, users can create…
From left: Kenji Shiomi (MD and co-founder of Sansan), Hiroshi Senju (Chief Producer of Eight Dept., Sansan)
Tokyo-based Sansan, the company offering cloud-based business card management platforms, announced on Thursday that a major update will be given to its app Eight, implementing the “company page” which displays user company content receivable on the feeds of Eight. Company users having their own pages will be allowed to place ads or recruiting information to targeted users based on their business card profiles on Eight. The next version of the Eight app having this function is planned for launch in late June, and will be available for desktop, iOS and Android from June 28th at the earliest.
Eight is the business card management app for individuals officially launched in 2012. The app is provided in the freemium model; users can use basic functions for free except for data export function and so on. The number of users surpassed the million mark in 2015, while Sansan added functions such as feed (similar to timeline) or group message in order to promote communications between users. The current number of users has exceeded 1.5 million.
The business card data registered by users is linked with company information on Eight. Based on the linked information, users can create their company pages via desktop. For company users, for example, recruitment staffs can send invitation messages directly to potential employees (Eight Talent Solution) or marketing staffers can put ads on the Eight Feed timeline (Eight Ads). Since the registered company data on Eight is also linked with database of Teikoku Databank, a Japanese corporate credit research company, Eight proposes the optimal targets for sending message or ad by analyzing registered data and business card information utilizing AI (artificial intelligence).
At the press conference held in Tokyo on Thursday, Kenji Shiomi (Managing Director / co-founder of Sansan) and Hiroshi Senju (Chief Producer of Eight Dept, Sansan) made comments. Both Eight Talent Solution and Eight Ads will be provided as paid services but the charge system is undecided at this moment. According to Shiomi, the price range will probably be much the same as conventional services. Regarding the additional functions including the “company page”, about 10 Japanese companies including Nissan Motor (TSE:7201), Okamura (TSE:7994), CyberAgent (TSE:4751), Cybozu (TSE:4776) and Lancers had expressed their intention to use these functions as soon as it is launched.
The launch of additional functions for Eight this time can also be viewed as Sansan the CRM (customer relationship management) startup having advanced into HRTech (Human Resource Tech) and AdTech fields. In contrast, another Japanese HRTech startup Wantedly had advanced into the CRM field with its app Wantedly People last November.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
See the original story in Japanese. IBM Japan held the Demo Day event for their BlueHub open innovation program last week. The latest batch features startups focused on inbound travel businesses. A number of companies offering inbound travel services participated, with four big corporates: NTT Docomo, Zenrin, Zenrin DataCom, and Softbank, and eight startups: Andeco, Crea Japan, Fesbase, Pretia, Mybase, Metro Engines, Rich Table, and Realista. Presented services and companies were: Fesbase: chatbot platform focused on serving Chinese visitors to Japan (by Crea Japan) Quippy for Restaurants: Marketing and product development support tool for restaurants (by Rich Table) Sakevel: Sake brewery tourism and personal sake sommelier service (by Mybase) SnapGo: AR(augmented reality)-based navigation service (by Pretia) Miccossy: Mobile app curating Japanese local festivals (by Andeco) Travel experience sharing platform (by NTT Docomo) 1Minute Japan: Video-based service for helping foreign visitors to Japan solve problems (by Realista) Metro Engines: AI (artificial intelligence) tool that helps hotels determine competitive pricing In late February, teams composed of a mix of the companies carried out kick-off meetings and held six workshops throughout the three month planning phase. Following the Demo Day they will begin to work on firm plans for commercialization. In the spirit…
IBM Japan held the Demo Day event for their BlueHub open innovation program last week. The latest batch features startups focused on inbound travel businesses.
A number of companies offering inbound travel services participated, with four big corporates: NTT Docomo, Zenrin, Zenrin DataCom, and Softbank, and eight startups: Andeco, Crea Japan, Fesbase, Pretia, Mybase, Metro Engines, Rich Table, and Realista.
Presented services and companies were:
Fesbase: chatbot platform focused on serving Chinese visitors to Japan (by Crea Japan)
Quippy for Restaurants: Marketing and product development support tool for restaurants (by Rich Table)
Sakevel: Sake brewery tourism and personal sake sommelier service (by Mybase)
SnapGo: AR(augmented reality)-based navigation service (by Pretia)
Miccossy: Mobile app curating Japanese local festivals (by Andeco)
1Minute Japan: Video-based service for helping foreign visitors to Japan solve problems (by Realista)
Metro Engines: AI (artificial intelligence) tool that helps hotels determine competitive pricing
In late February, teams composed of a mix of the companies carried out kick-off meetings and held six workshops throughout the three month planning phase. Following the Demo Day they will begin to work on firm plans for commercialization. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was asked to participate in this event as a judge. The following are introductions of the seven services that gave presentations.
Fesbase: chatbot platform focused on serving Chinese visitors to Japan (by Crea Japan)
When planning vacations overseas you may often rely on TripAdvisor and Yelp, but it is hard to tell the atmosphere of a place and whether it is suitable for kids or not. It is easy to imagine the same situation occurring during the expected boom in inbound tourism to Japan. Many tourists from China come to Japan for the cuisine. They may be left wondering how to make a reservation in such situations. That’s where the Yoyaku app uses chatbot and AI to come to the rescue.
Users select the category of restaurant they want to reserve and input details like the area they hope to go to. The app supports voice input so it is easy for travelers to use, and recommended information is delivered leveraging IBM Watson.
Since Fesbase already has an existing project that offers a human concierge, there is a large amount of training data, so it is possible to provide accurate recommendations. If, due to the contents of the question, the bot cannot answer, it is possible for AI to sort and select a human concierge who can. They are currently in negotiations with the Chinese media and also looking into acquiring users before their arrival in Japan.
In terms of business, they are thinking to charge a fee to restaurants based on driving user traffic to them, and in the future, once the number of users increases, they are planning to offer a platform for restaurant searching services to businesses.
Quippy for Restaurants: Marketing and product development support tool for restaurants (by Rich Table)
The Quippy app
Quippy provides a restaraunt searching tool on Instagram. It offers users with the chance to discover (even the unexpected) restaurants via searching. When the user launches the app, information linked to the location information of the restaurant and the picture pulled from Instagram is displayed. Since the app will learn what content the user has browsed, it will recommend additional restaurants later on.
For the service geared at restaurants, the tool will show them posts in English on social network sites and restaurant review sites as negative or positive. If a specific dish receives a negative review, it can recommend Instragram examples from another shop to the restaurant to improve. The searching service is free, while the service for restaurants will be offered based on a monthly subscription model.
Sakevel: Sake brewery tourism and personal sake sommelier service (by Mybase)
Takashi Kageyama, CEO of Mybase
88 of the 100 foreigners questioned at Narita International Airport said they want to drink Japanese sake. On the flipside, they don’t really have any information about sake breweries. Moreover, more than 99% of such breweries are mid-sized or family run so they may not be able to fully support foreigners who show up unannounced, but even before that 60% of consumption by foreigners visiting Japan is in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The idea behind Sakevel is to utilize tourism resources to awaken the small sake breweries that sleep in unknown areas, thus promoting regional development.
The Sakevel app
As for the sake itself, the Sakevel app recognizes the images on labels and provides that information in multiple languages. It also introduces personalized sake recommendations for tourists based on information gathered from past posts on social media sites. Since breweries cannot attract customers alone, Mybase plans to offer sake brewery tours along the same lines as a winery tour. Services are set to begin in October this year.
SnapGo will take you where you want to go without GPS by specifying your location with a mobile picture. This solves the problem of the numbers of foreign tourists who get lost due to lack of multilingual signage in Japan.
The company receives a photo of the place from its premise owner, creates an algorithm from it, and makes it possible to identify places from photographs taken by users through machine learning. As a result, users without GPS on their devices or who experience language difficulties can get to their destination by simply taking pictures.
In order to develop the algorithm it appears they need about forty 360-degree images. Additionally, it is assumed that the destination is input using images or text.
Miccossy: Mobile app curating Japanese local festivals (by Andeco)
Simply put, it is a festival information service for foreign tourists in Japan. It is difficult for users to acquire real-time festival information even if they refer to guide books, etc. People outside of Japan search for “matsuri (literally festivals in Japanese)” on YouTube as much as “Mt. Fuji” so there is a demand. Moreover, the company expects that there are 310,000 festivals all over Japan.
The Micossy app displays festival information in the surrounding area and provides related information like how to participate, and so on, in multiple languages. Their business model is the sale of “happi” or traditional clothing to be worn at the festival. Initially they plan to start by offering information on 100 festivals.
1Minute Japan: Video-based service for helping foreign visitors to Japan solve problems (by Realista)
1Minute Japan is designed for travelers to Japan who come on their own, not as a tour. It provides help to travelers before departure on topics like SIM cards and Wifi in Japan, and once they begin their journey, the company offers transportation and ticket information, as well as a restaurant reservation service. Using Watson to analyze the information learned from these tasks, it can analyze sentiments and classify what kind of problems people in various countries experience. Then they release video content to solve these problems.
The service can be used in this way: the example that, “an American traveler in their 20’s doesn’t know how to eat at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant”, guides them to create video content to help this person. They started test marketing in April and have acquired around 5,000 followers on their Facebook page.
Metro Engines: AI tool that helps hotels determine competitive pricing
Metro Engine
Metro Engines can optimize revenue for hotels and inns. The tool targets the 35,000 facilities throughout Japan, with 1.2 million rooms. Many of the rooms were priced using an individual’s expertise. Some chains use tools, but set their prices based on past performance and competing room prices. However, it can be said that this method will become ineffective as the supply-demand balance collapses due to access to private residences, etc.
That is where Metro Engines comes in. It predicts the reservation behavior of guests, and then set room prices through data analysis peppered with budget information, reviews, and furthermore, information on renting private homes and rooms, as well as guest room photos. In addition, It has also visualized human behavior based on mobile behavior data from NTT Docomo, Zenrin, and Softbank and included it.
Based on the big data obtained through these measures, they can tangibly present how a room should be priced. The service was announced on the 25th of last month and is currently under evaluation at 50 facilities. When they link up with the individual systems of hotels and inns, they can verify that the price setting was appropriate.
Watson’s unique open innovation program and future issues
Yuta Hagiwara, CEO of Prevent. His team won the previous program batch last year.
Followed by the previous batch focused on automotive and healthcare verticals, this was the second edition of the IBM BlueHub open innovation program. Prevent, one of the grads from the previous program batch last year, is a startup spun off from Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine. The team presented a solution preventing lifestyle diseases, which was collaboratively developed with a health insurance company.
Based on his research experience having succeeded in lowering the recurrence rate of high blood pressure, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease and other symptoms to less than 30%, he has developed an online consultation service. He claims that they will aim to gain the consultation efficiency by implementing the Watson technology into a chat-based consultation service.
In the latest batch focused on the inbound travel topic, participating companies were trying to create new values by combining with the unique strength of the services, technologies and resources that they have had.
Metro Engines was highly evaluated because of not only telling hotels optimized room pricing leveraging big data analysis but also predicting details and suggesting ideas about how to improve. The team is outstanding with having already 50 companies as potential clients.
Regarding aforementioned Predict and Metro Engines, they could unveil clear results through the program, however, the ideas of other teams were still “small” in the potential about their technologies and services or their ideas are still rough and unclear in the potential merit to come out of a collaboration work.
Moreover, we saw some projects which had probably managed to adjust their ideas into Watson in the program, meaning that they have turned a means into a purpose there.
It might sound good if we say a collaboration between resourceful corporates and game-changing startups with technologies. However, if the collaboration become a purpose, I assume that it will not bring a good result because of the gap in expectations and cultures on both sides, or the program host’s egotism.
Where is the problem to solve? Does it require any technology? What kind of businesses should be get together to speed it up? Open Innovation is now trending in Japan, that’s especially why I think these well-considered preparation may be more important.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based From Scratch, the company behind an integrated digital marketing platform called B->Dash, announced on Tuesday that it has raised about 3.2 billion yen (about $28.4 million) from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Rakuten Ventures, in addition to existing investors. This follows their previous 300 million yen ($2.4 million at the exchange rate then) funding in May of 2015 and 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) funding in November of the same year. The latest funding means that the company has raised a total of 4.5 billion yen (about $40 million) in funding to date. B->Dash is a web-based marketing platform that allows a company to integrate data from different points of their entire marketing process and analyze it comprehensively on an all-in-one basis. The service’s major clients include Kirin Brewery and Okasan Online Securities. From Scratch will use the funds to enhance the marketing platform, especially by strengthening data integration and data processing capability as well as further development of artificial intelligence technologies. Via TechCrunch Japan, Markezine Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy
Image credit: From Scratch
Tokyo-based From Scratch, the company behind an integrated digital marketing platform called B->Dash, announced on Tuesday that it has raised about 3.2 billion yen (about $28.4 million) from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Rakuten Ventures, in addition to existing investors.
This follows their previous 300 million yen ($2.4 million at the exchange rate then) funding in May of 2015 and 1 billion yen (about $8.3 million) funding in November of the same year. The latest funding means that the company has raised a total of 4.5 billion yen (about $40 million) in funding to date.
B->Dash is a web-based marketing platform that allows a company to integrate data from different points of their entire marketing process and analyze it comprehensively on an all-in-one basis.
The service’s major clients include Kirin Brewery and Okasan Online Securities. From Scratch will use the funds to enhance the marketing platform, especially by strengthening data integration and data processing capability as well as further development of artificial intelligence technologies.
artificial intelligence 
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
The Bridge
