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Japan’s HoloEyes secures $1.3M series A, helps surgeons simulate operations in VR

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based HoloEyes, the Japanese VR (virtual reality) startup specialized in the medical field by developing surgical simulation content for doctors, announced today that it has fundraised 150 million yen (about $1.3M US) from Nissay Capital in a series A round. This follows a seed round in which the company fundraised 10 million yen (around $89K US) from Japanese VR-focused acceleration program Tokyo VR Startups (TVS) after graduating from its its 2nd batch. HoloEyes was founded back in October of 2016 by app developer Naoji Taniguchi (CEO and CTO), surgeon and visiting professor/associate professor at more than a few universities Dr. Maki Sugimoto (Managing Director and COO), and Kenichi Shinjo (Managing Director and CSO), who has previous work experience as the producer of AllAbout and COO of Appliya. In December of 2016 they won the Tech Lab Paak award at the Tech Lab Paak’s 6th batch Demo Day, and in January of 2017 they were awarded the Amazon AWS prize at the Demo Day of the 1st batch of “Brave”, the acceleration program by Tokyo-based life science-focused startup VC/accelerator Beyond Next Ventures’. Images used for medical diagnosis such as CT scans, MRIs, and X-rays, are…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based HoloEyes, the Japanese VR (virtual reality) startup specialized in the medical field by developing surgical simulation content for doctors, announced today that it has fundraised 150 million yen (about $1.3M US) from Nissay Capital in a series A round. This follows a seed round in which the company fundraised 10 million yen (around $89K US) from Japanese VR-focused acceleration program Tokyo VR Startups (TVS) after graduating from its its 2nd batch.

HoloEyes was founded back in October of 2016 by app developer Naoji Taniguchi (CEO and CTO), surgeon and visiting professor/associate professor at more than a few universities Dr. Maki Sugimoto (Managing Director and COO), and Kenichi Shinjo (Managing Director and CSO), who has previous work experience as the producer of AllAbout and COO of Appliya. In December of 2016 they won the Tech Lab Paak award at the Tech Lab Paak’s 6th batch Demo Day, and in January of 2017 they were awarded the Amazon AWS prize at the Demo Day of the 1st batch of “Brave”, the acceleration program by Tokyo-based life science-focused startup VC/accelerator Beyond Next Ventures’.

L to R: Dr. Maki Sugimoto (Director / COO), Naoji Taniguchi (CEO / CTO), Kenichi Shinjo (Director / CSO)

Images used for medical diagnosis such as CT scans, MRIs, and X-rays, are generally expressed in two dimensions. However, surgeons often assemble a three-dimensional image in their heads based on these images, perform diagnosis based on what they learn using their stethoscope, and then perform surgery. HoloEyes developed a VR content solution for medical use called HoloEyes VR with the idea that surgeons and other medical staff can understand more intuitively when they are provided with 3-dimensional images. Currently, the company provides cloud services that can convert patient-specific CT data into polygons and freely view them in 3D space via VR devices.

Collecting the data from CT scans, forming 3D human body models, and accumulating it creates a so-called medical VR database. For example, it could be possible by searching with the keywords “60s male prostate cancer” to retrieve 3D images of a similar case which can be used by a doctor for diagnosis, and then used for training for surgery. The possible use cases include pre-operative conferences (surgical planning), sharing surgical plans among medical staff, education for young doctors and students, and as explanation to patients, etc. They are assuming a business model that provides VR viewers to hospitals and sells the data gathered with patient consent to medical universities and pharmaceutical companies.

HoloEyes plans to use the funds raised this round to build the system and business base for HoloEyes VR and expand its staff.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

Japan’s Novars lands $1.2M to get anything battery-powered under control with ‘smart’ coppertop

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See the original story in Japanese. In a crowdfunding campaign back in November, the MaBeee dry cell-shaped IoT (Internet of Things) gadget raised more than $60,000, over 12 times the initial target. Tokyo-based Novars, the hardware startup behind the gadget, announced on Tuesday that it raised 120 million yen (or about $1.2 million) from Nissay Capital and Mizuho Capital. For Novars, this follows their previous funding of an undisclosed sum from Inclusion Japan in a seed round. The company claims that it will use the latest funds to develop apps for and new models of the gadget as well as promoting their business by adding people for sales and marketing efforts. MaBeee is an AA battery-shaped IoT device. By installing it into a dry cell-powered item, users can take a full control of the item using mobile via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). An example of use case is that putting the gadget into a Mini 4WD miniature model, where users can run or stop the model car by shaking their smartphone. The gadget has been available at Amazon.co.jp and other e-commerce platforms as well as major electronics retailers across Japan since this August. Navars was founded back in April of…

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See the original story in Japanese.

In a crowdfunding campaign back in November, the MaBeee dry cell-shaped IoT (Internet of Things) gadget raised more than $60,000, over 12 times the initial target. Tokyo-based Novars, the hardware startup behind the gadget, announced on Tuesday that it raised 120 million yen (or about $1.2 million) from Nissay Capital and Mizuho Capital.

For Novars, this follows their previous funding of an undisclosed sum from Inclusion Japan in a seed round. The company claims that it will use the latest funds to develop apps for and new models of the gadget as well as promoting their business by adding people for sales and marketing efforts.

MaBeee is an AA battery-shaped IoT device. By installing it into a dry cell-powered item, users can take a full control of the item using mobile via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). An example of use case is that putting the gadget into a Mini 4WD miniature model, where users can run or stop the model car by shaking their smartphone. The gadget has been available at Amazon.co.jp and other e-commerce platforms as well as major electronics retailers across Japan since this August.

Navars was founded back in April of 2015 by CEO Akihiro Okabe. He was previously working at Seiko Instruments, a leading precision machinery maker in Japan, where he was involved in defining the communication standard of BT-Watch, a generic name of intelligent watches connecting via Bluetooth. Navars has been running a cross-company community for innovation called Yamiken (or 100-day lab), where the MaBeee device was born out of a participating engineer’s wish to play the “Plarail” toy train track system with his child by remotely controlling it.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Skydisc lands $855K to enhance detachable sensor packages for agriculture et al.

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Fukuoka-based Skydisc, a Japanese startup focused on developing detachable sensors and cloud services for data management, announced on Wednesday that it has fundraised 100 million yen (about $855,000) from three Japanese VC firms. Participating investors are Nissay Capital (investment arm of Japan’s leading insurance company) , Archetype Ventures (investment arm of Archetype), and Fukuoka-based VC firm Dogan. Since its launch back in October of 2013, Skydisc has been developing a variety of detachable sensor devices and the cloud for storing, then analyzing data from these devices. Prior to founding Skydisc, the company’s founder and CEO Osamu Hashimoto had been committed to the study of data analysis using high-speed distributed processing at Kyushu University. He was also developing sensor devices to acquire data in the study, which led him to launch the Skydisc business. Ginga Box, the company’s flagship sensor product line-up, allows users to choose up to three detachable sensors out of 14 different sensors to plug into a circuit board. Data acquired with these sensors can be monitored on Ginga Cloud, the company’s data management and analysis platform. Skydisc’s devices typically can detect temperature, humidity, three-axis acceleration, carbon dioxide concentration, and PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5) concentration so that it…

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Skydisc’s Ginga Box detachable sensor series (Image: Fukuoka Startup Selection, Fukuoka City Office)

Fukuoka-based Skydisc, a Japanese startup focused on developing detachable sensors and cloud services for data management, announced on Wednesday that it has fundraised 100 million yen (about $855,000) from three Japanese VC firms. Participating investors are Nissay Capital (investment arm of Japan’s leading insurance company) , Archetype Ventures (investment arm of Archetype), and Fukuoka-based VC firm Dogan. Since its launch back in October of 2013, Skydisc has been developing a variety of detachable sensor devices and the cloud for storing, then analyzing data from these devices.

Prior to founding Skydisc, the company’s founder and CEO Osamu Hashimoto had been committed to the study of data analysis using high-speed distributed processing at Kyushu University. He was also developing sensor devices to acquire data in the study, which led him to launch the Skydisc business.

Ginga Box, the company’s flagship sensor product line-up, allows users to choose up to three detachable sensors out of 14 different sensors to plug into a circuit board. Data acquired with these sensors can be monitored on Ginga Cloud, the company’s data management and analysis platform.

Skydisc’s devices typically can detect temperature, humidity, three-axis acceleration, carbon dioxide concentration, and PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5) concentration so that it can be applied to environment managing businesses, logistics and distribution, agriculture, and other business sectors. Especially for the agricultural industry, Skydisc already started offering an optimized package called Hatamori, literally meaning vegetable field keeper.

The company claims that they will use the funds to solidify management foundation, hire talents to strengthen developing sensors and analyzing acquired data, in addition to polishing up the product management process for mass-manufactured sensor devices.

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Skydisc CEO Osamu Hashimoto delivers his pitch at Myojo Waraku 2015, Fukuoka, Japan

Via TechCrunch Japan

Japan’s influencer marketing startup Tagpic secures series A from Nissay Capital, others

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based influencer marketing startup Tagpic announced in December that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum in a series A round from Nissay Capital and several angel investors including Shigeru Urushibara, the CEO of Tokyo-based consulting firm / cloud solution provider ULS Group (TSE:3798). Nissay Capital is the investment arm of a Japan’s leading insurance company. The funds were paid on December 25th but the other details, including the amount of money raised or the percentage of issued shares, haven’t been disclosed. In the meantime, the company announced the addition of Shuichi Takenaga, CEO of Aucfun (TSE:3674) and a specialist in big data, as an outside adviser. Founded in September 2015, Tagpic has been offering influencer marketing targeting 8.1 million Instagram monthly active users in Japan using famous personalities (so-called Instagrammers), such as amateur models, TV personalities and artists. Its main business is casting, introduces and mediates Instagrammers who match the marketing measures requested by companies. Tagpic has casted about 670 Instagrammers until now. According to CEO Ayumi Yasuoka, most of them are amateur models. Those networking Instagrammers are followed by a total of 10.8 million people. They can make use of their influence for…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based influencer marketing startup Tagpic announced in December that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum in a series A round from Nissay Capital and several angel investors including Shigeru Urushibara, the CEO of Tokyo-based consulting firm / cloud solution provider ULS Group (TSE:3798). Nissay Capital is the investment arm of a Japan’s leading insurance company.

The funds were paid on December 25th but the other details, including the amount of money raised or the percentage of issued shares, haven’t been disclosed. In the meantime, the company announced the addition of Shuichi Takenaga, CEO of Aucfun (TSE:3674) and a specialist in big data, as an outside adviser.

Founded in September 2015, Tagpic has been offering influencer marketing targeting 8.1 million Instagram monthly active users in Japan using famous personalities (so-called Instagrammers), such as amateur models, TV personalities and artists.

Its main business is casting, introduces and mediates Instagrammers who match the marketing measures requested by companies. Tagpic has casted about 670 Instagrammers until now. According to CEO Ayumi Yasuoka, most of them are amateur models.

Those networking Instagrammers are followed by a total of 10.8 million people. They can make use of their influence for promoting brands. In addition, Yasuoka has worked in the apparel industry in addition to being an amateur model and an Instagrammer. She says that this experience helps her now when she does the casting.

Since the launch back in September, we’ve been working with about 30 ad agencies. We mainly use Line for communicating with Instagrammers. Because it is easy for them to communicate through Line, and there’s a knack in creating relationships with them.

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Tagpic CEO Ayumi Yasuoka

On the other hand, they will end up being a simple small casting agency by continuing to work with this analog method. Therefore they are thinking of making a database of Instagrammers.

She continued:

Because people don’t possess much information on amateur model Instagrammers, we are developing a database called Caspic (spelling not confirmed), dedicated to casting Instagrammers. We still haven’t upgraded all the information, such as who has big eyes or who plays sports. This data is mainly used inside our company. Yet we are thinking of releasing it to other agencies later on.

After upgrading the information on the Caspic, the company can continue casting amateur models even if there are problems on the Instagram platform or changes of rules, for example. She expects it will also reduce dependence on the platform to a minimum.

Translated by Mariko Kobayashi via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda

Japan’s WOVN.io, multilingual support platform for websites, secures $1.1 million funding

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See the original story in Japanese. WOVN.io instantly turns a website into a multilingual environment just by adding a single Javascript code to a website source. Tokyo-based Minimal Technologies, the company behind the service, announced in July that it has partnered with Recruit Communications, and it also told The Bridge that the service has been adopted into more than 4,500 websites in the US, Japan, Brazil, Spain, and other countries. The company announced today that it has fundraised 130 million yen ($1.1 million) from Opt Ventures and Nissay Capital. Opt Ventures is the investment arm of Japan’s largest online ad agency Opt (TSE:2389) while Nissay Capital is that of Japan’s leading insurance company Nissay, or Nippon Life Insurance Company (TSE:6271). In a previous interview, the company said WOVN.io earns 90% of its revenue stream from their enterprise plan users. They plan to use the latest funds to strengthen their position as a marketing tool to help businesses expand globally. WOVN++, the SEO-enabled library launched in late July in beta, is also part of the strategy. Thanks to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics effect, there are now more websites available in English. I expect that WOVN.io will accelerate this trend and help…

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See the original story in Japanese.

WOVN.io instantly turns a website into a multilingual environment just by adding a single Javascript code to a website source. Tokyo-based Minimal Technologies, the company behind the service, announced in July that it has partnered with Recruit Communications, and it also told The Bridge that the service has been adopted into more than 4,500 websites in the US, Japan, Brazil, Spain, and other countries.

The company announced today that it has fundraised 130 million yen ($1.1 million) from Opt Ventures and Nissay Capital. Opt Ventures is the investment arm of Japan’s largest online ad agency Opt (TSE:2389) while Nissay Capital is that of Japan’s leading insurance company Nissay, or Nippon Life Insurance Company (TSE:6271).

In a previous interview, the company said WOVN.io earns 90% of its revenue stream from their enterprise plan users. They plan to use the latest funds to strengthen their position as a marketing tool to help businesses expand globally. WOVN++, the SEO-enabled library launched in late July in beta, is also part of the strategy.

Thanks to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics effect, there are now more websites available in English. I expect that WOVN.io will accelerate this trend and help make more content from Japan available to the global audience.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson

Japan’s crowdsourcing plaform Shufti raises $5.8 million

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Uluru, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform using housewives called Shufti, recently announced that it has fundraised 630 million yen (about $5.8 million) from Japanese VC firm Nissay Capital and wedding-related buzz marketing site Minnano Wedding. Uluru started its business providing business process outsourcing services in 2001, and subsequently launched crowdsourcing platform Shufti in 2007. The platform has acquired over 76,000 users to date. The company plans to use the funds to enhance human resources for further development and management of crowdsourcing business. Shufti was one of the oldest platforms of this kind. While they launched the platform in 2007, there were another several crowdsourcing services launched in Japan at that time, such as Lancers and C-team. So they started the crowdsourcing platform almost five years before Crowdworks, one of the most popular services in this space. According to Uluru’s vice president Yuhei Okeyama, the company still generates its primary revenue stream from their outsourcing services rather than the Shufti platform. They have a database called NJSS, showcasing tendering opportunities from governmental organizations around the country for their outsourcing needs; this DB has acquired nearly 1,500 corporate users to date and account for 60% or 70% of the market share. To…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Uluru, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform using housewives called Shufti, recently announced that it has fundraised 630 million yen (about $5.8 million) from Japanese VC firm Nissay Capital and wedding-related buzz marketing site Minnano Wedding.

Uluru started its business providing business process outsourcing services in 2001, and subsequently launched crowdsourcing platform Shufti in 2007. The platform has acquired over 76,000 users to date. The company plans to use the funds to enhance human resources for further development and management of crowdsourcing business.

Shufti was one of the oldest platforms of this kind. While they launched the platform in 2007, there were another several crowdsourcing services launched in Japan at that time, such as Lancers and C-team. So they started the crowdsourcing platform almost five years before Crowdworks, one of the most popular services in this space.

According to Uluru’s vice president Yuhei Okeyama, the company still generates its primary revenue stream from their outsourcing services rather than the Shufti platform. They have a database called NJSS, showcasing tendering opportunities from governmental organizations around the country for their outsourcing needs; this DB has acquired nearly 1,500 corporate users to date and account for 60% or 70% of the market share.

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To collect tender announcements from local governments, Uluru has been sending their people to governmental offices around the country. Hearing from Okeyama, we found that they have been using crowdsourced forces from Shufti to collect these announcements to build up the NJSS database.

Many of crowdsourced workers on the Shufti platform are married women. So it will be easy for the aforementioned buzz site Minnano Wedding to find synergy by driving potential users to the Shufti platform.

Japanese social media promotion startup raises $1.5M

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See the original story in Japanese. Interest marketing is a Tokyo-based startup focused on social media marketing for brands. The startup announced today that it has raised 150 million yen (approximately $1.5 million) from Japanese investment firm Nissay Capital. The total amount of funds in this round is assumed to exceed 200 million yen ($2 million), as it expects to receive additional funding from other VC firms next month. The startup introduced a social media promotion tool called Kolor back in March. Based on requests from advertisers, this service shows you ads in the form of missions to be completed. When you finish a mission, you will be able to receive a reward that can be later be redeemed for discounts or products at partnering merchants. In the six months since its launch in March, the startup has acquired 40 advertisers and the service’s iOS app has seen 40,000 downloads. According to the company, its main userbase is males in their 30s who are relatively familiar with digital services. Kolor has two primary aspect: it is a tool to improve recognition for brands, and an O2O tool for merchants to invite potential customers to their physical tools. In the first…

The Interest Marketing team. CEO Hikari Sakai is in front.
The Interest Marketing team. CEO Hikari Sakai is in front.

See the original story in Japanese.

Interest marketing is a Tokyo-based startup focused on social media marketing for brands. The startup announced today that it has raised 150 million yen (approximately $1.5 million) from Japanese investment firm Nissay Capital. The total amount of funds in this round is assumed to exceed 200 million yen ($2 million), as it expects to receive additional funding from other VC firms next month.

The startup introduced a social media promotion tool called Kolor back in March. Based on requests from advertisers, this service shows you ads in the form of missions to be completed. When you finish a mission, you will be able to receive a reward that can be later be redeemed for discounts or products at partnering merchants. In the six months since its launch in March, the startup has acquired 40 advertisers and the service’s iOS app has seen 40,000 downloads. According to the company, its main userbase is males in their 30s who are relatively familiar with digital services.

Kolor has two primary aspect: it is a tool to improve recognition for brands, and an O2O tool for merchants to invite potential customers to their physical tools. In the first sector, the service’s competitors include Monipla (by Allied Architects), Crocos (acquired by Yahoo Japan back in 2012), and Fantastics (by Gaiax).

Kolor
Kolor

So how can the startup expand its business in such a fiercely competitive arena? I asked Sakai about his future plan.

The more interesting missions (ads) we can present on Kolor, the more users we can acquire. So that it’s all about getting as many interesting missions as we can from our advertisers. We need to keep motivating advertisers to use the platform. When we offer a mission to our users on the platform, we pay attention to see what segments of the userbase the advertiser should specifically target.

The current version of Kolor is only integrated with Facebook, but the startup aspires to enhance the service further, developing a social media promotion tool that requires no social media integration.

On a related note, Interest Marketing acquired fellow startup company Appoi earlier this month. Appoi was founded by Hikari Sakai (also the head of Interest Marketing) and has been providing a calendar view service for sharing entertainment event updates with other users. He tells us why he merged these two companies prior to the funding.

Appoi was founded back in February of 2012 for [serving] the US market, and subsequently we started providing its white label service to major Japanese entertainment businesses such as E-plus (online box office) and Avex (music company). I’ve been running Interest Marketing as a startup focused on developing new services like Kolor. Coinciding this latest funding, we needed to focus our resources to a company. That’s why I had our two companies merge.

Transferring engineers over from Appoi, Interest Marketing is now about a 30-people team. Back in August, the startup partnered with Japanese credit card company Credit Saison and online reward program NetMile, which will help them accelerate user acquisition growth.

While B2C-focused social media tools are on the decline, the B2B2C field has great potential to expand further. In Sakai’s words, Japanese businesses’ usage of social media is not yet mature and still has much room to be cultivated.

Big data startup Hapyrus raises $925,000 from Japanese investors

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Silicon Valley-based big data startup Hapyrus announced this week that it has raised $925,000 from several investors in Japan and the US. This follows its previous round of seed funding from CyberAgent back in November of 2011. The investors this time are: Shigeru Urushibara (president of Japanese systems integrator UL Systems) Shogo Kawada (co-founder of DeNA) CyberAgent Ventures Kiyoshi Nishikawa (president of NetAge) Nissay Capital William Lohse (former president of Ziff-Davis publishing, angel investor for Pinterest) The startup was launched back in March of 2011 by Japanese entrepreneur Koichi Fujikawa. He previously worked at Yahoo Japan and at Japanese location-based ad platform startup Sirius Technology (acquired by Yahoo Japan in 2010). Japan’s governmental IT promotion agency heralded him as a “genius talent” in the computer industry with his Hadoop middleware project for scripting Ruby DSL (domain specific language). The startup launched a new service called FlyData for Amazon Redshift back in April, which allows automatic uploading and migration of data to Amazon Redshift, the data-warehouse service that can scale to petabyte size. For developers, the service allows you to control and send log files on your server to your own Amazon Redshift cluster over Amazon S3 at a frequency of…

hapyrus_logoSilicon Valley-based big data startup Hapyrus announced this week that it has raised $925,000 from several investors in Japan and the US. This follows its previous round of seed funding from CyberAgent back in November of 2011. The investors this time are:

  • Shigeru Urushibara (president of Japanese systems integrator UL Systems)
  • Shogo Kawada (co-founder of DeNA)
  • CyberAgent Ventures
  • Kiyoshi Nishikawa (president of NetAge)
  • Nissay Capital
  • William Lohse (former president of Ziff-Davis publishing, angel investor for Pinterest)

The startup was launched back in March of 2011 by Japanese entrepreneur Koichi Fujikawa. He previously worked at Yahoo Japan and at Japanese location-based ad platform startup Sirius Technology (acquired by Yahoo Japan in 2010). Japan’s governmental IT promotion agency heralded him as a “genius talent” in the computer industry with his Hadoop middleware project for scripting Ruby DSL (domain specific language).

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The startup launched a new service called FlyData for Amazon Redshift back in April, which allows automatic uploading and migration of data to Amazon Redshift, the data-warehouse service that can scale to petabyte size. For developers, the service allows you to control and send log files on your server to your own Amazon Redshift cluster over Amazon S3 at a frequency of once every five minutes. This helps you easily conduct an almost realtime-like big data analysis over the cloud.

They have another service called FlyData for Heroku, which also allows the automatic upload of log data on Heroku to Amazon EC3.

On a related note, Treasure Data, another notable Japanese startup focused on big data solutions, also received angel investment worth $2.75 million back in 2012, with funds coming from several investors including Jerry Yang (Yahoo co-founder) and Yukihiro ‘Matz’ Matsumoto (the inventor of the Ruby language).

Japanese website translation startup World Jumper raises $1.1M

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See the original post in Japanese Tokyo-based startup Yaraku has introduced a website translation tool called World Jumper, and it has recently raised about 110 million yen ($1.1 million) from Nissay Capital, Nippon Venture Capital, and several other angel investors. The startup was first launched back in 2009, and it has been providing multi-lingual translation services for website owners. In terms of differentiation from other translation services, the company outsources orders to third-party agencies, but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in the database for future reference. This results in better translation results without the need to outsource to agencies, and it helps keep translation costs down while the quality improves as time goes by. The startup has different translation databases for different categories of websites, such as e-commerce sites, portal sites, or general corporate websites. The startup’s clients include eBay, the guide app Tokyo Cool, Sunbridge Venture Capital, and digital ad agency Opt. All these companies typically need website translation in order to reach global audiences. The multilingual-translation tool includes a feature that scrapes your website, recognizes which part needs changes or additional translation when the website is updated. In this process, a translation will be provided…

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See the original post in Japanese

Tokyo-based startup Yaraku has introduced a website translation tool called World Jumper, and it has recently raised about 110 million yen ($1.1 million) from Nissay Capital, Nippon Venture Capital, and several other angel investors.

The startup was first launched back in 2009, and it has been providing multi-lingual translation services for website owners. In terms of differentiation from other translation services, the company outsources orders to third-party agencies, but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in the database for future reference. This results in better translation results without the need to outsource to agencies, and it helps keep translation costs down while the quality improves as time goes by. The startup has different translation databases for different categories of websites, such as e-commerce sites, portal sites, or general corporate websites.

The startup’s clients include eBay, the guide app Tokyo Cool, Sunbridge Venture Capital, and digital ad agency Opt. All these companies typically need website translation in order to reach global audiences.

The multilingual-translation tool includes a feature that scrapes your website, recognizes which part needs changes or additional translation when the website is updated. In this process, a translation will be provided based on the original HTML file without changing the source codes, so that you don’t need to re-edit the files for each additional language as long as its design format or website structure is the same as the original. Essentially, the clients don’t need to care about maintaining their non-Japanese websites.

Of course even with cutting-edge technology, automated translation between different languages cannot ensure total accuracy without human intervention. The World Jumper system still has the possibility of mistranslation or awkwardness. But in order to reduce this risk, the service gives you an interface where you can translate by yourself to educate the system for more accurate results with the future orders.

The fee consists of 80,000 yen ($800) for the initial account setup, 8,800 yen ($88) for monthly usage, and additional costs for manual translation. Your first translation requests is processed manually, but subsequent requests will be processed based on the database. This step is the one that results in reduced total costs.

With this funding, the startup plans further development on the platform, making it open to third-party developers. They expect to acquire 1,000 corporate user accounts by the end of this year.

In this space, we have already seen other competitors including HongKong’s One Sky, Finland’s Get Localization, and Silicon Valley’s Transifex.

Business card-based CRM startup Sansan raises $5M, planning global expansion

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Tokyo-based venture company Sansan announced on Tuesday that it has fundraised about 500 million yen (or about $5 million) from Nissay Capital and GMO Venture Partners. This follows the previous round in 2009, which raised 50 million yen from CyberAgent, Recruit Incubation Partners, and GMO Venture Partners. Sansan is known for providing the Eight app, a combined solution for business card scanning, data entry, and contact management. By linking your Eight account with your social media presences (like Facebook, Google Plus, Mixi), your contacts will be automatically imported and connected. Subsequently the business cards of those people will then appear on your Eight page. If don’t have enough contacts to connect but still have a large connection of business cards, you can ask the company to scan the business cards for free. Alternatively, you can scan the cards yourself with their smartphone app. (See our previous article for more information about how it works.) The entire service is provided completely free. In a CNET Japan report, the company’s CEO Chika Terada explained that they are not rushing to monetize it until they build a sufficient userbase, ideally something in the range of 10 million users. The startup expects to do business globally in the near…

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Tokyo-based venture company Sansan announced on Tuesday that it has fundraised about 500 million yen (or about $5 million) from Nissay Capital and GMO Venture Partners. This follows the previous round in 2009, which raised 50 million yen from CyberAgent, Recruit Incubation Partners, and GMO Venture Partners.

Sansan is known for providing the Eight app, a combined solution for business card scanning, data entry, and contact management. By linking your Eight account with your social media presences (like Facebook, Google Plus, Mixi), your contacts will be automatically imported and connected. Subsequently the business cards of those people will then appear on your Eight page. If don’t have enough contacts to connect but still have a large connection of business cards, you can ask the company to scan the business cards for free. Alternatively, you can scan the cards yourself with their smartphone app. (See our previous article for more information about how it works.)

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Sansan CEO
Chika Terada

The entire service is provided completely free. In a CNET Japan report, the company’s CEO Chika Terada explained that they are not rushing to monetize it until they build a sufficient userbase, ideally something in the range of 10 million users. The startup expects to do business globally in the near future, and they’ll be looking at building a global pool of crowdsourcing workers for card scanning and data entry, which will makes data entry possible regardless of language barriers.

With this new infusion of funds, they’re hoping to intensify further development of a better user experience, with a plan to introduce a new version of their smartphone app in May. Terada says it will be not only for scanning and managing business cards as before, but it will also be something that gives you an access to various information about your contacts, such as info to help you call or e-mail them, or the ability to view a map when you meet up with someone.

Other startups operating in this space are Maysee, as well as China-based Youlu.