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CyberAgent Ventures now accepting startups from Asia to pitch at Rising Expo 2015 in Tokyo

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup-focused VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced earlier this week that it has started accepting applications for pitches at Rising Expo 2015 in Japan, the company’s annual startup conference to be held in Tokyo on 7 August. Prior to that, they will hold regional qualifier events in Southeast Asia and South Korea in June. See also: 15 startups pitch at Rising Expo 2014 finals, regional winners from around Asia take part Venue rental marketplace Space Market wins top prize at Rising Expo 2014 The Southeast Asia edition invited 13 startups, 30 VC firms, and 10 business enterprises in Jakarta last year while eight startups and 15 VC firms participated in the South Korea edition in Seoul last year. From Japan, 15 startups, 60 VC firms and 60 enterprises participated in the Tokyo edition last year. According to CyberAgent Ventures, startups having participated in the last year’s event fundraised over 4 billion yen ($33 million), meaning each participating company fundraised over 300 million yen ($2.5 million) on average. Regional events and finals are scheduled to take place on the following dates: Rising Expo in Southeast Asia (Jakarta) … 25 June 2015, Thursday Rising Expo in…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese startup-focused VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced earlier this week that it has started accepting applications for pitches at Rising Expo 2015 in Japan, the company’s annual startup conference to be held in Tokyo on 7 August. Prior to that, they will hold regional qualifier events in Southeast Asia and South Korea in June.

See also:

The Southeast Asia edition invited 13 startups, 30 VC firms, and 10 business enterprises in Jakarta last year while eight startups and 15 VC firms participated in the South Korea edition in Seoul last year. From Japan, 15 startups, 60 VC firms and 60 enterprises participated in the Tokyo edition last year.

According to CyberAgent Ventures, startups having participated in the last year’s event fundraised over 4 billion yen ($33 million), meaning each participating company fundraised over 300 million yen ($2.5 million) on average.

Regional events and finals are scheduled to take place on the following dates:

  • Rising Expo in Southeast Asia (Jakarta) … 25 June 2015, Thursday
  • Rising Expo in Korea (Seoul) … In June 2015 but no exact date yet announced
  • Rising Expo in Japan (Tokyo) … 7 August 2015, Friday

They have started receiving applications for Rising Expo 2015 in Southeast Asia, which will take place in Jakarta on 25 June. Startups exploring funding opportunities or business partnerships should not miss this opportunity.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson

15 startups pitch at Rising Expo 2014 finals, regional winners from around Asia take part

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See the original story in Japanese. On Friday, Japans CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2014 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Unlike past editions, the investment firm held preliminary events at their regional offices in Seoul, Beijing, and Jakarta prior to the finals where 15 teams, including 5 foreign startups, competed by pitching their product to attendees. Last year smartphone-based livestreaming app TwitCasting won the top prize, and the startup subsequently fundraised $5 million. Among the 15 participating startups this time, Space Market was chosen as the audience favorite. Top prize winner: Space Market (also winning the Recruit Career prize and the Sumitomo Fudosan prize) Space Market lists unused or idle venues and allows users to pick one to rent on demand for business needs such as corporate meetings, shareholder meetings, training courses, and other events. Reservations are made online. 2nd Prize winner: Hachimenroppi (also winning the AGS Consulting prize) Hachimenroppi buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese restaurants or diners, according to specific needs. It was previously outlined in specific details about how it works, so please check it out ….

spacemarket-and-other-award-winners-at-risingexpo2014
Rising Expo 2014 prize winners

See the original story in Japanese.

On Friday, Japans CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2014 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1].

Unlike past editions, the investment firm held preliminary events at their regional offices in Seoul, Beijing, and Jakarta prior to the finals where 15 teams, including 5 foreign startups, competed by pitching their product to attendees.

Last year smartphone-based livestreaming app TwitCasting won the top prize, and the startup subsequently fundraised $5 million. Among the 15 participating startups this time, Space Market was chosen as the audience favorite.

Top prize winner: Space Market (also winning the Recruit Career prize and the Sumitomo Fudosan prize)

spacemarket-wins-top-award-at-risingexpo

Space Market lists unused or idle venues and allows users to pick one to rent on demand for business needs such as corporate meetings, shareholder meetings, training courses, and other events. Reservations are made online.

2nd Prize winner: Hachimenroppi (also winning the AGS Consulting prize)

rising_expo_hachimenroppi

Hachimenroppi buys fish from markets and brokers across the country and delivers it to Japanese restaurants or diners, according to specific needs. It was previously outlined in specific details about how it works, so please check it out . They recently fundraised $4.5 million last month following the previous round back in October.

3rd Prize winner: VIP Plaza (from Indonesia)

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Co-founded by former Rakuten Indonesia director Tesong Kim and former investment banker Yoga S. Sugiharto. VIP Plaza lists fashion items from international and Indonesian brands at daily discounts of 30% to 80%. They plan to add other categories like men’s fashion, beauty and home products, aiming for expansion into other countries in Southeast Asia.

The Tohmatsu prize winner: Utagoe

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Utagoe’s Moment Diary is a free journal app with a calendar, allowing users to make notes with timestamps, adding texts, images, videos, and audio. Since its launch in January 2011, the app has acquired over 5 million unique users with 30 million downloads from 211 countries on iOS and Google Play. Women in Asia region make up the majority of users. The company plans to integrate the app with wearable devices. They fundraised from KLab and KLab Ventures in January.

The SMBC Nikko Securities Prize winner: iCare

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ICare provides a cloud-based medical record management platform for occupational physicians called Catchball. It helps physicians better serve patients and share updates with the companies that these patients are working for to improve their working conditions.

The Intelligence Prize winner: Glider Associates

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Glider Associates provides news curation app Antenna, which delivers over 600 articles from over 230 news media oulets. Big companies had been allocating promotion budgets for mass media advertising for many years, but the company thinks it can encourage these companies to partially set it aside to run native ad promotions on the news app. They plan to launch an English version for global expansion.


The following startups did not win but gave interesting pitches.

PurpleCow

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PurpleCow provides a crowdsourcing service called Crevo specializing in animated videos. The service was launched in March and acquired 100 video production requests in the first two weeks.

iCook (Taiwan)

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iCook provides an online recipe sharing service in Taiwan. The startup fundraised from CyberAgent Ventures in October 2012 and subsequently partnered with Rakuten in January 2013.

Bequ.com (China)

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Bequ.com is a travel-focused social networking service, allowing users to connect with official tour guides and fellow travelers. It also provides tools to create travel plans and record travel experiences.

Pocket Supernova

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Pocket Supernova provides a video clip decoration and sharing app called Unda, which allows users to create 20-second video message clips for private use as well as for sharing with other users. They graduated from 500 Startups. See our previous interview with the Pocket Supernova team.

Oriflamme

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Developers of the Oriflamme team previously worked at DeNA where they produced the global hit game Blood Brothers. They want to overwhelm the global market with castle building RTS (real-time strategy) games as well as social games casting popular characters.

Toyro

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Toyro provides a comparison platform focused on life insurance and medical insurance products called Insnext, gwhich gives the best answer to consumers using the life expenses simulator. The company fundraised an undisclosed sum of investment from CyberAgent Ventures in November.

Kabuku

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Kabuku provides a 3D printing marketplace called Rinkak, where anyone with 3D data can open shops on the platform and sell products based on their designs. The startup fundraised $2 million from CyberAgent Ventures, Fuji Startup Ventures, and Nissay Capital in June.

Japanese beverage company Calpis runs a time-limited promotion campaign using the Rinkak 3D printing platform where a user can win a “miniature statue” with his or her face by uploading their portrait.

Tunedra (Korea)

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Tunedra is an iOS app that allows users to create original songs. When singing or humming a tune while launching the app, it will automatically add chords or an accompaniment to the melody and allow the user to share it with others.

Matchmove Global (Indonesia)

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Matchmove Global provides an entertainment platform for international brands. As credit cards are not common in Southeast Asia, the company issues pre-paid cards approved by global credit card brands and sells them to consumers at convenience stores or retail stores.

Similar to regular credit cards, their pre-paid cards have unique card numbers so that users can settle online payments at e-commerce or in-game app purchases by entering the numbers.


Rising Expo 2014 all finalists
All finalists pitched at Rising Expo 2014

  1. Disclaimer: The author was one of the selection judges.  ↩

Venue rental marketplace Space Market wins top prize at Rising Expo 2014

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See the original story in Japanese. Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2014 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Tokyo-based Space Market, the startup that operates a venue rental marketplace under the same name, won the top prize at this year’s event. Space Market lists unused or idle venues and allows users to pick one to rent on demand for business needs such as corporate meetings, shareholder meetings, training courses, and other events. Reservations are made online. In addition to the top prize, the company also won two prizes from the event’s sponsors: the Recruit Career prize and the Sumitomo Fudosan prize. We will keep you update with more about who were chosen as finalists at the event. Disclaimer: The author was one of the selection judges.  ↩

spacemarket-wins-top-award-at-risingexpo

See the original story in Japanese.

Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2014 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Tokyo-based Space Market, the startup that operates a venue rental marketplace under the same name, won the top prize at this year’s event.

Space Market lists unused or idle venues and allows users to pick one to rent on demand for business needs such as corporate meetings, shareholder meetings, training courses, and other events. Reservations are made online.

In addition to the top prize, the company also won two prizes from the event’s sponsors: the Recruit Career prize and the Sumitomo Fudosan prize. We will keep you update with more about who were chosen as finalists at the event.


  1. Disclaimer: The author was one of the selection judges.  ↩

CyberAgent Ventures now accepting startups to pitch at Rising Expo 2014 in Tokyo

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup-focused VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced on Monday that it has started accepting applications to pitch at Rising Expo 2014 in Japan, the company’s annual startup conference which will take place in Tokyo on August 8th. Some of our readers may recall that the company held Rising Expo 2013 last September, where mobile live-broadcasting app TwitCasting won the top prize. Unlike the event’s past editions, CyberAgent Ventures is hosting local preliminary rounds in four Asian cities (Jakarta, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo) prior to the main event. If you want to apply, your business should be already live and you should be exploring funding worth more than 100 million yen ($1 million). Startups passing the preliminary screening process will be invited to pitch to major Japanese VC firms and business executives.

rising-expo_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese startup-focused VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced on Monday that it has started accepting applications to pitch at Rising Expo 2014 in Japan, the company’s annual startup conference which will take place in Tokyo on August 8th.

Some of our readers may recall that the company held Rising Expo 2013 last September, where mobile live-broadcasting app TwitCasting won the top prize. Unlike the event’s past editions, CyberAgent Ventures is hosting local preliminary rounds in four Asian cities (Jakarta, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo) prior to the main event.

If you want to apply, your business should be already live and you should be exploring funding worth more than 100 million yen ($1 million). Startups passing the preliminary screening process will be invited to pitch to major Japanese VC firms and business executives.

15 Japanese startups pitch at Rising Expo 2013, TwitCasting takes top prize

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See our Japanese coverage of Rising Expo here On Friday, Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2013 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Last year smartphone-based credit card payment provider Coiney won the top prize of 2 million yen (about $20,000), and the startup subsequently raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures, and an individual angel investor. Among the 15 participating startups this time around, TwitCasting was chosen as the audience favorite by way of voting. TwitCasting is a mobile live-broadcasting application that was launched back in February of 2010. Its userbase is currently around 3 million, a larger total than Ustream currently has in Japan. Almost 20% of it user base comes from the overseas, and it is getting more and more popular in places like Brazil and the Middle East. It raised 64.8 million yen (approximately $648,000) from East Ventures and Japanese entrepreneur Masao Ito (who runs User Local). TwitCasting was pitched by Yosuke Akamatsu (@Yoski) of Moi Corp. For this competition, every single finalist had 10 minutes for their pitch, longer than most other startup events. This gave Akamatsu a chance to…

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See our Japanese coverage of Rising Expo here

On Friday, Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures held its annual Rising Expo 2013 event which showcased up-and-coming 15 startups to a crowd of local investors and entrepreneurs [1]. Last year smartphone-based credit card payment provider Coiney won the top prize of 2 million yen (about $20,000), and the startup subsequently raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, East Ventures, and an individual angel investor. Among the 15 participating startups this time around, TwitCasting was chosen as the audience favorite by way of voting.

twitcasting-at-risingexpo2013

TwitCasting is a mobile live-broadcasting application that was launched back in February of 2010. Its userbase is currently around 3 million, a larger total than Ustream currently has in Japan. Almost 20% of it user base comes from the overseas, and it is getting more and more popular in places like Brazil and the Middle East. It raised 64.8 million yen (approximately $648,000) from East Ventures and Japanese entrepreneur Masao Ito (who runs User Local).

TwitCasting was pitched by Yosuke Akamatsu (@Yoski) of Moi Corp. For this competition, every single finalist had 10 minutes for their pitch, longer than most other startup events. This gave Akamatsu a chance to explain the app’s user experience by showing a live online chat being broadcast by some high school girls. In a response to his question “Why you are TwitCasting”, the girls answered “Because its fun”. This impressed the audience a lot, possibly because typical middle-aged men usually have no chance to talk with young girls!

Like Coiney, which won the grand prize award at last year’s event, TwitCasting is expected to accelerate its global expansion and user acquisition moving forward.

To learn about all the other startups that pitched at Rising Expo, check out our overview below.

15 Startups from Rising Expo

1. Kosodate Share (co-operative childcare), pitched by Keiko Koda (Asmama)

This service allows you to ask other users in your neighborhood to take care of your children. Available tasks vary from babysitting to taking them to schools or kindergartens when you can’t manage. For parents, when you ask someone for a nursery task using the service, it will charge 500 yen (about $5) as a usage fee. The fee covers insurance in case of emergency, and which will ease your concerns about your child’s safety. To date the service has acquired more than 3,000 users.

rising-expo-2013-asmama

2. Conyac.cc, pitched by Naoki Yamada (Anydoor)

Conyac is a crowdsourced translation service for individual and corporate users. The company recently set up a San Francisco office and is intensifying its global service expansion. In terms of user demographic, the company’s major clients include buzz marketing sites, media websites, and social gaming studios. The startup has fundraised 40 million ($400,000) from United, Skylight Consulting, angel investor Anri Samata.

rising-expo-2013-conyac

3. Cafetalk, pitched by Kohtaro Hashizume (Small Bridge)

Cafetalk is a C2C marketplace focused on learning foreign languages online. The service itself does not provide any learning service but rather it connects teachers with students. To date it has acquired 15,000 students and 2,000 teachers who have posted more than 1,000 available lessons. The company has recently seen more than a few teachers who can make a living through this marketplace only. According to a Searchina interview with CEO Hashizume with, the service is in high demand among females in their 30s, who typically want to learn foreign languages as a hobby.

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4. Factelier, pitched by Toshio Yamada (Life Style Accent)

This startup claims to enable fashion enthusiasts buy Louis Vuitton-class fashions for prices as reasonable as Uniqlo. By eliminating the middleman between fashion retailers and clothing factories, the startup succeeded in bringing low-priced but high-quality Japan-made clothes to consumers worldwide. Prior to launching this startup, CEO Toshio Yamada worked at Gucci Paris when attending university, and he subsequently worked at Fashionwalker.com, one of Japan’s leading fashion e-commerce sites and the host of Tokyo Girls Collection. Readers may recall that my colleague Yukari Mitsuhashi previously spoke with him about how the company plans to change the industry.

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5. Kawaii Museum JPN, pitched by Taketo Tanaka

Kawaii Museum is a global platform for distributing Japanese character franchises. To date it has acquired more than 4 million likes on Facebook and several tens of thousand users for its Pinterest-like curation website. The startup is currently being developed by Ruby programmer Taketo Tanaka (below) who previously worked with DeNA. It was chosen back in March to be included in the fouth batch of KDDI Mugen Labo’s incubation program.

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6. Relux, pitched by Takaya Shinozuka (Loco Partners)

Relux is a satisfaction-guaranteed marketplace for Japanese inns. Every month its user number grows by 1.5 times, and the company expects to see more traffic from all around the world. To date the startup has received investments worth 60 million yen ($600,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Recruit Incubation Partners. You can also check out our previous interview with Shinozuka.

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7. Base, pitched by Yuta Tsuruoka (Base)

Base is a Shopify-like instant e-commerce platform developed by Project Liverty, a tech savvy team led by entrepreneur Kazuma Ieiri. Since its launch back in November of 2012, the company has acquired more than 40,000 merchants. It raised 23 million yen ($230,000) back in January, and is aiming to transact 100 million yen ($1 million) in deals by the end of this year.

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8. Event Regist, pitched by Kosuke Hirayama (Event Regist)

Event Regist provides a platform for event organizers to market their events and issue tickets online. The service is available in Japanese, English, Indonesian, Thai, and traditional Chinese. Many players are fiercely competing in C2C-based ticket deals (e.g. Ticket Street or Ticket Camp), and its B2C business is dominated by box office companies (e.g. Ticket Pia). So the startup has decided to focus on the B2B business model. It raised seed investment from East Ventures, Skyland Ventures, and Shinwa Agency back in June, and has exclusively handled ticket issuing for events like the Tokyo Game Show 2013 and CEATEC 2013 Japan.

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9. Ubiregi, pitched by Keita Kido

Ubiregi is a cloud-based POS (point of sales) system that uses an iPad at storefronts. Compared to conventional systems, it can be eailsy deployed and maintained, especially for individual merchants like small restaurants, standing bars, and accessory shops. The startup was launched by Keita Kido in August of 2010, and raised around 20 million yen (over $200,000) from Voyage Ventures and Kronos Fund. It also has a capital tie-up with SalesForce.com. To date it has acquired 7,000 merchants nationwide, with the expectation of reaching 20,000. That would account for 1% of the Japanese cash register market.

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10. WebPay, pitched by Kei Kubo (FluxFlex)

WebPay is an easy-to-install, API-based card payment solution for Japanese e-commerce companies. In order to give developers an easy interface for payments, the startup partnered with GMO Payment Gateway, one of the oldest and biggest payment processing companies in Japan. Upon its official launch, the company also received an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway.

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11. SLASH 7, pitched by Nobuhiro Hayashi (pLucky)

Slash–7 aims to gives website owners sophisticated data analysis for reasonable rates. Many executives at Japanese companies are becoming increasingly interested in making the most of big data analysis to improve their business. This company’s CEO believes it has an advantage over similar services (like Mixpanel) in terms of offering a variety of features for a cost. The company previously raised 20 million ($200,000) from CyberAgent Ventures and Incubate Fund.

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12. planBCD, pitched by Kenji Sudo (KAIZEN platform)

PlanBCD is a platform that helps developers improve the user interface of their web services. It provides developers with an A/B testing environment, especially useful for improving web content and interfaces. Using the service, you can also crowdsource the UI and UX improvement process. It raised seed funding worth $800,000 from Gree Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, and CyberAgent Ventures back in August.

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13. Seconds, pitched by Miku Hirano (Spicy Cinnamon)

Seconds is a mobile app for sharing photos between intimate friends or family members. You just take a photo, and choose your desired album for upload. Photos added are immediately visible to members who have access to that album, and those members can also upload pictures as well. The app was launched back in April, and it has acquired more than 40,000 users from three Asian countries in two months. It was incorporated in Singapore back in October and has engineers in HoChi Minh City (Vietnam) and Bangkok (Thailand). It received seed funding back in December from CyberAgent Ventures and other angel investors.

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14. TwitCasting (see above)

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15. Candy, pitched by Yosuke Fukada (Yoyo Holdings)

Incorporated in Singapore, this company plans to form a mobile economic ecosystem in emerging markets such as the Philippines. Since very few people pay with credit cards in these upcoming Southeast Asian markets, the company believes there are huge opportunities to cultivate business around monetary needs over there. Candy is a platform that gives users rewards which can be used to pay their cellphone bills in return for completing ‘microtasks’ such as participating in an online survey.

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  1. Disclaimer: I was involved in a preliminary screening process at the competition to choose the finalists with the other judges.  ↩