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Korea’s braille smartwatch developer Dot wins HackOsaka 2018 pitch competition

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See the original story in Japanese. Osaka City held the annual startup conference HackOsaka 2018 last month, having about 100 participants including investors, entrepreneurs and media from home and abroad. As marking the sixth such event since being started in 2013, their way to introduce trends of global startup ecosystem to entrepreneurs in the Kansai area has become more cultivated. At the last phase of the event, 10 teams comprising domestic or foreign startups gave pitches. The judges for the pitch competition were as follow: Junko Nishimura (Co-founder, Silver Egg Technology) Oko Davaasuren (Regional Director of South East Asia, Techstars) Oscar Kneppers (Founder, Rockstart [Netherland]) Gidi Schmerling (Director of Media Relations, Tel Aviv-Yafo [Israel]) Shan Lu (Founding Partner / CEO, LeaguerX) Allen Miner (CEO, Sunbridge / HackOsaka Supervisor) Peter Rothenberg, Editor-in-Chief in Japan of Tech in Asia / Founder of Best Beer, acted as master of ceremonies. Gold Prize: Dot (Korea) Korea-based Dot developed the braille smartwatch under the same name. It enables the visually-impaired to exchange messages or to understand SNS posts as with general smartwatch. Costing only $290 which is much cheaper than conventional braille keyboards costing about $5,000, it will be welcomed as a gift item. The…

See the original story in Japanese.

Osaka City held the annual startup conference HackOsaka 2018 last month, having about 100 participants including investors, entrepreneurs and media from home and abroad. As marking the sixth such event since being started in 2013, their way to introduce trends of global startup ecosystem to entrepreneurs in the Kansai area has become more cultivated.

At the last phase of the event, 10 teams comprising domestic or foreign startups gave pitches. The judges for the pitch competition were as follow:

  • Junko Nishimura (Co-founder, Silver Egg Technology)
  • Oko Davaasuren (Regional Director of South East Asia, Techstars)
  • Oscar Kneppers (Founder, Rockstart [Netherland])
  • Gidi Schmerling (Director of Media Relations, Tel Aviv-Yafo [Israel])
  • Shan Lu (Founding Partner / CEO, LeaguerX)
  • Allen Miner (CEO, Sunbridge / HackOsaka Supervisor)

Peter Rothenberg, Editor-in-Chief in Japan of Tech in Asia / Founder of Best Beer, acted as master of ceremonies.

Gold Prize: Dot (Korea)

Korea-based Dot developed the braille smartwatch under the same name. It enables the visually-impaired to exchange messages or to understand SNS posts as with general smartwatch. Costing only $290 which is much cheaper than conventional braille keyboards costing about $5,000, it will be welcomed as a gift item. The firm succeeded in downsizing of the display on the face utilizing its 30 patents. The firm won the pitch competition at Slush Tokyo 2017 as well.

Dot also developed the braille tablet Dot Pad ($950), as well as the simplified version Dot Mini ($200, for educational use). The firm plans to distribute several million products in India, where there are 10 million visually-impaired people. In addition, the firm started the development of the braille kiosk as a new project targeting Smart City Project in Dubai and had tested it at PyeongChang Olympics. The firm has currently been doing business in the U.S. and China, and is going to enter the Japanese market soon.

Silver Prize: Eye Control (Israel)

It is estimated there are 160 million patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) having muscle and nerve disorder, and the number of ALS cases has been increasing. The Eye Control team knew the communication device for ALS patients costs too much, and had started developing a wearable device which is cheaper and easier to use than the conventional devices.

Eye Control detects motion of the pupil by mounted camera and sends the data to microcomputer to analyze the meanings that a user wants to transmit. The analyzed content is sent to smartphone via BLE and is read out or controlled. One of the biggest features of this system is to eliminate troublesomeness of using a large display. The team was born out from Startupbootcamp in 2011 and was chosen for Next Future Technology award by Israeli tech media Geektime.

Bronze Prize: Carbyne (Israel)

In emergency calls such as 911 in the US as well as 110 (police) and 119 (fire and ambulance) in Japan, some problems have been arising in recent years: long calling time, fake calling, incorrect location, difficulties in prioritization of multiple calls or nonexistence of images to confirm the situation.

Israel-based Carbyne transmits 110 / 119 emergency calls to its own system, and acquires detailed and well-summarized information including location or images to support prompt rescue or appropriate response. It has already been introduced to the Mexican teleco América Móvil, as well as national projects in Honduras and the Philippines.

Bronze Prize: Nature Remo (Japan)

Nature develops an IoT product for smart air-conditioner named Nature Remo. The firm secured more than 22 million yen (about $210,000) through three crowdfunding at Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Makuake. It was chosen for 500 Kobe Accelerator, the acceleration program hosted by Kobe City and 500 startups and had recently fundraised 100 million yen (about $940,000) from Daiwa Corporate Investment.

As its development and production system has been established, the firm started selling the product at Amazon, as well as electronics retail stores such as Bic Camera or Kojima, allowing general users other than early adopters to purchase. Through cooperation with Kansai Electric Power, the firm took part in the verification project of Virtual Power Plant, the energy self-sufficient system as a substitute of power resources in the energy peak time by utilization of internet / sensor technologies and diffusion of distributed type power resources.

Bloodhero (Philippines)

The blood transfusion system, required for accidents or surgery, is generally maintained by blood donation from 1% of the total population and yet blood is in short supply. As a result, there are not a few cases that the family of patients who need blood asks for blood donation of specific blood type in social network services. Bloodhero is a social platform of blood donation to solve these problems.

The Bloodhero users can acquire points for every blood donation and are given status according to stored points; the service prepares various privilege such as free ticket of spa in each status level. In a hospital which introduced Bloodhero, the retention rate of blood donors increased by 23%. The firm aims to reach 50,000 blood donations handling by December of 2018.

Ouireward (France)

One million people experience cancellation or delay of flights annually in the world. In Europe, airplane companies are required to compensate passengers for a delay of more than three hours under EU261 Law. Generally, passengers can receive $700 back in cash at the highest but need to negotiate with airplane companies to claim the right. This negotiation requires troublesome processes; they have to submit many documents and wait for several months, and sometimes their requests are refused.

Ouireward provides a simple online form where users can fill within three minutes and performs the negotiation procedure on behalf of them. It charges 25% of cashback money as intermediate fee. Since its launch six months before, the firm has dealt with customer requests from 37 countries, negotiations with 79 airplane companies and has collected $160,000 cashback. Considering cooperation with airplane companies, the firm aims at $2 million fundraising and tie-up with Japanese airplane / insurance companies.

Yiyuan (China)

Yiyuan offers a skin condition diagnosis service that AI (artificial intelligence) evaluates patients’ face photos taken by the mobile app. Making landmarking on specific spots on the face and diagnosing the conditions before and after the treatment using deep learning, it advices patients whether they are recovering nicely or need additional treatments.

In the future, the firm plans to monetize by providing API (Application Program Interface) or SDK (Software Development Kit) for cosmetic retailers or upgrading the telephone support service. It has been given an angel investment from LeaguerX, the accelerator supported by QF Capital and Tsinghua University.

Travelio (Indonesia)

Travelio, approximating the Airbnb in Indonesia, aims to provide a higher-class service than typical vacation rental services. The firm performs property management on behalf of real estate companies, and provides hotel-level services including cleaning and sheets changing to travelers having demands of long-stay, leisure or business.

The firm currently provides the service in 25 cities within Indonesia and handles 3,000 properties. The ratio of domestic / foreign users is 65 : 35. This service is used on average 4.95 nights per stay and is seemingly popular among long-stay travelers who tend to make much of cost performance. Although many buildings have been constructed recently in Jakarta, not a few properties are left unsold. The service also contributes to monetization of these properties for real estate developers.

BackTech (Japan)

The lower back pain improvement app Pocket Therapist, launched by Japan’s BackTech in 2016, suggests the best exercise plans or introduces good clinics for each user based on the lower back pain evaluation algorithm developed by Graduate School of Medicine and Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University. The firm had raised funds from Cyber Agent.

Lower back pain is one of the common diseases of general workers and is also a severe problem for employers because it causes poor productivity. Pocket Therapist provides an environment where workers can easily receive advice from therapists, and enterprises or insurance companies pay the cost as their employers.

Protectiq (Russia)

Protectiq is a P2P (peer-to-peer) insurance service which applies the sharing economy concept. In developing countries, insurance services have not been improved much and that is one of major causes of death due to tumors or other forms of cancer. This service realized a cheaper charge system by utilizing blockchain technology into the insurance fee payment procedures and clarifying the cashflow.

Specifically, Protectiq users are charged $20 annually, and the insurance fee can be paid by third party donors or companies as a service to society. Targeting young and less wealthy adults in their teens to 40s, the service pays insurance premium of $350,000 at the highest based on users’ declaration.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Philippine health startup mClinica wins this year’s HackOsaka Award

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See the original story in Japanese. HackOsaka 2015, held earlier this month in Osaka, featured a pitch contest where 10 startups pitched their services and products. The event was hosted by Osaka Innovation Hub (OIH) and Osaka Economic Strategy Bureau. I would like to introduce prize winners and other presenting startups. Judges for the competition are: Don Burton (Managing director, Techstars) Tim Romero (Entrepreneur, Investor, Podcaster, and Writer) Airi Horie (CEO, Women’s Startup Lab) Khailee Ng (Managing Partner, 500 Startups) Allen Miner (Chairman, SunBridge Global Ventures) See also: Translation app Waygo wins HackOsaka pitch contest Gold Prize winner (Hack Osaka Award winner): mClinica (Manila, the Philippines) Supplementary prizes: 500,000 yen in cash, 50,000 Bonus Miles for each of 3 persons (presented by by Japan Airlines), Amazon Kindle (presented by Amazon Web Services) mClinica CEO Frouk Meralli is originally from Canada but now based out of Manila, the Philippines. Conventional independent drugstores in the Philippines are not organized with each others, and have neither POS facility nor internet connectivity. So pharmaceutical companies have no access to drugstores for marketing purposes or obtaining sales statistics. mClinica gives users a discount when buying drugs at a drugstore, in exchange for giving their contact…

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See the original story in Japanese.

HackOsaka 2015, held earlier this month in Osaka, featured a pitch contest where 10 startups pitched their services and products. The event was hosted by Osaka Innovation Hub (OIH) and Osaka Economic Strategy Bureau. I would like to introduce prize winners and other presenting startups.

Judges for the competition are:

  • Don Burton (Managing director, Techstars)
  • Tim Romero (Entrepreneur, Investor, Podcaster, and Writer)
  • Airi Horie (CEO, Women’s Startup Lab)
  • Khailee Ng (Managing Partner, 500 Startups)
  • Allen Miner (Chairman, SunBridge Global Ventures)

See also:

Gold Prize winner (Hack Osaka Award winner): mClinica (Manila, the Philippines)

Supplementary prizes: 500,000 yen in cash, 50,000 Bonus Miles for each of 3 persons (presented by by Japan Airlines), Amazon Kindle (presented by Amazon Web Services)

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From the left: Hack Osaka Award 2015 Chief Judge Allen Miner, MC Diane Kichijitsu, mClinica CEO Farouk Meralli

mClinica CEO Frouk Meralli is originally from Canada but now based out of Manila, the Philippines. Conventional independent drugstores in the Philippines are not organized with each others, and have neither POS facility nor internet connectivity. So pharmaceutical companies have no access to drugstores for marketing purposes or obtaining sales statistics.

mClinica gives users a discount when buying drugs at a drugstore, in exchange for giving their contact numbers to mClinica. This discounted cost will be later reimbursed to the drugstores by the pharmaceutical companies. In this way, while pharmaceutical companies can obtain statical data such as what kind of pharmaceutical products are being sold at which store, pharmaceutical companies and drugstores can market new products or run promotional activities via the platform.

The company has acquired big companies like Roche and Pfizer as clients, in addition to 1,400 drugstores and 20 million patients over the six months since launch. They fundraised an undisclosed sum of investment from 500 Startups, Philippines-based Kickstart Ventures, and Japan’s IMJ Investment Partners in October.

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Silver Prize winner: Blaze (London, UK)

Supplementary Prizes: 300,000 yen in cash, 50,000 Bonus Miles for each of 2 persons (presented by Japan Airlines)

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Blaze CEO Emily Brooke

Cycling at night is dangerous because of increased risk of collisions caused by lower visibility, so the fact is that the number of accident victims/casualities has been rapidly growing. Blaze has created a laser light for urban cyclists, which projects a cycle lane symbol on the road ahead of the cyclist for calling attention to pedestrians and automobile drivers, aimed at preventing possible traffic accidents.

Blaze has adopted a laser chip from a manufacturer in Tokyo, and its battery has approximately a one-month lifetime upon typical frequency or length of use. The company has successfully fundraised £55,000 through a Kickstarter campaign, followed by securing £1.5 million funds from Index Ventures, the Branson Family, and other investors. Their product is available online in 47 countries while also being available at UK’s biggest bicycle retail chains and the MoMA Store.

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Bronze Prize winner: Up Performa (Kyoto, Japan)

Supplementary Prize: 100,000 yen in cash, 50,000 Bonus Miles for 1 person (presented by Japan Airlines)

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Up Performa CEO Shuhei Yamada

Born out of Founder Institute Kansai, Up Performa aims to bring data measurement and analytics using wearable devices to the sports scenes, which has been common among professional sports players already. It allows players to playback the transition of their location and movement during the play in a heat map, not to mention seeing the total distance run and the transition of their running speed.

Up Performa plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign for its sports wearable device by the end of this year.

Crosscoop Prize winner: SmartCheckups (Berlin, Germany)

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In Europe, property agents or management companies have to make a report upon visual inspection of the condition of properties before renting them out. So they need to take many photographs and sort them out later to prepare a report, which is very time-consuming. SmartCheckups provides various templates and work flow for the photos in preparing the reports according to type of property, so agents or companies can simplify their property inspection and report-preparation processes.

SmartCheckups was initially founded in Berlin but started its business in Belgium. While their targeted markets are European (Germany, UK, Belgium, France and the Netherlands), they are also looking for partner companies in Japan.

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SmartCheckups CEO Didier Vermeiren

In addition to these four prize winners, I’d like to introduce more startups that stood out in the competition. $250 in AWS Credit were presented to all prize winners and participating startups.

Cofame (Osaka, Japan)

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Cofame COO Kanji Noguchi

Cofame provides users with a new experience for exchanging business cards using a mobile app. When you meet up with multiple people anew at a meeting, you can simultaneously exchange cards with these people using a single action on the app.

It also replicates the scene in the app by showing in which seat who was sitting around the table in a meeting so that you can remember the names of the people associated with their faces. Cofame allows users to export data to various contact management solutions, such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamic CRM.

Cofame founder Kanji Noguchi was selected for the 1st Silicon Valley fellowship program for entrepreneurs by the Osaka City government, and stayed in Silicon Valley while living in a tent to save expenses to network with the local community. He raised funds from several angel investors in the U.S. as well as Japan.

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Ingage (Osaka, Japan)

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Ingage CEO Tetsuya Wada

In a company, it is said that an annual opportunity loss caused by neglecting e-mail inquiries requiring a response has reached as high as $376,000 on average in Japan. Ingage has developed Re:lation e-mail sharing and response management solution for group working, which keeps company employees from forgetting to respond to each incoming inquiry.

At first glance it is just a web-based e-mail solution. But when some employee starts work on replying to an e-mail, the app shows other employees who were working on it so that users can eliminate the overlap of e-mail response tasks.

If you are requested to get approval from your boss in e-mailing outside of your company, your message draft will be saved once and later sent out upon receiving approval.

Cashboard (Berlin, Germany)

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Cashboard CEO Robert Henker

Cashboard is a fintech startup, which lets users start investing at as little as 1,000 euros. Users can ask the platform for automated trading in managing investments in ETF (exchange traded funds) as well as a combination of new and old financial products. By answering several questions, the service creates the best portfolio of financial products for users.

The company raised the first VC funding in 2014, followed by winning a pitch day event at Seven Ventures and 4 million euros in TV ad broadcasts. Leveraging these opportunity, they plan to strengthen marketing efforts in Germany in 2015, secure the second VC funding in 2016 for international expansion in Europe, followed by further expansion to the Middle East and Asian regions after 2017.

M Square (Kobe, Japan)

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M Square CEO Jojo Miwa

M Square CEO Jojo Miwa came to Paris to acquire an MBA degree. She was in Paris, hopping around for job interviews. For public transport use the NaviGo IC card for Paris Metro can be counted on, but she had been buying tickets because she didn’t know how to use the IC card.

OysterCard in London, EZ Card in Singapore, Octopus Card in Hong Kong, T-Card in Seoul, and Suica in Tokyo — there are various IC cards on the planet but these have no interoperability. If you have multiple mobile wallets, you have to install many apps supporting these wallets and remember many PINs/passwords. Your mobile device may be stolen.

M Square is developing a biometrics-based payment solution called Depago. They started development last October, and will launch the product in this June.

DigitAddress (Osaka/Tokyo, Japan)

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DigitAccess founder Wei Wang

DigitAddress provides encrypted addressing solutions. Instead of a conventional address, users can obtain a DA code substituting the address and provide it to a shipping operator. Then the operator can specify a geographical position using an API to the DigitAddress platform so that an item you ordered will be appropriately delivered.

In view of drone-based delivery systems seen becoming more common in the future, the company aims to provide more detailed geographical data with DA codes, compared to existing addressing systems mainly designed for postal services. This way, even if there are multiple buildings or houses at a single address, DigitAddress enables delivery to the correct recipient using a drone. In a nutshell, while their solution secures user privacy by masking the actual address, it can pinpoint the exact location for API-based delivery requests.

DigitAddress founder Wei Wang came to Osaka from mainland China to study physics. His company won the Tomodachi award at University Venture Grand Prix, a competition sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. We’ve been told that it has secured funding from a major company in the computer security industry.

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Stamp (Bangkok, Thailand)

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Stamp CEO Opie Lopansri

Stamp has developed a device that lets retailers become more likely to induce potential customers. From a retailer’s perspective, all you need to do is just press the device on a customer’s smartphone, enabling customers rewards point provision as with existing paper-printed customer loyalty cards. Users can use collected points as cryptocurrency at retailers participating in the Stamp platform.

Stamp is available for iOS and Android. In addition, the company has published an SDK (Stamp Development Kit) so that third-party developers can integrate it with their apps so allow their users to benefit also from retailers participating in the Stamp platform.

Often one can’t convert earned points to rewards because the minimum amount no being attained. Obtaining the number of third-party apps and retailers participating in the platform makes earning of reward points more likely, so the company wants to build as well as expand an ecosystem where users can earn or redeem points with partnering apps/retailers.

Stamp was nominated at Echelon 2013, a remarkable annual startup conference in Singapore, followed by winning the ASEAN ICT Awards in 2014.

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Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Translation app Waygo wins HackOsaka pitch contest

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See the original article in Japanese HackOsaka 2014, held earlier this month in Osaka, featured a pitch contest where 10 startups pitched their services and products. I’d like to introduce the prize winning startups below. Gold Prize: Waygo Awarded 500,000 yen ($5000), a round-trip ticket to London sponsored by British Airways, a Pebble Watch. Waygo is a translation app using that uses OCR technology. When the user scans Chinese sentences with their smartphone camera, the app will translate that sentence into English even without an internet connection. We previously mentioned this app when we covered Echelon 2013 and Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2013. Last year, the startup took part in 500 Startups’ incubation program, and subsequently raised $900,000. CEO Ryan Rogowski shared two updates at the event. The first is that they are going to release a new version of their app that translates Chinese into Japanese. The other (and perhaps the most interesting one) is that they are now developing a prototype app for Google Glass. Silver Prize: TransferGo Awarded 300,000 yen ($3000), Pebble Watch Many people need to make international money transfers. But service charges at banks can be expensive, as are other transfer services like Western Union….

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See the original article in Japanese

HackOsaka 2014, held earlier this month in Osaka, featured a pitch contest where 10 startups pitched their services and products. I’d like to introduce the prize winning startups below.

Gold Prize: Waygo

Awarded 500,000 yen ($5000), a round-trip ticket to London sponsored by British Airways, a Pebble Watch.

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Waygo CEO/founder Ryan Rogowski

Waygo is a translation app using that uses OCR technology. When the user scans Chinese sentences with their smartphone camera, the app will translate that sentence into English even without an internet connection. We previously mentioned this app when we covered Echelon 2013 and Innovation Weekend Grand Finale 2013. Last year, the startup took part in 500 Startups’ incubation program, and subsequently raised $900,000.

CEO Ryan Rogowski shared two updates at the event. The first is that they are going to release a new version of their app that translates Chinese into Japanese. The other (and perhaps the most interesting one) is that they are now developing a prototype app for Google Glass.

Silver Prize: TransferGo

Awarded 300,000 yen ($3000), Pebble Watch

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TransferGo co-founder/CEO Daumantas Dvilinskas

Many people need to make international money transfers. But service charges at banks can be expensive, as are other transfer services like Western Union.

TransferGo, a startup based in Lithuania and London, offers international money transfers service at reasonable price. The transfer flow goes like this:

  • A user transfers money to the local TransferGo account, thus paying only a domestic transfer fee
  • TransferGo will then send the money from the TransferGo’s local account to a TransferGo account in the recipient’s country, and then on to the recipient.

The transfer fee is £2.50 plus 1.5% of the total amount of transferred. The company’s real rate of return is pretty high at 70%, and they have acquired licenses from authorities in the countries where they offer the service.

TransferGo was launched in May of 2013, and the number of the transfers in the first month was 941. But in January of 2014, that number shot up to 6,837. Currently they have 21,000 users and 98% of them said they want to recommend the service to friends. TransferGo is currently only available in Europe, but the startup aims to expand to other areas, including Asia.

Bronze Prize: StudyPact

Awarded 100,000 yen ($1000), Pebble Watch

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StudyPact is a service that lets users to set a study goal and monetary stakes as as sort of bet with themselves. For example, you can set a goal of studying English for two hours a week, and then set the target stakes at $5. If you reach that goal, you get $5, but if not, you have to pay $5. In the event that you have to pay, the fee is split in half among users who supported the goal and the rest will go to StudyPact.

To realize more effective learning platforms, the startups plans to tie up with other educational platforms and services like Duolingo, Anki, Memrise, Coursera and Edx. The prototype that implemented Anki is expected to be released in early March, and there are plans develop apps for Android, Chrome, FireFox and iPhone. They’re now participating in an accelerator program hosted by Open Network Lab, so let’s wait and see what they present at the demo day in a few months.

Crosscorp Prize: Slumbor

Awarded 1-year free pass to co-working spaces run by Crosscorp in Singapore, Jakarta, Delhi, and Ho Chi Minh City.

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AnSing Technology CEO Dr. Hu Junhao

Slumbor is a Singapore-based startup producing a sort of smart mat designed to be put under your pillow. The mat has sensors that acquire various data, which are then transferred to the user’s smartphone via BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). The startup currently attends a program run by the IoT incubator, HAXLR8R. They plan to raise funds at Kickstarter later on.

In addition to these four prize winners, I’d like to introduce two more startups that stood out for me in the competition.

Ontrox

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Ontrox CEO, Kazuki Arita

Ontrox is a startup aspiring to reduce traffic jams by using big data. The CEO says that by using such data, you can see certain patterns of traffic jams in cities. The advantage of Ontrox, he says, lies in their unique technology that can visualize the pattern of traffic jams and shorten the processing time for visualization.

The same technology can be used for other purposes such as analyzing and optimizing computer network data, or analyzing users’ online behavior on e-commerce sites. The startup was selected as one of 10 startups to participate in SVIP (Silicon Valley Innovative Program) hosted by the Japan External Trade Organization, which aims to launch global services from Silicon Valley.

Warrantee

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Warrantee, an Osaka-based startup, aims to digitalize product warranties. When you buy a product, you typically have to fill out information on a paper form to validate the warranty. But because this is a time consuming process, many users skip it.

Warrantee proposes a one-stop process, registering personal data in advance on their service. In this way the user can quickly register warranties for different products or from different companies. There are many cases where retail stores offer additional paid warranties, so the startup plans to earn a service charge from retailers by motivating users to opt into such additional warranties. Another business opportunity lies in tying up with retailers, allowing them to utilize user data accumulated on Warrantee for the retailer promotions.

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Can Osaka be a startup hub?

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This is an abridged version of the original report in Japanese. The HackOsaka 2014 conference recently took place here in Japan, with the aim of boosting the startup community in Japan’s Kansai region. This year Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Berg CEO Matt Webb were invited as special guests. Pebble, of course, is the smart watch developer that was funded by Y-Combinator. Berg is based in London, offering an ‘Internet of Things’ cloud platform for third-party developers. Together with Masahiko Inada, the CEO of Kabuku [1], they participated in an panel discussion moderated by journalist Tsuruaki Yukawa. While many major companies in Japan have their headquarters in Tokyo, many CEOs are originally from Osaka. Yukawa explained a little about Osaka’s history of entrepreneurship: My father was a merchant. In fact, when I was a kid, all the parents except maybe one were merchants. Even though there are strong entrepreneurship roots in Osaka, the city is not the startup hub in Japan. Everyone goes to Tokyo. What should we do? Matt noted that the situation is similar to what London previously experienced: A lot of startups in London left for the USA. Because we didn’t have funds, there was no way…

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This is an abridged version of the original report in Japanese.

The HackOsaka 2014 conference recently took place here in Japan, with the aim of boosting the startup community in Japan’s Kansai region. This year Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky and Berg CEO Matt Webb were invited as special guests. Pebble, of course, is the smart watch developer that was funded by Y-Combinator. Berg is based in London, offering an ‘Internet of Things’ cloud platform for third-party developers. Together with Masahiko Inada, the CEO of Kabuku [1], they participated in an panel discussion moderated by journalist Tsuruaki Yukawa.

While many major companies in Japan have their headquarters in Tokyo, many CEOs are originally from Osaka. Yukawa explained a little about Osaka’s history of entrepreneurship:

My father was a merchant. In fact, when I was a kid, all the parents except maybe one were merchants. Even though there are strong entrepreneurship roots in Osaka, the city is not the startup hub in Japan. Everyone goes to Tokyo. What should we do?

Matt noted that the situation is similar to what London previously experienced:

A lot of startups in London left for the USA. Because we didn’t have funds, there was no way to tie up with big companies. We didn’t have a community.

Of course, community plays an important role in any startup scene. And Eric stressed the benefits that the startup community provides in Silicon Valley.

hackosaka-2014-iot-ericWhen you develop a minimum viable product, you can get both positive and negative feedback from the community. Taking that feedback into account, and continuing development in a constructive manner is important.

At a large company, a CEO can get feedback from his or her board members. But at a startup, a founder often has to rely on himself or herself. Because of this, community support can be just as important as fundraising and market chance.

Matt said it is important to name a community if you want to develop it. The area around Old Street station in East London had been called Silicon Roundabout, but later the UK government named the area TechCity with the intention to invite more startups there. This has helped to raise public awareness. People started thinking about entrepreneurship, getting together in order to create a community.

Matt: Organizing events is important as well. In London, events related to hardware startups are held about twice a month. Job events and networking events are held almost every week.

Eric: People in Osaka have already started doing important things. This event has a pitch contest. This is quite important to help build a community.

TechCity in London took a much different path than Silicon Valley. In the same way, I’m optimistic that Osaka can develop it’s own unique startup culture, something different from Tokyo or Fukuoka.


  1. Kabuku operates 3D printing marketplace Rinkak.  ↩