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Japan’s HiNative Q&A app for language learning hits 3.4M registered users, raises $6M

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Lang-8, the company behind a Q&A app for language learning called HiNative, announced on Wednesday that it has fundraised 650 million yen (around $5.8 million US) from YJ Capital, Daiwa Corporate Investment, and FFG Venture Business Partners, along with individual investor Kotaro Chiba. The payment was completed in August of this year. Other details, such as the investment ratios, were not released. As of August 2018 there are 3.41 million registered users on the HiNative app. This is nearly 17 times the amount related 2 years ago when we interviewed the company. According to Lang-8 CEO Yangyang Xi the current number of questions posed has reached 8.54 million and the number of responses totals 27,760,000. These numbers have also increased nearly tenfold compared to two years ago. See also: Japan’s HiNative, Q&A app for language learning, secures $2M to boost user growth Much as Stack Overflow and Yahoo Answers, it is desirable for Q&A services that provide open answers to offer both the “flow experience” where responses can appear immediately and the “stock experience” where answers close to a users’ query pop up on demand after searching. To elaborate on such services, when…

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Lang-8 CEO Yangyang Xi at his new office in Ebisu, Tokyo
Image credit: Takeshi Hirano

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Lang-8, the company behind a Q&A app for language learning called HiNative, announced on Wednesday that it has fundraised 650 million yen (around $5.8 million US) from YJ Capital, Daiwa Corporate Investment, and FFG Venture Business Partners, along with individual investor Kotaro Chiba. The payment was completed in August of this year. Other details, such as the investment ratios, were not released.

As of August 2018 there are 3.41 million registered users on the HiNative app. This is nearly 17 times the amount related 2 years ago when we interviewed the company. According to Lang-8 CEO Yangyang Xi the current number of questions posed has reached 8.54 million and the number of responses totals 27,760,000. These numbers have also increased nearly tenfold compared to two years ago.

See also:

Much as Stack Overflow and Yahoo Answers, it is desirable for Q&A services that provide open answers to offer both the “flow experience” where responses can appear immediately and the “stock experience” where answers close to a users’ query pop up on demand after searching.

To elaborate on such services, when I search for a phrase, in many cases it turns up owned content such as English speaking services on Skype. HiNative has reached a milestone because its search results are open, so the access to them will help the company to stand out in each country. Access to this web index is about 6 million unique users a month.

The company has a wide reach with 110 supported languages in 240 regions, and fast answers to questions posed via the flow experience appear in less than a few minutes. It has built up a community that is able to provide some form of an answer within an hour, and the knowhow garnered from Lang-8 is a big help here. The funds raised this time around will be used to further increase the overseas use rate, and to strengthen the management and development teams, which are currently consist of 10 employees, as well as to further strengthen the company’s marketing activities.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

Japan’s HiNative, Q&A app for language learning, secures $2M to boost user growth

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Lang-8, the company behind a Q&A app for language learning called HiNative, announced on Wednesday that it has secured 200 million yen (nearly $2 million US) in funding. The investors in this round include Kyoto University Innovation Capital, East Ventures, and DeNA, as well as individual investors notably Chiba Kotaro and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron, in addition to multiple others. Details of the shareholding ratios and payment date have not been disclosed. Since its official launch back in November of 2014, HiNative has gradually assembled users, and as of the end of July 2016 it had reached around 200,000 registered users. “We can see a 500,000 users milestone within the year,” CEO Yangyang Xi said in a previous interview back in July. In relation to the number of questions and responses, which is of special importance to the Q&A app, as of the end of September there have been 960,000 questions asked receiving 3.4 million answers. The app supports 120 languages and gains user access from almost every country in the world. The company plans to use the funds raised this time around to strengthen their development system, as well as promoting marketing…

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Yangyang Xi, founder and CEO of Lang-8

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Lang-8, the company behind a Q&A app for language learning called HiNative, announced on Wednesday that it has secured 200 million yen (nearly $2 million US) in funding. The investors in this round include Kyoto University Innovation Capital, East Ventures, and DeNA, as well as individual investors notably Chiba Kotaro and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron, in addition to multiple others. Details of the shareholding ratios and payment date have not been disclosed.

Since its official launch back in November of 2014, HiNative has gradually assembled users, and as of the end of July 2016 it had reached around 200,000 registered users. “We can see a 500,000 users milestone within the year,” CEO Yangyang Xi said in a previous interview back in July.

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HiNative’s user growth

In relation to the number of questions and responses, which is of special importance to the Q&A app, as of the end of September there have been 960,000 questions asked receiving 3.4 million answers. The app supports 120 languages and gains user access from almost every country in the world. The company plans to use the funds raised this time around to strengthen their development system, as well as promoting marketing measures aimed at acquiring 2.5 million users by the end of 2017.

And so the story continues, with Xi having said in a previous interview, “Finally, we’re on track and growing,” to now, where he is set to advance to the next stage. He says that while they have to some degree seen verification of their growth, he’d like to improve the number of acquired users and at the same time qualities to retain them.

Xi explained:

As we thought, the more concurrent connections we have the better the numbers become, so first of all we’ll do our best to win over new users. At the same time, what we want to do within 6 months is increase the response speed. If we can get to where answers come within an average of 5 minutes, user experience would also significantly improve, so we want to focus on that from here on out.

Additionally, since his debut in 2007 as a student entrepreneur, Xi has continuously operated his social network for language learning, but unable to make any breakthroughs, experienced his share of struggle. As such, this is his first chance to take a large sum of funding to strengthen the system.

He continued:

Until now we have been working with 5 team members, but we would like that to become 10. In particular, we’re looking for engineers, 1 iOS specialist and one Android, as well as a designer, so those are areas we’d especially like to strengthen. Also, I am still doing the web design, so of course I’d like someone who could take that over.

In terms of business development, they will look for measures to attract YouTuber marketing to their ‘big hit’, as well as for managerial support similar to COO for Xi.

To begin with, Xi seeks to complete his goal of breaking through the 2 million user mark. He also discussed hopes of opening up the language learning contents stored on HiNative for searching capabilities (like Stack Overflow).

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

HiNative: Giving language learners a handy way to ask native speakers

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Seven years ago, Tokyo-based entrepreneur Yang Yang Xi launched the language-learning platform Lang-8. He came up with the idea while studying language at Kyoto University. See also: Lang-8: The language learning startup that’s playing the long game His company, also called Lang-8, fundraised an undisclosed sum from Tokyo-based VC firm CyberAgent Ventures in January. Because startups usually fundraise to launch a new business or expand their current business so we’ve been interested in how they will take a next step from there. That’s exactly what we want to tell you today. A new product from Lang8, HiNative gives users who are studying a language an easy way to connect to native speakers of that language. Typical language learners often have to refer to a dictionary or consult a foreign language teacher to learn appropriate expressions. However, a dictionary takes a grammatical and a formal approach, which does not work well for daily conversation, and a teacher is not always around to help. HiNative is just the app to overcome these problems. It allows users the choice of one of four question templates to query a native speaker on the platform (see below picture). Users are notified of their answers to…

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Lang-8 co-founder and CEO YangYang Xi(喜洋洋)

Seven years ago, Tokyo-based entrepreneur Yang Yang Xi launched the language-learning platform Lang-8. He came up with the idea while studying language at Kyoto University.

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His company, also called Lang-8, fundraised an undisclosed sum from Tokyo-based VC firm CyberAgent Ventures in January. Because startups usually fundraise to launch a new business or expand their current business so we’ve been interested in how they will take a next step from there. That’s exactly what we want to tell you today.

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A new product from Lang8, HiNative gives users who are studying a language an easy way to connect to native speakers of that language.

Typical language learners often have to refer to a dictionary or consult a foreign language teacher to learn appropriate expressions. However, a dictionary takes a grammatical and a formal approach, which does not work well for daily conversation, and a teacher is not always around to help.

HiNative is just the app to overcome these problems. It allows users the choice of one of four question templates to query a native speaker on the platform (see below picture). Users are notified of their answers to their questions via e-mail.

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You will set your native language(s) and the language(s) you are interested in when signing up for the service, so you will be requested to answer when another user puts a question on your language. The app is developed based on a responsive web design so you can comfortably keep using it on a smartphone or tablet as well as on a desktop.

Xi explained what has triggered his team to start developing HiNative:

With the Lang-8 platform, we initially thought that blogging is a good way to learn foreign languages with communication. But to keep blogging requires users to sustain a high motivation. While many web services have been shifting to mobile, blogging or writing a long story using a mobile interface is pretty difficult. So we had to develop something beyond the Lang-8 platform.

If a native speaker were standing next to you, it would be easy for you to ask him or her for a proper native phrase. But it’s not substantial. That’s why we developed HiNative.

Xi and his team have developed HiNative leveraging all the experience they’ve learned from the Lang-8 platform both in good sides and bad sides. Despite the fact that they launched the HiNative app as early as several months ago, they are already confident for user acquisition but are more focusing on tactics to improve user retention rate. Xi elaborated:

For a better user engagement, I think what users experience during their first visit to our service is a key. That’s why we’ve been running usability tests a bunch of times. Duolingo nicely marked 36 million downloads worldwide. But they are a content-based platform. We believe that a social network approach will be a main stream in the language learning platform. We aim to be the top platform in the social-based language learning category.

He added that the user active rate of the HiNative app is pretty better than that of the Lang-8 platform. In order to give users much better experience, they will launch an iOS app some day next month, as well as planning to start developing an Android version soon.