Madrid’s IE Business School and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University (KMD) jointly held their first Venture Day event for entrepreneurs in Tokyo. The former is well known for being one of the top producers of MBA graduates, and for its many entrepreneurship events. KMD is based in Tokyo, encouraging people to solve societal problems and create new businesses using cutting-edge digital media technologies.

The event featured a number of talks from both Japanese and European entrepreneurs, as well as a pitch competition where 10 startups competed to win a round-trip ticket to Madrid, presented by Turkish Airlines.

I won’t go through all the startups here as we have featured many of them before. But it was good to several new faces with fresh ideas. Let’s have a look.

CompiTechnology

If you work in the startup industry, how many devices do you bring in your bag to work each day? A tablet, and a smartphone too perhaps — but for programmers, you likely need a laptop too. All that can be heavy, and you probably need a lot of money to buy everything.

CompiTechnology aims to develop a smart device that lets you what typically requires many smart devices to do. The company hasn’t disclosed too many details about this, but we do know that they are devoting $1 million for the R&D efforts for the production of their next product.

Smart Lab Module (by Molcure)

For many scientific researchers, you will need different devices for difference experimental purposes. This costs a lot. There is a multi-functional device that can be adopted for many experiments, but it can require millions of dollars ^[1].

A University of Tokyo graduate student had the idea to develop a lighter version of this kind of devices, making the most of smartphone technology, a hardware module, and an SDK. For researchers, one of the key advantages is that it would untether you from your lab, as it gives you the ability to check the status of an experiment using your smartphone regardless of where you are.

Studio4word

Studio4word provides a multilingual narration and translation service. Our readers may recall startups Voip and Creofuga who offer solutions in this space. But Studio4word is different in its easy-to-understand pricing structure. Regardless of what language you choose, their pool of native speakers will receive your job offer for 1,000 yen (about $10) for every 100 words in non-Japanese languages, or for every 100 characters in Japanese.

They also provide translation and proofreading often needed for foreign language narration. I assume the service will target startups who want to create promotional videos for their services for the global market.

Sharebu Kids

Sharebu Kids is a flash-sales e-commerce site focused on kids’ fashion. Their strategy is to partnering with baby fashion brands from overseas that have no presence in Japan, buying their products for Japanese consumers, and presenting them at affordable rates. At the same time, it gives brands the opportunity to get their name out in the Japanese market.

The company is not interested in working with well-known baby brands, since they typically have local distributors or their own flagship stores, and they would usually force retailers to sell at non-discounted prices. By giving brands benefits besides just revenue, Sharebu Kids hopes to provide a unique user experience for consumers.