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Japan’s content distribution tech startup Pulit raises series A from Samsung, Line Ventures

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Pulit, the Japanese startup developing distribution technologies for digital image and video content, has secured funding in a series A round from Samsung Venture Investment and an investment fund managed by Line Ventures. The funding sum has not been disclosed but it is estimated at several million of US dollars. For Pulit, this follows their seed round back in August of 2016 (raising 50 million yen) and their pre-series A round back in June of 2017 (raising about 100 million yen). The company also disclosed at this time that investors participating in the previous pre-series A round were DK Gate (a joint venture company of Digital Garage and Kodansha) and Dentsu. While Samsung Venture Investment and Line Ventures are corporate venture capital arms of the global electronics giant and the messaging giant respectively, possible strategic partnerships between Pulit and these companies are still unclear. The company uses the funds to strengthen hiring engineers (focused on content distribution network, digital rights management and content streaming technologies) as well as business developers aiming to launch an official roll-out. Pulit was founded in 2015 by K.W. Lee (CEO), a Tokyo Institute of Technology graduate who had…

The Pulit team
Image credit: Pulit

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Pulit, the Japanese startup developing distribution technologies for digital image and video content, has secured funding in a series A round from Samsung Venture Investment and an investment fund managed by Line Ventures. The funding sum has not been disclosed but it is estimated at several million of US dollars.

For Pulit, this follows their seed round back in August of 2016 (raising 50 million yen) and their pre-series A round back in June of 2017 (raising about 100 million yen). The company also disclosed at this time that investors participating in the previous pre-series A round were DK Gate (a joint venture company of Digital Garage and Kodansha) and Dentsu.

While Samsung Venture Investment and Line Ventures are corporate venture capital arms of the global electronics giant and the messaging giant respectively, possible strategic partnerships between Pulit and these companies are still unclear. The company uses the funds to strengthen hiring engineers (focused on content distribution network, digital rights management and content streaming technologies) as well as business developers aiming to launch an official roll-out.

Super Distribution System (SDS)
Image credit: Pulit

Pulit was founded in 2015 by K.W. Lee (CEO), a Tokyo Institute of Technology graduate who had been engaged in R&D at Samsung Electronics, Min-Soo Kim (CTO) who had been developing apps as a freelance programmer and Shohei Komatsu (Director) who had been involved in fund management or technical advisory work at Tokyo-based startup accelerator Slogan. The firm was born out from the first batch of seed acceleration program Supernova which is jointly managed by Draper Nexus, Slogan, Coent Venture Partners and Viling Venture Partners (however, their participation was undisclosed because they were still in stealth mode as of Demo Day).

In the Super Distribution System (SDS) scheme developed by Pulit, as content holders or creators upload videos to be distributed onto cloud, Robust Image Watermark is embedded on the cover image and direct access link (URL) is issued for each video. Clicking the direct access link, OS-native players are activated and then users are allowed to watch the videos on PC or smart devices. Also, DRM (digital rights management) control is available, so that users can save the videos on local environment or watch them again according to conditions set by content holders or creators.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Pulit gets million US dollars to help publishers stream content on own channels

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Pulit, the Japanese startup developing distribution technologies for digital image and video content, announced on Wednesday that it has closed a pre-series A round. The investors participating and the scale of funding were not revealed, but some sources say that the investors are the corporate venture capital of a leading ad agency and an IT business company both of which can see potential synergy with Pulit’s business. This follows Pulit’s previous funding 50 million yen in a seed round back in August of 2016. In the Super Distribution Scheme (SDS) developed by Pulit, as content holders or creators upload videos to be distributed onto cloud, Robust Image Watermark is embedded on the cover image and direct access link (URL) is issued for each video. Clicking the direct access link, OS-native players are activated and then users are allowed to watch the videos on PC or smart devices. Also, DRM (digital rights management) control is available, so that users can save the videos on local environment or watch them again according to conditions set by content holders or creators. After the launch of their business announcement last year, Pulit carried out PoCs (Proof of…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Pulit, the Japanese startup developing distribution technologies for digital image and video content, announced on Wednesday that it has closed a pre-series A round. The investors participating and the scale of funding were not revealed, but some sources say that the investors are the corporate venture capital of a leading ad agency and an IT business company both of which can see potential synergy with Pulit’s business. This follows Pulit’s previous funding 50 million yen in a seed round back in August of 2016.

In the Super Distribution Scheme (SDS) developed by Pulit, as content holders or creators upload videos to be distributed onto cloud, Robust Image Watermark is embedded on the cover image and direct access link (URL) is issued for each video. Clicking the direct access link, OS-native players are activated and then users are allowed to watch the videos on PC or smart devices. Also, DRM (digital rights management) control is available, so that users can save the videos on local environment or watch them again according to conditions set by content holders or creators.

After the launch of their business announcement last year, Pulit carried out PoCs (Proof of Concept) with 6 major Japanese private TV broadcasters  (3 in Tokyo and 3 in Osaka), 4 major publishing companies, 3 animation studios from March to April this year (Low-Fidelity PoC).  From May-June this year PoC was carried out by participating new media companies and social network services in addition to 10 TV broadcasters, 6 big publishing companies, and 3 animation studios (Middle-Fidelity PoC). From here, they plan to hold closed beta tests from July to August (which will also serve as High-Fidelity PoC), followed by open beta tests from September to October, with the goal of launching this service alongside Android/iOS viewer apps within the year.

Until now, when content holders and producers distribute content, they had to rely on a distribution platform run by third-party operators. Because of this, it was difficult for content holders to distribute their top tier content since it was impossible to implement marketing measures freely, and there was a minimum guarantee (a minimum fee for delivery consignment paid by the content holder to the platform operator regardless of the user’s viewing number), making it difficult to handle niche content.

According to Pulit CEO K.W. Lee, by introducing Pulit, content holders can directly distribute their own content without using any other content distribution platform, so it is easier to distribute top tier content, as well as niche content, and they hope that a long tail market will be born from this as well. He remarked that he plans to extend the service categories beyond to microcontent, picture books, photographs of comics, novels and magazines in the future through partnerships with broadcasters and publishers all over Japan,

If we investigate video content IP holders in Japan, we come across three companies in total, with Pulit pulling through as the dominant company if all the three were left to duke it out. Although the details remain unknown, it is thought that the funding sources are closely related to this strategy.

In response to this funding, Pulit says it will strengthen the organization from the current 4 to 6 people (to 10 people including the external development collaborators).

Translated by Amanda Imasaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda

Japan’s Pulit gets $500K to disrupt streaming industry with ‘super-distribution system’

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Pulit, the Japanese startup developing distribution technologies for digital image and video content, this week announced that it has secured 50 million yen (about $500,000) in its seed round. This round was led by Korea’s startup-focused fund BonAngels as well as five investors…namely, Jun Narimatsu (ex-CFO of Cookpad, also as a strategic adviser and an angel investor), Yusuke Sato (founder of FreakOut and Ignis), Yoshinari Matsuda (attorney), Hiroyuki Kato (ex-CTO of Atlantis and current CEO of web service developer Irodori) and Goushi Yamaguchi (formerly worked at Cookpad and Lancers, currently involved in management of 30 startups). With this fundraising, Pulit has started making a serious effort to develop a new content distribution channel and services based on its own patents relating to ‘SuperDistribution System (SDS)’ for digital images. Pulit was founded in 2015 by K.W. Lee (CEO), a Tokyo Institute of Technology graduate who had been engaged in R&D at Samsung Electronics, Min-Soo Kim (CTO) who had been developing apps as a freelance programmer and Shohei Komatsu (Director) who had been involved in fund management or technical advisory work at Tokyo-based startup accelerator Slogan. The firm was born out from the first batch…

pulit-team
L to R: Min-Soo Kim (CTO), K.W Lee (CEO), Shohei Komatsu (managing director)

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Pulit, the Japanese startup developing distribution technologies for digital image and video content, this week announced that it has secured 50 million yen (about $500,000) in its seed round. This round was led by Korea’s startup-focused fund BonAngels as well as five investors…namely, Jun Narimatsu (ex-CFO of Cookpad, also as a strategic adviser and an angel investor), Yusuke Sato (founder of FreakOut and Ignis), Yoshinari Matsuda (attorney), Hiroyuki Kato (ex-CTO of Atlantis and current CEO of web service developer Irodori) and Goushi Yamaguchi (formerly worked at Cookpad and Lancers, currently involved in management of 30 startups). With this fundraising, Pulit has started making a serious effort to develop a new content distribution channel and services based on its own patents relating to ‘SuperDistribution System (SDS)’ for digital images.

Pulit was founded in 2015 by K.W. Lee (CEO), a Tokyo Institute of Technology graduate who had been engaged in R&D at Samsung Electronics, Min-Soo Kim (CTO) who had been developing apps as a freelance programmer and Shohei Komatsu (Director) who had been involved in fund management or technical advisory work at Tokyo-based startup accelerator Slogan. The firm was born out from the first batch of seed acceleration program Supernova which is jointly managed by Draper Nexus, Slogan, Coent Venture Partners and Viling Venture Partners (however, their participation was undisclosed because they were still in a stealth mode as of Demo Day) .

In the distribution of fee-charged video content, video distribution platforms such as Hulu, Netflix or Amazon Prime are commonly used. Although content holders or video creators hope to perform marketing according to their own will, in practice most of them depend on these platforms.   Besides, since platformers grasp distribution path to viewers related to content, the profit of content holders or creators tend to be reduced under this income structure. What Pulit tries to propose is a disruptive business model in order to regain the initiative of video content distribution to content holders or creators.

pulit-diagram

In the SDS scheme developed by Pulit, as content holders or creators upload videos to be distributed onto cloud, Robust Image Watermark is embedded on the cover image and direct access link (URL) is issued for each video. Clicking the direct access link, OS-native players are activated and then users are allowed to watch the videos on PC or smart devices. Also, DRM (digital rights management) control is available, so that users can save the videos on local environment or watch them again according to conditions set by content holders or creators.

As a result, users need not be a video distribution platform member just because he / she wants to watch a certain drama or a movie. Content holders or creators have become able to freely conduct marketing or promotion activities according to their own direction without being restricted by any contract condition such as exclusive distribution. Since the promotion for content viewing will be done only by sharing link URL, it can be simply displayed as-is on the timeline advertisement of Facebook or Twitter. Actually, Pulit seems to expect such an operational manner of the service that allows content holders or creators to set the direct link URL to the video content for DSP (demand-side platform) advertisement, thereby raising the conversion ratio of the videos, and that may be the reason why the lineup of the angel investors for this round includes some who are familiar with the ad-tech field.

In addition, content holders or creators can distribute videos in pay-per-view method, and can change it to free-distribution method with commercial insertions (as with the commercial broadcasting) for each content just with a switch on the control dashboard. If reserving unreleased content for viewing, users can receive push-notification with direct access link for the video via LINE when the content has been released.

Currently Pulit consists of four members but plans to increase to six from September based on the fundraising this time. Considering demands for the Japanese content from overseas, the firm will start business promotion from intellectual property management agencies of Manga contents or animation production companies.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy