See the original story in Japanese.

The parts colored in red were updated on 4:30pm, Feb 12th based on our additional coverage.

We just learned that Tokyo-based Clear, the Japanese startup behind a study notes organizer app under the same name, has been acquired by Japanese stationery giant Kokuyo (TSE:7984). Since its launch back in 2010, the startup has secured about 400 million yen (about $3.8 million) from investors to date. According to Japanese startup database Initial, they were estimated to be valued at 1.938 billion yen (about $18.5 million) after securing the series C round back in 2018.

Clear secured a series D round last year, which brought the company’s funding sum up to 516,748,113 yen (about $4.9 million) according to their website. Initial has not shared Clear’s post series D round valuation.

(Not to be confused with Clear, another Japanese startup developing brands and online media portal focused on Japanese sake products.)

Clear was founded in October of 2010 under its previous name of Arcterus by Goichiro Arai (CEO) who has held various posts including Resort Business Manager at Japanese resort development / management major Hoshino Resort together with Yoshiki Shiraishi (COO/CFO) who was Arai’s classmate at Keio Business School. The Clear app, launched in December of 2013, allows notebooks sorted by subject or educational unit to be shared with other users and is available for Android, iOS and web.

Started in Japan, the app has expanded into several markets including Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, China, and Hong Kong. It has acquired 2.3 million (Arai says it has already reached 2.5 million) active users (MAUs) in Japan and 3.5 million MAUs worldwide, suggesting that one out of four middle and high school students in Japan is using the app.

Aiming to help cram schools attract their potential customers and better market themselves in addition to developing learning content, the company has partnered with several companies such as:

• Zoshinkai Publishing (Z-kai Group), Japanese major in offering online or distance learning for students
• Asahi Gakusei Shimbun, Japanese major news company’s subsidiary for publication for students
• Sprix (TSE:7030), developing content for cram schools
• Lacicu, developing web services and educational video apps for cram schools
• Manabi Aid, offering online video classes for students
• Rakuten (TSE:4755), Japanese leading e-commerce giant

In an interview with Bridge, Arai shared how his company has reached the agreement:

In fall of 2019, we had a chance to meet Kokuyo CEO Hidekuni Kuroda and we decided to work together.

Kokuyo has a large market share with the paper notebook brand Campus while we do so with the digital notebook brand Clear. We thought it would be a good partnership to utilize the respective brand power each other.

In terms of overseas development, for example, Kokuyo has expanded into Mainland China, while Clear has about 800,000 users of their app in Thailand alone. By sending customers to each other’s strong geographical markets, there would be a possibility of increasing the market share of both brands in respective markets. Having not yet decided on the specifics, Clear may be able to add new functions to the app by bridging the paper and digital gap.

In addition to the notebook mobile app, Clear offers two other key services:

• Meets – helps cram schools in recruiting students, jointly operated with Education Network and Sprix. Educatiional Network is a subsidiary of aforementioned Zoshinkai Publishing.
• Shinro Erabi (career choice) – helps high school students find their best career path with resources on universities, jointly operated with Shoei Koho, a subsidiary of after-mentioned CHIeru.

Arai says the partnership with these companies will continue even after his company was acquired.

In March of last year, Clear partnered with CHIeru (TSE:3933), the classroom management solutions provider for schools. CHIeru has a subsidiary focused on helping universities promote, and the partnership helps universities market their entrance exam briefing even in a virtual format during the pandemic with the help of Clear.

Clear won the second prize at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014, while also being selected as a finalist at ASIABEAT 2016 in Xiamen, obtaining international spotlight. They won the Japan preliminary round of The Global EdTech Startup Awards (GESA), and then won the global finals in London in 2018.

See also:

• Japan’s Clear, study notes organizer app for students, gains $1M for Asian expansion
• Japan’s Clear, study notes organizer app for students, raises $1 million

See the orioginal story in Japanese.

Japan’s Arcterus, providing educational services including a notebook-sharing app named Clear, announced on Friday that it has fundraised 100 million yen in a series C round. Participating investors consist of a fund by Shinsei Bank and Shinsei Corporate Investment in addition to Zoshinkai Holdings, a leading Japanese company behind correspondence education service and cram school chains. With the series A round back in July of 2015 and the series B round back in November of 2016, this round brings the EdTech startup their total equity funding to about 400 million yen (about $3.5 million US).

 

Arcterus was founded in 2010 October by Goichiro Arai (CEO) who has held various posts including Resort Business Manager at Japanese resort development / management major Hoshino Resort together with Yoshiki Shiraishi (COO/CFO) who was Arai’s classmate at Keio Business School.

Clear, launched in December of 2013, allows notebooks sorted by subject or educational unit to be shared with other users and is available for Android, iOS and web. After five years from launch, the app has marked 2.2 million downloads, over 1 million monthly active users, and about 250,000 shared study notes online, boasting its popularity in Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong, and other Asian markets.

See also:

• Japan’s Arcterus wins Global EdTech Startup Awards with study notes organizer app Clear

The company will use the funds to foray into recruiting business, aiming to eliminate the mismatch between enterprises and job-seeking fresh graduates while the level of “churn” in new hires is getting higher these days. According to Arai, study skills needed at university and business skills are different, however, it is supposed they will primarily assess personality and aptitude of users based on their study log on the Clear app and then propose the right job to them.

Given the fact that students majoring (or to be expected to major) in science and medical courses account for half of all Clear users, the company wants to answer the needs of companies hoping to hire these graduates as employees.

Arcterus is launching an ad service on the Clear app, aiming to help cram schools better reach students. Unlike other conventional ads targeting parents of students, the app can offer a direct access students and allows advertisers more efficiently market their service according to the user profile, such as where they live or which grade they are in.

Tokyo-based Itokuro (TSE;6049), a potential competitor for Arcterus and the Japanese education company behind portal sites on cram schools and private schools, is now boasting a market cap of over $600 million US with a P/E ratio of 60. Besides Clear, Arcterus is handling a teaching tool for tutor school named Caiz or an individual tutoring cram school in the residential area of Ota City, Tokyo named Shiki Gakuin. Insights from these businesses are expected to help expand their new revenue stream.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

See the original story in Japanese.

The Global EdTech Startup Awards (GESA) is the world’s largest pitch completion focused on EdTech startups whose global finals event annually take place in London. Led by Israeli EdTech startup incubator MindCET, the initiative was jointly founded by European Union’s EdTech incubator Open Education Challenge and EdTech UK.

Tokyo-based Arcterus, the Japanese startup behind study notes organizer app Clear, won the Japanese regional preliminary in December, and then won the 4th GESA world finals in London last week. The Arcterus team won the awards for the first time as a Japanese startup followed by the runner-up, Kenya’s mobile learning management platform M-Shule, and the 3rd place winner, India’s MentorMind, which helps students work on real-time work situations in the form of challenges put forth by companies.

This year’s GESA has received 600 2,000 applications from more than 70 countries and regions around the world. 18 teams including Arcterus were chosen as global finalists this year while many of the judges came from EdTech-focused VC firms and other education-related organizations in eight countries. I’m so impressed that a Japanese startup won the competition where Asian teams had a less strong presence. As winner awards from the competition organizer, Arcterus will receive support for their global expansion efforts in the educational ecosystem plus for public relations, in addition to mentorship and business assistance opportunities.

The Clear app has been especially attracting users in Asian markets including Japan where classmates and friends have a culture of teaching and helping each others while their entrance exams are fiercely competitive. Winning at the Western community-based competition in Europe will definitely help them expand beyond the Asian region. Arcterus CEO Goichiro Arai understood there could be a possibility of meeting the demand of the app in UK, France and Russia given how students in these markets may think in line with the GESA event attendee perspective while the company’s judgment for expansion will be based on a market survey.

Since its launch four years ago, the app has acquired over 1.6 million downloads in the Asian region including more than 1.2 downloads in Japan alone. Considering the 7 million population of middle and high school students in Japan, 1 out of 2 students there use Clear. In addition, the company is offering the service in Thailand, Taiwan, China, Indonesia and Malaysia while planning to expand into Brazil, India and Vietnam after this year.

Besides Clear, Arcterus is handling a teaching tool for tutor school named Caiz or a individual tutoring cram school in the residential area of Ota City, Tokyo named Shiki Gakuin. The company raised about 130 million yen (about $1.05 million) from Startia (TSE:3393) and other companies in July of 2015, followed by securing 110 million yen ($1 million) series B round funding from The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun and Z-kai in 2016. They recently partner with Yoyogi Seminar Education Research Institute, the R&D arm of Japan’s leading cram school chain, to offer them with ClearS, a lecture support tool optimized for educational organizations.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

See the original story in Japanese.

Japan’s Arcterus, providing educational services including a notebook-sharing app named Clear, on Tuesday announced that it has reached a capital and business alliance agreement with The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun (belonging to the major daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun Company’s group) publishing newspaper for students “Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun” and “Asahi Chukosei Shimbun” and also with the  correspondence education major Z-kai. As a result, Arcterus has secured a total of 110 million yen (about $992,000) from the two companies in its series B round, subsequent to the 130 million yen (about $1 million at the exchange rate then) raised during its series A round last July.

With this business alliance, Arcterus starts providing news commentary on hot topics or articles related to past exam problems on a constant basis in Clear with the support from The Asahi Gakusei Shimbun as per a trial this May, in addition to Z-kai’s educational materials in accordance with the adaptive learning method. Although Clear had been provided for free until now and been profiting only from advertisements displayed on the app, it will commence premium services under the subscriptions model which utilizes the two companies’ content on a revenue-sharing basis.

Arcterus was founded in 2010 October by Goichiro Arai (CEO) who has held various posts including Resort Business Manager at Japanese resort development / management major Hoshino Resort together with Yoshiki Shiraishi (COO/CFO) who was Arai’s classmate at Keio Business School. Besides Clear, Arcterus is handling a teaching tool for tutor school named Caiz or a individual tutoring cram school in the residential area of Ota City, Tokyo named Shiki Gakuin. Although it is a rare business form for startups, Arai decided to establish and manage a tutorial school by themselves in order to understand the actual front-line of education and to reinforce services.

Clear, launched in December of 2013, allows notebooks sorted by subject or educational unit to be shared with other users and is available for Android, iOS and web. After three years from launch, the number of current users in Japan has reached 970,000 and is close to marking the one million figure. Considering that the number of Japanese high and junior high school students is about 7 million, one in seven students are using Clear. In addition, it has 250,000, 20,000 and 10,000 users in Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea, respectively.

Arai explains about marketing in Asian countries:

We make teams by hiring local university students as interns. In countries having a culture of helping each other by borrowing and lending notebooks when studying together, Clear tends to be widely accepted.

In the above-mentioned countries, Clear’s development model and the students’ information sharing style fit perfectly, and contributed to user acquisition going well. In other words, the app has hardly made a dent in countries where a competitive culture is strongly reflected upon education, as in Singapore. Although Arcterus showed a willingness to advance into North America last year, it altered its plan by prioritizing user acquisition within “Asian countries with a notebook-sharing culture” due to the same reason as to entering Singapore or markets where several competitors exist.

Coinciding with this agreement, the Clear app has been updated for two functions. It enabled easier  search of registered notebooks out of the 120,000 found on Clear’s platform according to textbook publisher or educational unit. Additionally, a Q&A function between users was added, allowing them to cover points hard to understand just through the  checking of notebooks.

Arcterus won the second prize at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014, while also being selected as a finalist at ASIABEAT 2016 in Xiamen, obtaining international spotlight. Global development in the EduTech field which easily reflects language or culture barriers is said to be difficult; however, the firm aims to acquire cross-border users by setting Clear as an educational platform.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy