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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….

hackosaka-2014-competition-final

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.

hackosaka-2014-competition-waygo
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

hackosaka-2014-competition-transfergo
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

hackosaka-2014-competition-studypact

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.

hackosaka-2014-competition-slumbor
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

hackosaka-2014-competition-ontrox
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

hackosaka-2014-competition-warantee

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.  ↩