Japan’s Nikkei ¹ reports today that national TV network Fuji TV has founded a venture capital fund called Fuji Startup Ventures, or FSV for short. The fund will be worth about 1.5 billion yen (approximately $17 million) to invest in startups developing apps and services that can be integrated with TV programs.

Fuji TV has many subsidiaries including radio stations, mail-order businesses, music companies, and book publishers. They aim to create business synergies between their existing subsidiaries and tech startups they will subsequently invest in.

As Japan’s younger generation drifts away from watching TV, private TV broadcasters are now forced to create a new revenue stream in addition to their primary business.

In 2012, we saw Fuji TV embark on some other digital endeavors, including opening new online channels on YouTube, and even cooperating with Rovio for an Angry Birds web game on the Fuji TV website.

Crowdworks, a Tokyo-based startup providing a crowdsourcing platform that matches engineers and designers with job postings, announced today it has partnered with Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) to integrate its platform into a service called Yahoo Crowdsourcing.

Yahoo Crowdsourcing was unveiled as a beta service last year and seemed to gather a limited number of users for testing, but still only has been showing a teaser screen publicly. With this new integration, a part-time worker who takes on an interesting work project can now get Yahoo Japan’s reward points as compensation, which can then be used to to purchase many services on the Yahoo Japan site.

Our readers may recall that we previously featured this startup when it raised $3.75 million from three notable Japanese VC firms. They have brokered about $10 million worth of job matchings so far, and have more than 3,600 corporate clients ranging from listed companies to SMEs.

DropMyEmail, a Singapore-based startup providing cloud solutions for website and email backup, has announced a partnership with GMO Cloud, the cloud solution arm of one of Japan’s largest hosting providers, GMO Internet Group.

The partnership between the two companies includes capital tie-up, and the roll out of Dropmyemail’s business offering to GMO’s users in Japan. The startup’s founder and CEO John Fearon says that they are planning to setup a Japanese subsidiary in Tokyo and intend to explore other partnerships with telcos and data center operators in the Asian region. GMO Cloud is investing in the company, and while the exact figure is unspecified, we’re told that it’s a six figure sum.

DropMySite was launched in Singapore in August of 2011, and unveiled its e-mail backup service DropMyEmail last March. The startup acquired OrbitFiles, a US-based cloud backup solution site last June and has increased its presence in the North America region.

Tokyo-based startup Kamado Inc., which is running several web services including auction site Livlis and a photo curation site Clipie, was today acquired by Mixi (TYO:2121), Japan’s largest social network. The acquisition details haven’t been disclosed.

Kamado was launched in 2010 by Yuichi Kawasaki, the former vice president of Kyoto-based web juggernaut Hatena. Mixi is now thought to be struggling to find new monetization models, as it has 14 million users but is falling behind Facebook in terms of user activity. With this acquisition, Mixi is expected to gain some firepower in its service planning, and in its business development for smartphone-focused services.

Tokyo-based startup Entertainment Kick today launched a new web service called Voyagin, which allows you to discover authentic travel experiences, particularly in Southeast Asian countries. Our readers may remember that we previously featured a service called FindJPN, intended to help foreign visitors to discover travel experiences in Japan. Voyagin is something like an enhanced version of FindJPN but with a Southeast Asian focus.

Voyagin does have some competitors, however. Gidsy.com, SideTour.com, and Vayable.com all have their big presences in the travel experience marketplace. But most of them don’t have a wide variety of choices, especially in terms of travel experiences in Asia. So Voyagin is hoping to fill this vacuum, aspiring to take the lead in this niche market. They’ve already collected more than 350 travel experiences from locals in India and Southeast Asia countries as of today.

In terms of acquiring ‘activity organizers’ (the startup calls them ‘hosts’) who plan activities and post them on the website, the startup is interviewing locals face-to-face or over Skype in order to assure service quality before to approving them as organizers. According to the startup’s CEO Masashi Takahashi, almost 50 percent of these existing organizers introduce their friends as new organizers. Organizers can post their activities for free, and Voyagin takes a 15 percent commision every time a user buys one of the listed activities.

I think Voyagin may work as a platform to bring wealth from developed countries to local people in emerging economies in the Southeast Asia, and that would certainly be a positive side effect of such an initiative. So if you are considering buying a travel package this winter, especially one for the Southeast Asia region, it might be worth your while to explore some options on Voyagin.

Japanese VC firm Global Brain held its annual startup-focused conference in Tokyo last week, the 6th Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF). The firm and its limited-partner investor Nifty unveiled their future investment strategies. In addition, nine tech startups from Japan and the rest of Asia pitched to a Japanese crowd of angel investors, entrepreneurs, and local media.

We’d like to highlight one panel discussion in particular titled “Asian venture companies on track for growth.” Panelists included Gwendolyn Regina Tan (the co-founder of SGE.io, Singapore), Mark Hsu (partner at TMI, Taiwan/台湾創意工場 許安德先生), Mohan Belani (the co-founder of e27, Singapore), James Jung (the co-founder of beSuccess, Korea) and Willis Wee (the founder of Tech in Asia, Singapore/亜洲科技 黄心泉先生). The panel was moderated by Global Brain’s James Chan(陳亮宏先生).

Asian markets are diverse

Mark Hsu(許安德), partner at TMI

The session kicked off by emphasizing the market diversity in the region. “Asia is so huge,” Mark Hsu noted.

Even if we pick one country in South East Asia to talk about, there are many different views [which we cannot apply to] the entire region together. But the ratio of a country’s population to its GDP is a good index to find how much potential a country has. For instance, Myanmar has 55 million people with a GDP of 70 US dollars a month per capita, and Indonesia has 240 million people with its GDP per capita at $300 dollars a month. A country’s population and productivity index lets you easier to understand the state of the country. Thailand’s economic growth is extremely fast now.

e27’s Mohan Belani also pointed out Thailand, calling it “one of the fastest countries in terms of the speed of spreading internet infrastracture in Southeast Asia.

Willis Wee(黄心泉), TechInAsia

James Jung from BeSuccess proudly introduced his country, noting, “Korea’s internet penetration rate is as high as 91 percent, and our mobile penetration rate also high as 70 percent.”

Tech in Asia’s Willis Wee says, “I’m interested in Vietnam. Facebook and Twitter are highly widespread in Indonesia too, and it will be the next big one after mainland China.”

Gwendolyn Regina Tan from SGE argued for Myanmar’s potential and said, “Its infrastructure is not well-prepared, but the country has many investors and a big population, which means there’s a high potential for rapid growth.”

One thing all panelists appeared to agree on was the region’s high potential to develop further.

The gap in broadband availability and online payments

Moderator James Chan moved on to the next topic about internet infrastructure and online payment issues in the region, with special consideration to the fact that in some countries in Asia a majority are still using feature phones.

Mohan Belani, co-founder of e27

All panelists pointed out the fact that in some regions payments are still made via mail and very few people use credit card payments. TMI’s Mark Hsu says,

In Taiwan, convenience stores have spread around the country since about 10 years back. But now, the number of e-commerce sites have exceeded the number of convenience stores and department stores. Most of e-commerce sites can accept credit card payments but customers tend to pay at a convenience store and pick up what they’ve ordered online there.

e27’s Mohan further adds:

Most Thai people don’t have a credit card, but they do have a bank account, so they can buy something online and pay by debit card.

The e-commerce business is trending now in Southeast Asia, and banks are intensifying investments in developing infrastructure which at this point is still inadequate. Broadband availability differs from country to country, and there’s a big gap in terms of online market opportunities.

Willis Wee explains:

Everyone should see not only consider [high-capacity] broadband countries [1] but also “non-laptop” countries. In these “non-laptop” countries, people usually don’t have laptops but mobile penetration rates are extremely high. Entrepreneurs have to recognize these market gaps and discover business opportunities by filling needs or addressing gaps.

Venture capitals and the surrounding environment in Asia is not yet mature

James Jung(정현욱), co-founder of beSuccess, Korea

James Jung from beSuccess points out:

Korea has more than 500 angel investors. Our startup ecosystems are working closely with the US, and there are many cases where US-based companies have invested in Korean startups. Similar to Singapore, the Korean government is also proactively involved in helping startups in their growth.

e27’s Mohan adds:

The state of VC firms in Singapore is not yet mature. Startups can get support from big enterprises but there are still few angel investors there. That’s why VC firms provide hands-on support for early-stage startups as well as funding.

He says this is where angel investors should take the lead, in his view. TMI’s Mark compares this with his region:

[Like] Singapore, Taiwan does not have many angel investors. We have highly-skilled engineering talents which have not yet discovered from our workforce pool. Cyber Agent Ventures has come to Taiwan, and Japanese companies are keeping their eyes on the startup trends in Taiwan.

SGE’s Gwendolyn says:

We need more time to mature the market. For entrepreneurs, news like a startup [emerging] from our country to make a successful exit could motivate them to launch their startups.

For Southeast Asian countries, there are many things to learn from Japan

Gwendolyn Regina Tan, co-founder of SGE.io

For the fourth topic, the panel discussed the relationship between Southeast Asia and Japan. They pointed out that entrepreneurs place too much emphasis on Silicon Valley, and need to be more conscious of discovering market potential in Asian countries. The region has more than double the population of the US, and more big deals and more business partnerships could be made if the region was unified and every country worked well together. They say, every startup community in Asia has to have a sense of unity, and they would like to explore how we further impact the entire startup ecosystems and unify the market.

e27’s Mohan points out that “Japan has an important role for startups in Southeast Asia. It is one of the best place for fostering entrepreneurs and IPOs.”

Likewise SGE.io’s Gwendolyn adds that “Japanese working abroad motivate us a lot. I’d like to learn how Japan brings innovation. In many aspects, there are many things to learn, and we’d like to share with many people what we’ve learned from Japan.”

BeSuccess’s James says:

Kakao Talk has acquired 70 million users worldwide, and Japan has Line [2]. [This base of users] will definitely generate a lot of business chances.

Willis focused on the affinity of Japanese companies for SEA markets, and closed the session saying that,

Good products from Japan may bring great impact to Southeast Asia. Additionally, there are many things to learn from insights and knowledge that Japanese entrepreneurs have. Moreover, we can learn a lot from the fact that Japanese companies are good at expanding business overseas. I hope there will be more cases where Southeast Asia and Japan can work collaboratively.

A big thanks to Shintaro Eguchi for his awesome write-up over on Startup Dating.

Tokyo-based startup Nana Music has finally introduced a global version of its iPhone app. It allows users to sing, play songs, and collaborate with other users on their Nana platform. The app was launched two months ago, but has been for Japan only up until now. The service has acquired more than 4,400 users and has seen over 10,000 recorded posts since then.

The new version is designed to fit iPhone 5′s longer screen, and it’s now integrated with Twitter and Facebook. The maximum recording time has also been extended from 60 to 90 seconds.

The startup has introduced some user interviews with some users, including a university student/amateur singer and a karaoke girl. They hope this may motivate you to give their music collaboration service a try.

Readers may recall reading our past coverage about the app, which gives a little more background about the startup’s journey thus far. Get the new global version of Nana app here in the App Store.

Crowdworks, a Tokyo-based startup providing a crowdsourcing platform that matches engineers and designers with job postings, just announced today that it has raised a total amount of $3.75 million (300 million yen) from Itochu Technology Ventures, Digital Garage, and Suneight Investment.

The service was launched in March of this year, and has acquired more than 2,000 corporate clients who are posting jobs on the platform. So far projects worth more than $8 million have been matched in the six months since the launch.

Since before launching the startup, Crowdworks’s CEO, Koichiro Yoshida, has been helping his clients set up their business in Vietnam and China. Their business model is basically facilitating job requests and matching between developed and developing countries. In other words, they are bringing jobs from corporate users in the US and Japan to freelance engineers and designers in the South East Asia region.

Mr. Yoshida tells me that this effort helps eliminate income disparities between developed and developing countries. With the funds raised, is keen to intensify business expansion in Vietnam, the Phillipines, mainland China, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Silicon Valley.

Moso, a Tokyo-based startup that developed the online video effect app that wowed us at our Startup Asia Jakarta event this year, has just released a new iPhone app for video messaging with your buddies, called Vidssage. The name fuses together ‘video’ and ‘message’ – its core feature.

It allows you to create a video with special effects – and also provides lots of templates in the app – so that you can easily send your friends a professional-looking and well-edited video message in an instant way. Just like sending text messages.

Moso was founded in 2012 by globe-trotting video DJ and tech entrepreneur Shinji Murakoshi. After his experience with the Mac-only Moso app, he recognized the need to develop not a desktop app but a mobile app – and, even better, something that’s social. It seems he and his team have taken several months to accomplish this feat with Vidssage, a product that’s a sort of Whatsapp that focuses on videos, not words or emoticons.

Find the free Vidssage app for iPhone in the App Store.

This one-minute promotional video of VidMessage, starring pop-culture artist/photographer Julie Watai, is worth seeing:

(Video link for mobile readers)

Recruit Media Lab, a research arm of Japan’s largest human resources and classified ad company, released an iPhone camera app with a variety of filter effects last week. It’s called Cameran, and it has, quite remarkably, recorded a half million downloads in just three days since its release. It now ranks atop the ‘free’ sections in app stores for Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

The camera app was developed under the supervision of Mika Ninagawa, a female photographer and film director who’s known for her works filled with red flowers, goldfish, and landscapes.  The app has 23 photo filters and allows you to add effects to your own pictures.

According to reactions in social media and the blogosphere, Cameran seems to be winning over women, particularly those in their 20s and 30s, as there looks to be a large base a people who love Miss Ninagawa’s aesthetic style.

Check out the Cameran demo video below, courtesy of the good folks over at AppBank:

Japan’s first-ever smarphone-based credit card processing service Coiney has just launched today. Instead of conventional credit authorisation terminals (CAT), the company provides merchants with a small attachement that can be connected to an iPhone and enables card processing by swiping their customer’s card.

Merchants are not required to pay any installation or registration fee, but there is a 4 percent commission (including the card processing fee and card acquirer’s charge) for the purchases made over the platform. For now, it can accept Visa and MasterCard and allows customers to complete their payments by signing their name on the iPhone’s display.

Potential users of this service/device are local merchants with less than 10 employees, and door-to-door sales businesses in need of mobile terminals for credit card purchases.

Coiney was founded by ex-Paypal Japan employee Naoko Samata and won the top prize at Rising Expo 2012, a startup showcase competition event held by CyberAgent Ventures last month. She has been looking at payment solutions in other parts of the world, and found that Japanese providers are still behind their counterparts in the US. This motivated her to invent a new product of her own. They also plan to introduce an Android app for the service in 2013.

From the left: Takamasa Matsumoto (software designer), Naoko Samata (CEO/founder), and David Asikin (engineer lead)

1. WHILL type-A, by WHILL – chosen as the best in the batch
2. Sparta
3. Onegai Company, by Actcat
4. Mashroom.fm
5. Smakul, by Hungry
6. Jam, by Rena

1. WHILL type – A (by WHILL – chosen as the best in the batch)

This vehicle helps individuals with physical disabilities move more easily, and reach locations beyond their regular comfort level. The team has developed Whill with the aim of making its users feel better. It’s designed in compliance with Japanese traffic laws, and allows users to drive on public roads without a driver’s license.

This product has come from Campfire, Japan’s Kickstarter-like crowdfunding site, where they fundraised about $13,000. With the money, they plan to produce the first 100 units and put them up for sale in December. The team includes engineers who previously worked at Nissan Motors, Sony, and Olympus.

The WHILL Team and their prototype.

2. Sparta

Sparta is a Photoshop-like platform that allows 3D graphic artists to easily operate a point cloud (3D coordinate) system without learning programming skills. Using only a tablet and a pen, artists can create their works. The startup plans to monetize the service by charging licensing fees from to users, providing a storage option and sharing revenues at an asset store, which would also let users to sell their art/designs online. This product raised about $7,300 on Campfire from 86 people, and 43 of those purchased the service. The development team includes computer graphics engineers who previously worked in visual effects for movies.

3. Onegai Company, by Actcat

This smartphone app allows you to post a task that you want other users to do for you. By leaving a comment for you, someone can get rewards that can be used to buy ice cream, smartphone peripherals, etc. The team launched the app just a month ago but have already acquired more than 28,000 users. It’s currently available on the iTunes app store and Google Play.

4. Mashroom.fm

This web service is intended for music-lovers in the US. For example, if you upload your guitar track, you can overlap it on top of other tracks (using other instruments) which other users have posted. Thus the service allows you to arrange a jam session in the app regardless of where you are. The team is working on partnering with instrument manufacturers and others in the music industry.

Mashroom targets music-loving consumers in the US.

5. Smakul, by Hungry

This smartphone app helps local merchants develop their own website optimized for smartphone browsing. You don’t need a desktop or laptop, but by simply entering your business’s phone number, the app will automatically put together a business profile, including things like your location. You can generate your website in this way through this very simple procedure. A survey says 85 percent of people who have visited merchant websites have given up their browsing when they find no smartphone-optimized version. Impressively, the team has acquired more than 100 merchants since their launch just a week ago.

6. Jam, by Rena

This smartphone app allows you to invite your friends to a party or gathering. For a given event, the app helps you invite friends with the push of a button. The development team conducted a survey which showed that people often wanted to invite their friends out, but felt the process was cumbersome because their contacts are stored across several different apps and services such as Facebook, e-mails, and Twitter. The app allows you to send them all a message regardless of which app their details are stored in.

Jam helps you invite your friends to go hang out.

Meanwhile, the Open Network Lab has launched two new incubation spaces. One is in its headquarters in Ebisu, and the other in Kamakura. Its Kamakura space has a facility with 24 desks and a great view of the ocean. It’s a great environment where entrepreneurs can concentrate and cultivate new, innovative ideas. These facilities are basically open for the alumnus and current startups, but visitors can drop in too. These are another must-visit spots for entrepreneurs who will travel to Tokyo.

Open Network Space in Daikanyama

Open Network Space in Kamakura

Japanese social gourmet site/ restaurant finder Retty just announced that it has raised a total of $1.2 million from GREE Ventures, NTT Investment-Partners, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. The startup has not disclosed  how many shares were allocated to each of the investors.

Until today, the service has acquired about 90,000 users, and 90,000 restaurant entries. This means it has a larger collection than other Japanese gourmet sites such as Hotpepper and GuruNavi, Retty CEO Kazuya Takeda says.

Similarly to the ‘like’ button on Facebook, the service has a button on each of restaurant entry which allows you to say that you’d like to dine there. Users have performed this action more than 400,000 times, and it’s growing at 130 percent each monthly.

Using the fund, they expect to increase their staff, intensify development and marketing efforts, and also to start international business expansion in the US and Singapore. As for the rest of Asia, that will start around the spring of 2013.

Readers may remember last year when we reported that Retty raised $285,000 from Cyber Agent Ventures as their first round of funding.

Retty's English version (currently under development)

Tokyo startup Nana Music has just introduced an iPhone app (currently only available in Japan) that allows users to sing, play songs, and collaborate with other users on their Nana platform. It’s still a beta version but it is expected to release its official English version, launching worldwide within in the next two months.

With voices and sounds recorded with smartphone microphones, the app allows users to share and mix their audio with other users on the platform. The startup aims to bring new users the experience of singing with someone and enables one to even team up with a band or a choir — even with people living far away in different parts of the world.

The founder is aspiring professional singer and Kobe-raised entrepreneur Akinori Fumihara a.k.a. Unio (meaning an ‘urchin man’ in Japanese). He was deeply inspired by “We are the World 25 for Haiti,” a charity relief song from 2010, and co-founded the startup with four other music lovers.

Their idea was unveiled for the first time at the TechCrunch Tokyo 2011 Conference which showcased notable 11 Japanese startups last November. The team was chosen to participate in Movida Japan’s acceleration program, a Japanese startup incubator, and won the grand prize at an (unofficial) preliminary pitch event at SXSW 2012.

As an organizing member of Tokyo’s local tech community, I often get contacted from foreign entrepreneurs and investors who are coming to Japan. In order to help make their visit more fun I would like to take them to notable attractions in Tokyo, since Tokyo is a part of my daily life it can be hard for me to anticipate what might best entertain them, especially in terms of experiencing authentic Japanese culture.

FindJPN may be a solution to this problem [1]. The Tokyo-based startup, and an alumni of Open Network Lab (a sort of Japanese version of Y-combinator), is almost one year old. I tried to learn a little more about its business strategy in an interview with the startup’s founder and CEO Masashi Takahashi.

Please tell us a little about yourself and what led you to launch FindJPN?

When I attended Keio University SFC (Shonan Fujisawa Campus), I was running an NPO that encouraged amateur cameramen to shoot videos and air them on community channels to help revitalize the local community and economy. But it was an NPO and I found no way to monetize. In order to learn how the monetization process works, I worked with a consulting firm called A.T. Kerney after graduating from the university. In 2008, a friend of mine launched a startup called Coach United, providing private lessons for those who wish to learn English, illustration, guitar playing, etc. I decided to join them. This is a sort of O2O (online-to-offline) matching service that connects private teachers with potential students, and I’ve been working with them for three years.

Coach United has been a good business, but I’ve been seeking a new idea and a chance to launch my own startup. I’m sure that it’s worth giving foreign visitors authentic travel experiences which they have never experienced before. That’s why I launched FindJPN last August and applied for a startup acceleration program by Open Network Lab. Now we have an independent office with a team of five members and are working on further system development and business expansion.

How does the system work?

The system has basically two different log-in modes, an activity organizer and a user. Users can find attractions which they want to experience simply by browsing our website. They can pay in advance using PayPal or a credit card prior to leaving for Japan or even during their stay in Tokyo.

We currently have almost 150 sets of attractions provided by activity organizers such as individual travel guides, calligraphy teachers, yoga instructors and cooking instructors. They usually have their own customers but they put their activities on our website in order to fill up vacancies in their classes and acquire new customers. But their basic intention includes letting visitors experience Japanese culture and learn English conversation through the activities. Their listed prices include our commission, which is our main revenue source.

Compared to existing travel agencies, why not arrange accommodation or transport for your customers? Could that bring more revenue?

Our business is a niche. We do not intend to compete with [in that space] but rather partner with [those companies]. Furthermore, we need to have a license to arrange package tours and deals with accommodation or transport ticketing under the Japanese travel business law.

Do you have any screening process when approving postings from your activity organizers?

Absolutely. In order to ensure the [quality and variety] of activity postings, we talk with them on a face-to-face basis or over Skype prior to approval.

CEO Masashi Takahashi explains about FindJPN at Open Network Lab

Is there any competitor with a similar business?

As far as I know, there’s one called Vayable.com. It’s a San Francisco-based startup which launched in April of 2011 and is backed by Y-Combinator. But we’re really focusing on providing authentic Japanese experiences to the world at this point, and that’s unique.

Can you tell us something about your future plans?

We have several plans at this point. But first of all, what we can do is provide activities in the Tokyo metropolitan area. By encouraging activity organizers in the rest of the country to join our platform, we would like to present more posts about activities happening in many cities.

Second, we would like to make the service available in multiple languages. Currently we are only in English but our users include people from the US, Australia, Singapore, Germany, and Scandinavian countries.

Third, we want to work together with our potential partners such as hotel chains, travel agencies, and online travel reservation sites such as Trip Advisor and Expedia. Our business will not conflict with theirs, and we’ll able to pay them commissions when they sell our activities on their websites.

Are you offering anything special for users right now?

Yep. We’re currently running a promotion campaign where you can win cash. If our user encourages a friend to sign up for our service, that user can win ten dollars when the friend purchases any travel activities on the website.

We’re also working on developing new things which may attract more users. We can’t disclose what it is yet, but it will be unveiled later this year or in the beginning of next year. So please stay tuned.

After the last year’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami, Japan’s travel industry has been struggling. Local hotel owners are often complaining about bad businesses. However, there are more ways to acquire visitors by giving them more additional attractions, and FindJPN may be a good way for them to do so.

But more recently the startup has introduced a new iPhone app called Cake the Reader, which is a Facebook reader app that allows you to browse and comment on your Facebook newsfeed (pictured below). Featuring impressive smoothness when you flick over posts and switch Facebook groups, the app has hit third spot in the social networking category of the Apple App Store in Japan only two days since its launch on August 3rd. Currently it is only outranked by NHN Japan’s Line and Facebook’s native smartphone app.

The Facebook smartphone app is widely reviled and mocked for its poor responsiveness. While this new Cake app limits its features only to browsing/commenting/liking your newsfeeds and participating groups, it does all that very smoothly. The theory in its limited feature-set being that these functions are good enough to cover nearly all of what you want to do with Facebook.

According to the Wondershake’s CEO, Satoshi Suzuki, the app was developed thanks to a sudden inspiration they had back at a hackathon event at Open Network Lab last February. The startup team had been trying to develop another app but shifted its efforts to improving the communication tool that everyone was using 24/7 but still consistently complained about.

In addition to this project, just last April the startup also launched a casual kind of portal for event organizing and ticketing called Tsudoi (web/iOS app).

With this fundraising, the startup intends to enhance features of the Lounge app and intensify further development of Sticker Maker, an iOS app allowing users to send their friends animated stickers via MMS. The Sticker Maker app reached top spot in the SNS category on the iTunes app store in Thailand with more than 100,000 active users. The Lounge app also got lots of attention from Thai consumers during the last several months as well.

It was not disclosed exactly how much money the startup raised and how much shares have been allocated to the new share holders. Prior to the fundraising, the startup appointed Mr. Jun Ogawa as its director, an executive officer at Tokyo’s well-known tech incubator Motion Beat (previously known as ngi Inc).

Quan is in a unique/awkward position as it is collaborating and at the same time competing with other chat apps. But Quan founder and CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno did tell me that Quan will be changing its strategy from competing to collaborating with other chat apps. My speculative guess is that Lounge will not be able to keep up with the growing usage of WeChat, LINE, and KakaoTalk (in which Tencent invested) and so the Sticker Maker App could serve as a product to ride on that wave instead of competing head on. Anyway, stay tuned for a review of the sticker app later [2].

Our readers can find our past interview with Mr. Mizuno, which was conducted in Tokyo last January.

‘Feel On!‘ was introduced as an iPhone app last year, and it allows you to see someone’s tweet with an emotion by using a cartoon illustration according to the context of the tweet (some readers may recall that we’ve previously wrote about the app back in April). There has been no version so far for tweets in a non-Japanese language, but finally the English version of the app for Android was introduced last week, and it is available for download on Google Play. The English supported iOS version will be coming up very soon.

The app was created by Tokyo-based startup L is B Corporation, whose name stands for ‘Life is Beautiful.’  The startup’s CEO/founder Taisuke Yokoi was previously working with Just Systems which is known for having developed one of the most used pronunciation-based Chinese character input systems for the Japanese language. His experience at that company contributes a lot to developing the SEE (social emotion engine) which makes it possible for the app to understand what kind of emotion a user has by analyzing the words in his or her tweet.

The engine previously could only handle Japanese tweets, but to tackle the English language, the startup set up a new lab in Montreal, Canada, a city that sits on two language communities in English and French.  With the English version, they are planning to expand their business in the South East Asia region, and I’ve heard that Mr. Yokoi would like to set up another local office in Singapore to develop a Chinese version which may attract the large number of Twitter users in the region.

Last year in June, Feel On was given the first prize at SF New Tech Japan Night, which is a one-night pitch event in San Francisco for Japanese startups who want to be more global.

Note: Mr. Yokoi’s father passed away last week. Our thoughts are with him and his family.

Tokyo-based social game developer Gumi announced Monday that it has partnered with Shinsei Bank and set up a fund for investing in game developers in mainland China and Singapore. Japan’s economic daily Nikkei reports the fund is expected to invest in developers who are aiming at developing apps and games for consumers in North America. During the next two years, the two companies intend to invest in 10 to 15 companies, with about 10-30 million yen ($125,000 to $375,000) for each investment. Gumi is investing 50 million yen and Shinsei contributes 300 million yen ($3.75 million) to the fund.

Gumi established their local subsidiary in Singapore in April, and appointed David Ng Meng Wah as the president. He previously served as an executive at Electric Arts APAC and Malay conglomerate Dijaya.

The company’s CEO/founder Hironao Kunimitsu tells us he aspires to make his venture into a top social developer in the world gaming market, and the investment is one of their strategies to obtain high potential game titles and talented resources from the region.

Shinsei Bank was originally founded almost 60 years ago as a LTCB (Long-term Credit Bank of Japan) but went bankrupt and was nationalized in 1998. Then it was privatized and taken over by US-based private equity firm Ripplewood in 2000, and now most of its shareholders are institutional non-Japan investors.

In order to use the service, users are required to rent a Windows mobile device as a scanner. When an employee comes back to his/her office, they set the cards collected on the device to have them scanned. Scanned images are securely transfered via the Internet to Sansan where operators are standing to enter profiles.

Recently the company introduced a new style of a business card-based human relationship management platform specifically designed for individual users. It’s called Eight. It’s integrated with Facebook, Google+ and Mixi, and available via an iPhone app as well as on the desktop. If you have a connection with someone on any of the supported social networks, they will be automatically connected on the Eight platform as well. Their profiles will be listed as your contacts with the scanned images of their business cards.

If you meet someone whom you have never no contact on social networks, you may capture an image of their card with the app, and they will be connected with you after the company completes the data entry process based on the card image transfer. The process is totally manual, but the company charges no fee to the users because it intends to find a variety of potential business opportunities through the service. They have know-how on cost reduction and human operations, Sansan’s marketing manager Hiroshi Edward Senju explains.

They have launched the service in Japan first, and are planning to expand it to Asian countries next year, where exchanging business cards tends to be a little more important than in the rest of the world.

 

It’s a very simple process that doesn’t require programming skills. Screen sequences on the emulation platform are animated and enabled with HTML5 and JavaScript. Runtime excutable programs for the both smartphone platforms will be compiled on the cloud-based service, and can be exported. You can then submit it to the iPhone app store or the Android App Market, making it available to the public.

Asial's CEO Tanaka Pitches at Startup Dating Salon (Feb 22, 2012)

Prior to unveiling the app at DEMO Asia, which is currently taking place in Singapore, Asial’s founder and CEO Masahiro Tanaka came to Startup Dating Salon, a networking event happening every Wednesday in Tokyo, where he presented his idea:

With the integration of PhoneGap, an opensource smartphone app developement  framework by Nitobi (acquired by Adobe Systems last October), developers are allowed to integrate their apps with handset-embeded features like the camera, GPS, and motion sensor. Our platform is not appropriate for developing fully-featured apps, but I believe this give non-programmers a good option to develop light-weight apps with their own hands.

Mr. Tanaka also revealed his team has been working long and hard to complete the platform, and he believes no other vendors could easily develop a similar environment that simplifies app development processes.

Asial Corporation is now visiting Singapore and he just presented about the platform at the Launch Startup pitching session of DEMO Asia today.

Asial is a web app and smartphone app developer founded in 2002 by the CEO Tanaka and his classmates at the graduate school at the University of Tokyo. He was born in Japan, but raised in Dallas and Los Angeles. He was well-known for introducing freeware and shareware while attending high school.

We recently had an opportunity to interview the startup’s CEO/founder Young-wook Kou.

What made you introduce this app and this new feature? 

Prior to launching my own startup, I’ve been working at Movida Japan, an incubation office by well-known angel investor Taizo Son. Then I launched a web app called TwitMarket, which helps people to exchange updates on selling goods they don’t need and buying others which they need. Due to some [unforeseen] reasons, I closed it more than a year ago, but as you remember, there was the massive earthquake attack in the Tohoku region on March 11 last year. I tried to find what I could do to help the disaster victims and serve our local community. I launched a website delivering updates on what the victims need by customizing the previously running web service, I named it ‘Twit for You.’ It was launched in a week after the quake hit and has helped match more than 2,000 sets of people in their needs for assistance and utility goods.

I planned ‘Twit for You’ to be a time-limited service, and I thought I would shut it down after a little while if the victims no longer exchanged information. But we keep operating the service because we had many who were asking for it to continue. PepperMeet can be considered as some sort of a [derivation] from the two apps, TwitMarket and Twit for You, and I’ve been positioning it as a mobile app.

How many users do you have?

We have 10,000 users now (as of the middle of Feb 2012). But I would like to reach 400,000 users by the end of the next fiscal year, which is March 2013.

The app is available in four languages — English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Are you planning to target any market other than Japan?

Sure. I have a plan to deploy a massive promotion in my home country of Korea this coming March. I also would like to get into the Chinese market, but the app adopts Facebook Login to authenticate users, so I should develop another interface that allows Chinese users to login with RenRen or QQ login. I’m now considering when is the best to start working on it.

How do you monetize?

By advertising and receiving OEM service orders from potential corporate clients who are interested in having a fully-customized version of the location-based app for their marketing. We can put their brand logo on the app. When you launch the app and try to find other users or your friends nearby, the logo will appear in a selection of friends, and you will be able to navigate to the nearest shop or branch of the brand if you prefer.

Why did you come to Japan to launch the startup?

Several years ago, the Korean government lifted the ban on Japanese culture (Korea was colonized by Japan before WWII, and the government subsequently had strictly banned selling or broadcasting Japanese literature, movies and TV dramas), so that we were allowed to watch Japanese dramas and commercial films on TV. I was so impressed with the high quality of those works, and that drove me to come to Tokyo. Just in four days after finishing service in the Korean army, I came to Japan and started working with a TV program production in Tokyo. But a couple of years ago, when I was looking at the social game industry in the middle of the boom, I thought it has had many people hooked because of game addiction. I wanted to make a change and do something to make the world better. That’s why I started working at Movida Japan, and then [eventually] launched my own startup.

Rocket Start consists of three people in total: Mr. Kou as CEO, US-based New Zealander Zane David as a UX designer, and Korea-based Jason as the chief developer.  The startup fundraised 5 million yen (approximately $62,000) from Tokyo-based seed investor Samurai Incubate last October.

We can’t disclose a lot about it at the moment, but we’ve heard a new accelerator program in Korea will soon start encouraging Korean startups to go abroard. Mr. Kou expects to help a lot of them make their businesses successful in Japan. I’m looking forward to see how his app spreads out in the Asian region, and I hope he can bridge the startup communities in these two countries going forward.

See Also:

• Kou Youngwook: Realizing Dreams | the People behind the Paper.li

Earlier this week, Tokyo-based startup Kaditt introduced an iPhone app (available in English and Japanese) that allows users to discover places to visit based on your friends’ recommendation. It’s called Freco, which is a combination of the two words, friends and recommend. The app allows you to disocover places to visit from a selection of sight-seeing and dining spots recommended by like-minded people you know on Facebook, Twitter, and Mixi.

The startup calls it a “location-focused social bookmarking service.” You can save sites and shops that you fancy as a “card” with their geographical profiles and pictures, and then share them with your followers.

As you discover posts about interesting places on the app, you can express your enthusiasm by pressing one of four buttons: cute, cool, tasty and nice. Your choice is collected by the app’s server in the background, generating a relationship map with you and the people you follow called a Trust Graph. This gives you a feed from like-minded people and serves up more accurate recommendations. The startup expects to monetize by partnering with street retailers and merchants, giving discount coupons to users depending on location, which is detected by the app.

The startup’s CEO Naoki Kadouchi explains that the app is targeting the ‘F1 layer,’ which are women in their early 20′s. With the launch of the app, they set up a showcase introducing a variety of places to visit recommended by female university students in Tokyo.

The startup focused on making the coolest user interface to attract that particular demographic. In accordance with how much you are attracted by a post, you may press a ‘like” button up to seven times, and animated music notes will come up on the app when you tap the button.

Naoki Kadouchi used to work with Proctor and Gamble and has been running a social network business using video distribution and e-commerce while attending university.

The company was commended with high honors at CyberAgent Ventures’ bi-annual startup competition event Startups 2011 Spring, winning the right to receive financial and physical support from the firm.

They plan to introduce an Android app sometime soon, and are hoping to expand the service from Japan to North America and Taiwan, targeting one million users in six months.

Earlier this week, Tokyo-based startup EverConnect unveiled its web app that allows you to check out posts and tweets from multiple social network accounts on a single screen. It’s called Everconnect.Me, and so far it has fundraised a total of 15 million yen (about $193,000) from three investors, Voyage Group, NetAge, and Neptune Group.

The web service aggregates messages and posts from Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare, and plans to integrate with more social network platforms soon. It is expected to launch in beta tomorrow, and only invited users are allowed to sign up for the service. To receive an invitation, you will be requested to register on their website, press the ‘like’ button on their Facebook fan page, follow their Twitter account, or receive an invitation from existing users. The first 100k applicants can receive a complimentary premium account.

The startup’s founder/CEO Yutaka Shinohara explains:

As our email messaging services transition to the cloud, users became more free to use messaging without thinking about the background mess. But today, we turn to using a variety of social media, and have been forced to use different networks to reach a specific contact, in accordance with whichever network he or she belongs to. [This really means] we are no longer free. We just wanted to launch an aggregation service that allows us to use multiple social network platforms more openly.

CEO Shinohara Pitches at Startup Dating Salon (Feb 8, 2012)

The service is targeting users outside Japan as it is provided entirely in English. The company will use the money fundraised especially for hiring new talent, and for adding new features which will help it push into the global market.

The startup was founded in September of 2010 by Mr. Shinohara, who previously worked with Tokyo-based secure messaging vendor Zenlok Corporation. They were chosen as one of Red Herring’s Top 100 Asia Winner and Global Finalist in 2011, and also won the second place at the Innovation Weekend Grand Finale, a startup competition by Tokyo- and Silicon Valley-based incubator Sunbridge Venture Habitat.

Tokyo-based serial entrepreneur and web service producer Kazuma Ieiri has brought us yet another entertaining web app.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. And here in Japan, it’s a sort of “custom” that women give chocolate to their boyfriends or male co-workers. Now we have an app that allows us (boys/men) to easily choose the girl of your fancy by entering her Twitter account and asking her for chocolate. It’s called Chocokure. If she accepts your request, she pays 500 yen (or just over $6) for a gift package, that will be delivered to you, so you can enjoy a sweet treat from her.

I should also note that a team of web developers and designers called Mochrom have coincidentally been working on developing a similar service to Mr. Ieiri’s. In order to prevent user traction conflict and the possibly of being labeled a copy-cat, they decided not to release their app. The team’s service lists portraits of the girls who have joined, and they can compete in rankings according to how many chocolate requests they’ve received from male users. But regrettably this service won’t be released.

It’s a little funny that men always seem to be thinking the same things…

At the time of writing more than 2,500 packages are ready to be ordered via Ieiri’s web app. He previously co-founded a Tokyo-based web hosting company called Paper Boy & Co (which originated in Fukuoka, and was later acquired by GMO Internet), developed a number of web services including Japan’s kickstarter-like patronage platform Campfire last year. He has also been committed to helping potential entrepreneurs launch fun apps and services that may make our community more lively and entertained.

We had a chance to interview the startup’s co-founder and CEO Naka and asked her a little bit more about the service, as well as some of the details behind it.

Wantedly originally launched as a platform to find like-minded co-workers for projects. Did you pivot from this to make it to a social recruiting platform?

When we launched the website at first, we intended to see how many people were interested in our service and how the demographic looked. We wanted to see it in the beta phase.  We got 12,000 users and confirmed that the largest part was entrepreneurial individuals aged from 25 to 34.

There are a number of web services that help people find jobs and help employers find talent.  What made you decide to launch the service into that space?

From my point of view, Linkedin, which is often quoted as one of the best-known options for recruiting, is an online resume and works well for job seekers to introduce themselves to potential employers and for talent seekers to find potential employees. Likewise for online job board sites.  In order to give our clients opportunities to find high-skilled talents, our approach is to reach people who are neither seeking jobs nor interested in changing their jobs.

We would be grateful if the service can help more people learn about other jobs that they have never seen before.  We want to call it a job version of AirBnB. This does not focus on introducing users to our clients but making a web-based catalog that showcases jobs from clients which will get users’ attention. We’ve strictly chosen which companies can be featured on the website, and they are basically organizations we know well and believe in. We do not deliver money but rather the culture of our clients to the users.

The service is available via Facebook authentication, and only corporate users which have reached the startup’s standard are allowed to make posts for gathering people (from among individual users) for having power lunches, inviting co-workers, organizing hackathons, and offering contact-based jobs. If you are interested in joining a task or a project described in the post, you can raise your hand by pressing the ‘apply button.’ Some projects are open only to the users who have a Facebook friend working with the company who has posted, which improves the quality of each post and makes users more comfortable when applying.

Prior to launching the service, Miss Naka was previously working with Goldman Sachs and Facebook Japan, and released an illustration posting site called Magajin as her weekend startup project. She has mastered Ruby-on-Rails in order to develop the app, which is running on Heroku.

[Hat-tip to] Ryuichi Nishida of TechCrunch Japan for his awesome story (in Japanese) about the startup.

Other Japan-made picture decoration apps (such as Decopic and Snapeee) have been booming, especially in Asia. So Quan also expects this app to spread around the region. I conducted a brief interview with the startup’s CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno to find out more.

Could you tell us a little about your background first?

Prior to launching my startup Quan last August, I was working with a mobile/network game developer called Tekunodo, where I was in charge of administrating the development of a [successful] number-juggling game called Touch the Numbers. It has been ever downloaded more than three million times worldwide. I quit the developer [position] last July to start my own startup.

Why did you develop the LOUNGE app?

We can receive e-mails having decorated texts with the iPhone’s native e-mail app, however sending it with decorated texts is unavailable, except using mailer apps by cellphone carriers or the third parties. We’d like to give users back luxury of communications by texts. That’s one of the reason why we developed the app.

How will you monetize it?

We have no significant business plan at the moment, but we can see several possible ways. I think we’ll be able to create a variety of artistic or cute background decoration sets designed by professionals, which we can make downloadable online and sell them to the users. Second, when a user adds a company as his/her contact on the app, the company gives him/her a discount or a compilimentary coupon for their merchandise or services. In this case, Quan will receive a commision fee from the company every time the coupon is issued. Third, with the accumulation of messages being exchanged among the users, the startup will know a lot about what users is the most interested in. This may work for doing marketing business or helping ad agencies find new ways to satisfy their client needs.

What kind of technology does this app use?

The app uses a real-time connectionless http protocol and allows users to communicate texts and exchange illustration without pressing a ‘send’ button. As you proceed typing texts or drawing illustration on your handset, that is simultaneously transmitted to the app’s server, and [the person on the] other end can share them without time lag. Both ends can share what they want to communicate to each other with no delay. For better user experience, we are forced to set a high-spec environment to accept real-time data transmission from the users at the same time, which costs a lot.

How do you want this app to spread?

We just want to make it start with circle activities at universities across the country. Many guys from universities have helped us develop the app, and that’s a lot of fun for us. As for marketing the app, I really would like to work with women because they always bring us great ideas that will never come up to in a man’s mind.

Naver Japan’s messaging app LINE recorded more than 10 million downloads last month, which shows that chat apps for smartphone is one of the biggest areas in Asia’s tech community. Quan’s Lounge has both chat app functions of and text decorating — so it has potential to be a huge hit.

I heard Quan’s Mizuno will attend the Startup Asia Singapore event that will happen on February 2nd and 3rd, that will be a good opportunity to catch up with him and see his insights on the smartphone app industry.

The app uses your profile image on Facebook, breaks it down into many tiny parts, and re-organizes a new image of you made up of small pieces of your Facebook friends’ profile images, as pictured below. It takes around one to three minutes to complete the own mosaic, which can be placed on your Facebook timeline with tags of the friends whose pictures it consists of.

Prior to the mosaic picture app, the company also introduced a Facebook app called Friendly Cover in November, which aggregates profile images of your Facebook connections and creates a cover image that fits your Facebook timeline. Osamu Yazawa, a manager at Voyage’s new FB app section, unveiled the app and said that it is currently used by 40,000 people in 160 countries worldwide.

According to CNET Japan, Mr. Yazawa was majoring in social welfare at his university and had been interested in developing an app that helps people meet, inspired by the need to tackle Japan’s low-birth rate issue. In May, he released a Facebook app that helps you find your potential partner, which is called ‘Menurut Anda?‘ (meaning ‘what do you think?’ in Bahasa Indonesia), and now it has more than 130,000 users in Indonesia.

[Hat-tip to Yuhei Iwamoto for his awesome story on CNET Japan - article in Japanese]

During the last year, Open Network Lab has been dedicated to providing startups with opportunities to learn how UI and UX should be thought out. This is, of course, critical when they are developing their own web services and smartphone apps. Back in August the incubator had a special lecture session with Janice Fraser, a co-founder of SF-based digital design consultancy Adaptive Path.

AQ was founded in 2008 by three key UX and UI experts and has designed websites and apps for well-known startups and projects such as MyGengo (social translation platform), Mozilla Japan, and Tokyo Art Beat (a bilingual portal site of  art and design-related events in Tokyo).

For more information on AQ and what it is doing to help startups with design, see our interview from a few months back with Chris Palmieri about their AQ Lift program.

YourGolf Online

Three years ago, the app was developed by Asai, Inc., a system development company based in Tokyo and China’s Fuzhou city. Mr. Kenji Saikami who used to be a project manager of the app spun it out, and he launched a new company called YourGolf Online.

“60 percent of our users has come from outside Japan, and more than 200,000 users are active on a monthly basis,” the company’s CEO Saikami explains. As reasons for their success, he pointed to two advantages: there’s no other competing service and there is little language barrier because it is a sport app.  For speeding it up globally, their app is available in English and compatible with both metric and empirical systems (meters versus yards).

It has a web-based user dashboard for an access with PC, allowing users to see how they have made approaches in past games with a Google Earth animation they call “Virtual Replay.” The company wants to make this a sort of golf-playing version of Usream Live and, as it’s recorded, and they expect the service as to show users how professional golfers are playing or have played with a bird’s-eye or satellite view.

In order to accelerate their user traction, CEO Saikami (right in the picture above) and his buddy Michiyasu Yabuki (left) are now visitng in Singapore to meet with Asian Tour, the official regional sanctioning body for professional golf in Asia. We’ve heard they will be staying in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur from December 4th (Sunday) to the 9th (Friday) to seek potential partnerships with local sport-related businesses in the region. If you have any interest in the team and their app, we recommend you to drop them a line for an interview or future partnerships.

This photo-sharing app aims to help you discover locations and events around you. By sharing pictures and comments with other users, you can discover a place you might not otherwise find, they explain. When you post a picture, you will be requested to categorize it as scenery, restaurants, cafes, shopping, entertainment, or others. In addition to integration with other social network platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, it allows you to follow other users whom you’ve seen at the places you frequently visit, and in this way Compath aims to make an interest-based social network on the app.

The start-up’s CEO Hiromichi Ando explains:

“A survey says 43 percent of the people who try to find their local business actually uses Google, but it gives them unsatisfactory responses because the most useful tips are buried among miscellaneous search results.   To avoid it, in the US 52 percent of people uses social media as an alternative. That’s why we need to invent a social media especially designed for discovering a place to visit and an experience to share. That is Compath.me.”

I believe this will be something like an serendipity engine.

In order to overtake a ‘Chicken-and-Egg’ problem, they have adopted a system giving repeat users options to raise their “grade.” The more pictures and comments you post, your status will be raised up in their grade system, which in turn motivates you to post more pictures. In addition, they have devoted themselves to simplify the process of picture posting, it now requires just only three steps: taking a picture, choosing a category, and noting a short description.

The app was developed and is being further developed by the team of seven people including CEO Ando and the CTO Shoko Sakurai.  At their working space Open Network Lab, the ABC Loop team, a language learning start-up, are seated just next to Compath.me, and they helped a lot to develop the global version of the app in more natural English expression. They are currently receiving fundraising from several well-known VC firms in Japan, the US, and Europe. We’re very excited to see what they make at LeWeb.

The following video helps you learn a little more about how the app works.

The portal is maintained by Mediagene Inc who’s known for running Japanese editions of popular tech-savvy blogs such as Gizmodo and Lifehacker. The company has a bunch of app reviewers and bloggers across the country, and their blog posts will be published in the both languages from now on.

The manager of the department of Internet business development at Infocom Co., Mr.Kazumi Hirooka, explains that they want to partner with tech blogs and news media all across the world, and elevate it into a platform that can spread Japan-made, high-quality Android apps globally by being referenced by many news readers and bloggers.

Their business model is completely ad-based for now, but Mr. Hirooka wants to explore more potential ways to monetize his business.

The name comes from the idea of connecting potential tech stars in the region and making new connections. The city is often considered as a gateway for Japan to other Asian countries because its geographical proximity is much closer to Seoul and Shanghai than to Tokyo.

Inspired by the concept of SXSW (South by Southwest) that happens annually in Austin, Texas, Masanori Hashimoto, the co-founder and CEO of Fukuoka-based tech company Nulab, wanted to hold such an event in Japan. His many friends and angel investor Taizo Son have joined forces to help, and the event finished with great success. There were more than 1,200 attendees, which is quite a remarkable number for the first-time event.

Panel discussion on Asian startup scene:

On day two of the event, I had an opportunity to moderate a 45-minute panel discussion with Taizo Son, Willis Wee (of our own Penn Olson), Serkan Toto (of TechCrunch), and Gang Lu (of Technode) who joined from Shanghai via Skype.

I asked the panel about Silicon Valley and whether they recommended Asian startups to go there, or anywhere else. In responding that, Willis noted “If we go to Silicon Valley, do we really know how the local market works? It requires a lot of time to learn it.” He added that “they should focus on the high potential of Asian market.”

Serkan explained most Japanese ‘techpreneurs’ would say they want to go abroad but that 99 percent will never do so. Willis says that Japan and China have big enough markets to feed them, so for 95 percent of local startups it’s not necessary to go abroad.  Gang and Willis agreed that startups should launch their business in Asia rather than in the U.S., because the region has a high potential.

The following videos were taken by Zenpre, which will give you an idea of what this event was like.

Pitches:

Pitches were made by three startups from Fukuoka, one from Hong Kong, two from Singapore, and two from Tokyo.

GlueCast (Fukuoka) – Pitched by Kota Sakoda

Gluecast is a simple, web-based, video chat application that allows users to communicate with others as if they were chatting in a common place.

The app was developed by Fukuoka-based freelance programmer Kota Sakoda. As many of our readers know, we already have a variety of video chat solutions such as Skype and Google+.

However, he would like to make it possible even for elderly people to communicate with their grandchildren who might live far away. The app requires no software installation but just works with a flash-enabled web browser. Organizers of the event – some in Tokyo and others in Fukuoka – had been using the app for discussing and preparation.

Oooi (Fukuoka) – pitched by Kenji Matsuoka

Oooi is a smartphone app that allows users to share real-time location with their friends. The app was co-developed by Kyushu University’s assistant professor Yutaka Arakawa, and won the first prize at Startup Weekend Fukuoka that took place last August.

If you travel somewhere with someone, for sightseeing or shopping, you might want to visit your favorite places alone, and later meet up with your travel pals again.

This app helps by creating an event within the app and participating with your travel-mates, so that you will never miss your meeting point. If you’re late to arrive, your friends will be notified of your current location, thus letting them know you’re on the way.

Switcheroo (Fukuoka) – pitched by Shinya Miyazaki

Switcheroo is an iPhone app that encourages users to barter with other users. Miyazaki-based social app developer Aratana Lab invented this app, and it’s now available in the US app store. (Though not available in the Japanese app store currently)

Conventional ways of bartering bring problems, such as finding a person you can barter with. The app has a unique way to find people to trade with, by combining your Facebook social graph and the app’s interest graph which has been generated by user behaviors.

Switcheroo β from switcheroo on Vimeo.

OneSkyApp (Hong Kong) – Pitched by Loki Ng

OneSkyApp is a web-based translation platform that helps app developers localize their product into many languages, in partnership with crowd-based translation workforces and translation agencies worldwide. You can read more about the startup here.

Sageby is a platform that allows users to monetize their spare time. For instance, if you’re waiting for your meal at a restaurant, you will be able to obtain rewards by just filling out a survey form. When you take a cab and go somewhere, the same will be possible during the drive. They’re looking for potential partnership with local cab companies and restaurant chains in Japan, in addition to their efforts in Singapore.

Innova (Singapore) – Pitched by Rick Tan

By putting a credit card-sized device with GPS functionality into your valuables, you can be alerted if you ever leave them behind. This will be available in Singapore in December, and it costs SGD 29.99 (or about US$23). The device’s battery can be changed using a USB interface, but it keeps working for several days on a full charge.

Crowsnest (Tokyo) – Pitched by Kaisei Hamamoto

Crowsnet is a combination of a web app and iPhone app that aggregates links on Twitter. It collects information on the social web and generates a unique news portal just for you.

The app is developed by Tokyo-based tech startup Rmake who has invented a web-based game development platform. Kaisei is also the creator of Blogopolis, a site that gorgeously visualizes the tech blog buzz in Japan.

Zusaar (Tokyo) – Pitched by Kenji Ishii

Zusaar is a web-based event organizing assistant that allows organizers to manage attendees as well as collect admission fees via PayPal. The app uses third-party authentication systems so that users are not required to have a unique ID but are allowed to signed up with a Facebook, Twitter, or Mixi user account. In partnership with Nokisaki.com, a venue search portal for event organizers, it helps you find a venue as well as promote and collect fees.

The app is developed by Prophet Corporation in Yokohama, and won an award at the “Graph hack Awards”, an annual app development competition presented by Tokyo’s web jaggernaut GMO Internet Group.

For making arrangments for the startups from Southeast Asia, on behalf of all the organizing staffs, I wish to thank Anne Cheng (Singapore-based startup mentor), Jonathan Buford and his friends (Startup HK) for their assistance. Naoko McCracken (Automattic, Asiajin) and Natsuko Hirano (Alien Eye) also supported in coordinating bilingual slides and pitches.

Recorded Ustream video with synchronized-paging slides was made possible by Fusic with their web product Zenpre.  Moso, Nulab and hosting service provider AT-LINK jointly presented a video blog site exclusively for covering behind the scenes with staff interviews.

Yumiko Sensei(left), a well-known dancing mistress seen on Nico Nico Douga, interviewed by Julie Watai, an Otaku culture artist.

[Image Credit] Takeshi Hirano (Bootup Asia) a.k.a. Kigoyama

[Related: For more about Conit, see some of my stories on Asiajin.]

With this acquisition, the start-up is expected to accelerate Mixi’s efforts developing smartphone-enabled services and improve its smartphone app usability. We also remember, in September, the company acquired Naked Technology, a five-year-old Tokyo tech start-up with many talented smartphone app developers and engineers. The terms of the both deals weren’t disclosed.

Meanwhile, GREE was also busy this week picking up a smartphone app developer over their own, acquiring Mars ltd. Like Conit, Mars is a Tokyo-based tech start-up, and it is known for having developed a virtual pet game called Megu.

In Silicon Valley, we hear lots about larger tech companies struggling to find new talent. Many end up acquiring start-ups simply to bring in quality people, rather than the service that they might have built. This trend appears to have spread across the Pacific, as we’re currently experiencing it here too.

The company’s founder/CEO Taichi Murakami is now 25 years old, having launched the company in 2006 when he was attending Waseda University in Tokyo.

Five years ago, he won the first prize at an entrepreneur fostering program with his business plan, which gave him a one-year complimentary rent at the university’s incubation office and encouraged him to found the company. The company provides web portals in the fields closely linked to our daily lives such as job hunting, apartment hunting and second-hand car purchase.

As a distinctive business strategy from what other competitors are doing, Livesense charges fees to clients or recruitment advertisers only when they get results (such as finding a good employee candidate or selling off a car). Especially in the Japanese recruitment industry, the company’s “money give-away” program for those who get a new position has allowed it to engage potential users and made the company a great success.

No stock of the company has been yet alloted to any VC firm, and an almost 90% stake is owned by CEO Murakami and his buddy/co-founder Daisuke Katsura. The company expects to go IPO on December 7, and on that day we’re likely to see the emergence of new young billionaires in the Japanese web industry.

[Image Credit: LiveSense Website]

The office is closely located to 24/7 restaurants and a public bath with hot spring, which makes things a little easier for people to continue working on their start-up rather than fear missing the last train for home late at night. The office has a width of 555 square meters (approximately 660 square yards) and has a bar-like cafeteria, meeting rooms, phone booths as well as office desks.

The area is 15-20 minutes away from the centers of Shibuya or Shinjuku by local train, and it has access to Tokyo International Airport (aka Haneda) in 30 minutes. With this new office, the incubator expects to intensify global partnerships with other foreign incubators and co-working spaces, the founder/CEO Mr. Kentaro Sakakibara explains.

The incubator partnered with SF-based incubators Rocket Space, PariSOMA, and Citizen Space, and it is scheduled to organize a start-up showcase event with the latter in San Francisco next January. They also expect to intensify investing in South Korean start-ups in the near future. It has started with AdByMe, a social-networked advertising platform that helps advertisers make an ad stream by creating and spreading short, trackable link ads.

The incubator is known for having successfully exited Nobot, which was acquired by KDDI’s mobile ad company Mediba. (We recently wrote about Mediba’s plans to set up an office in Singapore soon.) Prior to Samurai Incubate, Mr. Sakakibara worked with Shibuya-based e-commerce juggernauts Axiv.com (now Voyage Group) in developing sales and marketing strategies.

In Tokyo, we now have quite a few incubator-supporting co-working spaces and incubation offices here in Tokyo. A map to the right shows you some of the more well-known among them.

Both the iPhone and Android apps are available for free. By registering your friends with their phone numbers, you are allowed to only connect with other users you know well. For group chatting with foreign language speakers, interpretation assistant functions were recently added, which helps you communicate in Japanese, Chinese, and English.

In Apple’s Appstore Social Networking category ranking, the app reached the top in Japan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia, Macau, and Hong Kong.

In foreign countries, mobile operators mostly provide their users with no e-mail service, unlike Japanese operators.  The users have no option other than SMS as text messaging and are required to pay for it additionally.

The company’s chief strategist of business development, Mr. Jun Masuda, says.

Not a few messenger apps have been introduced, but we suppose our app [has gotten] a high reputation because it’s absolutely free.

The company expects to add video call and group call functions shortly.

[Press release (in Japanese)]

The preliminary selection event started with a keynote speech by Brandon Hill, who is a Japanese-American born on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. He is the founder/CEO of btrax, and he has argued that Japanese start-ups need to appeal not only to the local community in Japan, but to global community as well.

Twelve start-ups were nominated, and six of them were chosen by juries as finalists to present in front of several hundreds of tech geeks in the capital of digital innovation next month.

Here are the twelve start-ups as well as some of comments from the juries and the audience. All the pitches were made in English, and the event was emceed by PO contributor Yukari Mitsuhashi.

1. Balloon by Nagisa, Inc.

This start-up aims to develop a new promotional media platform bridging advertisers and consumers. Balloon is a smartphone app that combines three functions: free group chat, free group calling, and photo sharing with effects.

They fundraised from Tokyo-based incubators NetAge and Samurai Incubate.

2. Bookpic by Bijutsu Shuppan Networks

The company is a subsidiary of a 100-year-old art book publisher. They introduced Bookpic, an e-publication viewer that allows users to share your comments on what you’re reading with others via Facebook and Twitter.

Brandon pointed out (as a jury member) that there are many competitors in this area and encouraged the presenter to check out Copia as an example, which is an e-book reader aimed at sharing book reading experiences and building a community online.

3. Conyac by Anydoor

Conyac is a crowdsource translation platform that allows you to ask others to translate your text to the other languages.. When a potential translator signs up with the service, he or she will be qualified by confirming if he or she can really understand an originated language by using the CAPTCHA-like technology. Multiple translators will submit their translations, and the user is allowed to pick the best. This works as a qualification process and contributes to refining the result. That’s why the service is drastically cheaper than professional translators or translation agencies, the start-up’s CEO/co-founder Naoki Yamada says.

4. Facematch by Facematch <chosen as a finalist>

This web app was developed at Breakthrough Camp, a two-month-long camp for university/college students to launch their tech start-ups on summer vacation. It won the first prize among 24 teams.

The idea of the app is very simple. You might see a cute girl or a good-looking guy at a party but miss the chance to talk with them. It’s possible that he or she could be a friend of a friend on Facebook.

The app helps you try to connect with people of similar interest by using the Facebook Friend API. You can try to find out which friend’s friend he or she is with the app, and try to connect with him or her. If both sides mutually approve, the connection request will be approved. Additionally, the app is expected to present a selection of discount coupons from restaurants and various merchandise.

5. Grow! by Grow! <chosen as a finalist>

Grow is a platform that allows blog readers to submit tips to blog publishers. It works like Twitter’s retweet button or Facebook’s Like button embedded in a blog post, but by clicking on the Grow! button, you can tip the blog author.

Users of the service can sign up with their PayPal accounts and charge up with the reward points for  their Grow! accounts beforehand. Publishers or blog authors who have received points can exchange them for real money at a rate of 1 US dollar for 100 Grow! points.

6. MidoNet by Midokura <chosen as a finalist>

Midokura is a cloud-enabling company developing a technology to replace the conventional physical devices such as routers with a virtual entity that can be managed on the web. As we mentioned here on PO, the start-up raised 100 million yen from several institutional investors such as NTT Investment Partners. The team consists of 14 members including nine engineers, some of whom were formerly working with a Google cloud-related department and Amazon Web Services.

[Related] Sunbridge Invests In Japanese Start-ups Wondershake and Midokura

7. PIRKA by PIRKA <chosen as a finalist>

PIRKA is a smartphone app that encourages users to clean up their environment and share the experiences of picking up trash on the road. When you pick up some trash, just take a picture of it with the app and share where and what you did with other users. Every time the other users praise your behavior, you will be encouraged to clean up more, and the world is much cleaner. Both iPhone and Android apps are available.

From a corporate social responsibility (CSR) point of view, if any company sponsors a geographical area it can then give rewards to the users who have picked trash there. Rewards could be free or discount coupons for drinks served at a local coffee shop for example.

The app was named after the Ainu language word (etupirka) given to tufted puffin which is known for grooming often and keeping themselves clean at at all times.

8. Synclogue by Joho Planet <chosen as a finalist>

If you use multiple computers (such as a laptop, a desktop at home, and a desktop PC at office) Synclogue helps you synchronize the configuration of plug-ins for apps you’ve specified. The start-up adopts a freemium model, where users are allowed to choose up to three apps to be synchorized for free. Synclogue expects the app be as essential to PC users as DropBox.

The start-up was founded by students from Waseda University and Tsukuba University.

9. Snapdish by Vuzz  <chosen as a finalist>

Snapdish is an iPhone app dedicated to food photo sharing, and it helps you share what you cook or eat with other users. We previously interviewed Snapdish here on PO.

10. Wishscope by Zawatt

Wishscope is a social wishlist app that helps you connect with people who may have similar interests with you. We recently interviewed the team, and you can read that article here.

11. Rin by Willile Mobile

Kyoto-based start-up Willile Mobile is developing a smartphone ad network by using the natural language processing technokogy for behavioral targeting. This is in partnership with Kyoto University’s professor Dr. Sadao Kurohashi, who’s known as an authority on this technology.

It’s not just about detecting words contained in a user-submitted query, but also finding the contextual meaning of the query to determine the best search advertising results for the user.

They have also set up a subsidiary in Hong Kong last April and have started their smartphone ad sales in China, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Cambodia.

12. 5 Seconds by Miew

Convinced that the last five seconds of amateur videos are the most entertaining, this Tokyo-based start-up launched a smartphone-based video sharing app called 5 seconds last April. It can be considered as a video version of Instagram, allowing users to take a video, add effects, share to Facebook and Twitter. The start-up expects to have 3 million users by the end of FY2011.

A group pic of the finalists.

This comes from several private investors including Nissei Capital (the investment arm of Japan’s second largest life insurance company), Sansei Capital (that of Japan’s Mitsui Life Insurance) and Project Ocean (a Tokyo-based independent pre-IPO consultancy).

Qlippy was released in August 2010 in its alpha version. It used to be a combination of a website and the iPad app which allows users to import EPUB-formatted content via iTunes and to share the text you’ve clipped with other users over the Internet. But the service appears to have pivoted to introduce an SDK for third-party e-book readers in an effort to acquire a critical mass of users.

Today Qlippy’s social function allows you to share reading experiences with other users by  quoting your favorite part of a book and commenting on it via Twitter and Facebook. It is available with various e-book readers and content distribution platforms such as PurchasePlug from No 28. Inc. and Aero Browser from Clealink Technology. More e-book reading environments are expected to be compatible soon.

With these funds, the start-up expects to add more engineers to accelerate its service development further,this according to its founder and CEO Yoichi Shirakata. Mr. Shirakata is an almuni of Japan’s Y-combinator-like incubation program, Open Network Lab. He previously worked with German business management application vendor SAP.

For more on information, check out these links or the promo video below.

• Japan’s KDDI Announces 5 Nominees For Its First Incubation Program (PO)
• SpinningWorks Introduces iPad App to Create Social Media of e-Book Readers (Asiajin)

Fashion Walker was launched in 2005 as a fashion e-commerce platform jointly by Yahoo Japan and Tokyo-based apparel retailer, Branding (formerly known as Zavel). Branding was founded by Fumitaro Ohama who used to be a script writer for TV program productions.

Fashion Walker targets potential customers in the F1-layer (female students and office workers between their 20s and 30s), and is also known for organizing periodical big fashion showcase events such as Tokyo Girls Collection, Kobe Girls Collection and Tokyo Girls Collection in Beijing/Shanghai.

Related: Tokyo Girls Collection Aired On YouTube Live Streaming (Asiajin)

[Via: Fashionsnap, in Japanese]

Wondershake won the grand prix at TechCrunch Japan’s start-up pitch event in April, where Allen Miner served as the chair of judges. The start-up raised funds from Cyber Agent Ventures on the same day. Now the Wondershake team has moved to San Francisco and are working on registration as a US company.

Sunbridege will invest in a form of convertible notes to avoid increasing the valuation with the investment, and make it easier for the start-up to get additional fundraising from potential US investors in the future. (Refer to our previous article for more on Wondershake)

Meanwhile, Midokura is a cloud enabling tech company and funraised 100 million yen in its seed round from some VC firms including NTT Investment Partners and datacenter company Bit Isle.

Sunbridge's Allen Miner (left) and Wondershake's Hitoshi Suzuki (right) at Teclosion 2011 Spring

The company was co-founded by the former COO of Globis, a private MBA schooling company in Tokyo. Japanese legendary techpreneur Kiyoshi Nishikawa (the founder of NetAge) is also involved in the board of directors. During the past few months we’ve heard from some of the company’s team that they are developing the alpha version of some cloud-related apps, but no further details are available at this point.  We’ll keep you posted if we hear anything.

Update: Wondershake just announced the total amount of this fundraising from several investors including Sunbridge was 360,000 US dollars. (Their announcement, in Japanese)

Mr. Watanabe started his career at an investment arm of Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Capital in 2007, and he was appointed the investment division manager for a tech-oriented investment company Ngi Group last year.  He frequently lectures and presents at many start-up events and conferences.

NTT Investment Partners, the investment arm of the country’s largest telco, announced it would invest in B Dash Ventures, working together to dig out potential tech start-up personnel and services.  NEC Biglobe (Japan’s second-largest ISP), GREE (social network and game platform operator), and Septeni (web/mobile advertising and affiliate) also announced they would be partnering with B Dash.

Mr. Watanabe unveiled that he partnered with Tokyo’s property company Mori Building, with a number of office buildings and skyscrapers in the heart of the city, working on setting up an incubation facility called B Dash Lab.

Japanese Tech Incubators At A Glance

In Tokyo, we can no longer count the number of tech incubators and VC firms on one hand. So this is a good opportunity to briefly review them.  Here they are in alphabetical order:

• Breakthrough Partners – Co-founded by Koji Morihiro and Yuji Akaba, both of whom are alumni of Techfarm Ventures in Palo Alto.  Recently they held a two-month-long camp for university students to develop their web/smartphone apps and to encourage entrepreneurship.

• East Ventures – Co-founded by Mixi’s ex-CTO Batara Eto and Kronos Fund Founder Taiga Matsuyama, it focuses on investment in South East Asia. (It is also known for having invested in this blog, Penn-Olson)

• Incubate Fund – Co-founded by four venture capitalists and backed by DeNA.  It has invested in social game app developers and mobile portal companies such as Aiming, Pokelabo, Istpika, Cross Games and F-route.

• Infinity Venture Partners - Co-founded by three venture capitalists including Akio Tanaka, the former head of Adobe’s investment division, and Hirofumi Ono, the former managing director of CyberAgent’s subsidiary of mobile app development CA Mobile. It’s known for having invested in Groupon Japan and successfully sold it out at a high valuation.

• Movida Japan – Founded by Taizo Son, a serial entrepreneur and a Korean descendant in Japan.  His older brother is the CEO of Japan’s large mobile operator and Internet service company Softbank. Refer to our previous feature for more details on the company.

• Net Age – Founded by Kiyoshi Nishikawa, the founder of Ngi Group (mentioned above).  He is a lengendary serial entrepreneur and launched a number tech venture companies in Tokyo’s Shibuya region in the late 1990s, which was called BitValley.

• Open Network Lab - A seed accelerator located in Ebisu, Tokyo.  Backed by Tokyo’s web service juggernaut Digital Garage, price comparison portal Kakaku.com, and the MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. It was recently incorporated.

• Rebright Partners – Founded by Takeshi Ebihara who was previously working with JAFCO and GMO Venture Partners.  He also serves as a director for Indonesian tech incubator Batavia. See our previous article for more details about Batavia.

• Samurai Incubate – Founded by Kentaro Sakakibara who was previously working with Shibuya’s e-commerce giant EC-Navi. Nobot, one of their portfolio start-ups, had a very successful exit.  It is now partnering with a large warehouse company and working on setting up an incubation facility for tech start-ups in the waterfront area of Tokyo.

Appmom pulls the usage state of apps on your Android handset and shows you a recommendation list of apps to be installed/uninstalled. Your occupation, generation, and a comparison of similar users will also affect the recommendation results. A series of recommended apps can be installed with one-touch, as can ‘unrecommended’ apps uninstalled with a single touch too.

There are several recommendation apps like Chomp that recommend the best set of Android apps for you. But I’ve never seen something like Appmom that recommends you to uninstall apps you’ve never used.

The app’s Japanese version was released almost one month ago, and the number of people downloading the apps was more than 5,000 as of September 12, according to Japan’s Android app ranking site AndroRank. Mrs. Naoko Tsubaki, the development manager of the app, expects to monetize it with an ad revenue model in the future.

I just had an opportunity to interview the start-up’s CEO Daisaku Harada and CTO Nobuaki Suzuki at Shibuya’s incubation facility, EC-Navi Boat.

Could you briefly tell us a little about Wishscope?

Wishscope is a web service and iPhone app that helps people connect by matching someone in need of help with those who can contribute or help them. There users can assume two different roles in this service: a person can ask someone else to help them (i.e. be a ‘wisher’), or they can help someone do something (i.e. be a ‘hero’). A list of other users’ wants and wishes will be presented on our platform, and the users can take one if they find something that they can help with. Our service aims to help people solve problems and encourages them to connect with each other on our platform.

What is the major difference between Wishscope and similar services such as Zaarly (U.S.) and Wondershake (Japan)?

Zaarly was launched when we were just preparing for launching our service. One of the main differences with them is our service is based on real name member registration. As for Wondershake, actually we aimed at encouraging people to connect but we use a sort of list presentation where users can share their interests. That’s the main gap.

What made you launch the service?

CEO Harada has a girlfriend, and I’ve given her many presents. But she never looks pleased when I give it to her. I thought it’s very hard to find what other people really want. I then thought that exchanging people’s wants would be a good idea. There are some services where people exchange skill sets on ‘crowd-sourcing’ sites, but I think it may require a high skill level or some expertise to participate. Our service is simpler, and people without any technical background or special expertise can help someone solve their issues and make their wishes come true.

How do you motivate users?

We have a payment system using PayPal that allows a ‘wisher’ to pay for a contribution from a ‘hero.’ Payment could be free (for voluntary work) or it could be higher than five US dollars.

You’re also facing some ‘chicken-egg’ problems since your launch. How do you overcome these issues?

Our service can be used with a Facebook accounts, and this makes it easier for users to log in. Once you’ve signed in, our service will take your interests from your Facebook profile settings, and then find someone whose interests are very similar to yours. Wishscope presents the most recommended set of wish lists to you, encouraging you to connect with those users.  Starting with highly populated areas in Japan and the U.S., we will make our service available city by city as a sufficient number of both ‘wishers’ and ‘heroes’ jump on board. In some areas, we’re starting with giving a limited number of our service accounts to students attending a specific university. We think this is also a good idea because it stirs up high expectations.

What are your thoughts on international service expansion?

We think there will be a business model where ‘wishers’ in developed countries ask some ‘heroes’ in developing countries to help. That may contribute to solving the North-South problem.

When we give someone a relatively-expensive present or gift in a group payment arrangement, do we use the service as a platform for collecting the payment?

What we can do with the service is just escrow the payment from a ‘wisher’ to a ‘hero’ when the wisher’s request has come true. In other words, we just provide a platform but have nothing to do with the payment and the deal. If we handled the group payment arrangement, we would stand as a money recipient from the wisher, which would be considered as a donation according to Japanese financial law.   According to Japan’s financial authority, that could be suspected of falling under a category of money laundering crimes.

What is your future plan?

We would like to add a feature that shows users their wish-based relationship in diagrams, or something we want to call a ‘wish graph.’ In the next two or three years if a sufficient volume of ‘wishgraph’ data has been accumulated, we could use augmented reality (AR) technologies to try to develop a mount-head display device that would let you see the people’s wishes when you wear it and see someone.

We’ll launch the service for the iPhone and Android on the web, and release iPhone and Android apps afterwards.

Can you tell us about your team?

CEO Harada was previously working on developing a new content service at Disney Japan. CTO Suzuki was previously working with Cybird, a well-known mobile app developer in Tokyo. A tech guy who has developed a Tokyo wants/give-away exchange site called Livris is highly committed to our service.  An American, a British guy and a Korean-American girl are committed to developing the service and designing the user interface.

Who has invested in your service?

A Hong Kong-based angel investor, Mr. Jun Emi from Netcapital Partners; Mr. Taiga Matsuyama from Kronos Fund; and another anonymous person are our seed investors.  We’re very grateful for this additional fundraising from Cyber Agent Ventures which helped us greatly accelerate our international expansion and further our app development.

(Disclosure: Mr. Matsuyama co-manages East Ventures together with Mixi’s ex-CTO Batara Eto. East Ventures has invested in Penn Olson.)

Finally, when the service or the app will be available?

As mentioned just before, our service will be available on a city-by-city basis. Hopefully, we would like to launch the service in some Japanese and US cities in September, otherwise in October at the latest.

Tell me a little your background and what you been doing?

I’m attending Tokyo’s Chuo University majoring in commercial science, and also managing a non-profit organization (NPO) called Unoneicchi (named after the words meaning ‘one’ in French, Spanish, Italian, English, Chinese, and Japanese). The NPO aims to tell people about the world by relaying what its members have seen first hand from developing countries. Previously I used to be an intern for EC-Navi, a Tokyo’s web service which is very active in contributing to Japan’s tech start-up community.

What made you launch the service?

A couple of years ago, I just planned a tour to Bangladesh with my mates in the NPO in order to see how social entrepreneurship is doing in developing countries. We had great success in the tour, and could even see Dr. Muhammmad Yunus, the Nobel Prize Peace winner and the founder/CEO of the Grameen Bank, a Bangladeshi micro-finance and community development bank.

I felt that planning a tour and carrying it out with my mates brought on a great sense of unity. A tour arrangement does not have to be a speciality of only travel agents. I thought that the joy of arranging a tour could be shared by individuals too.

How did you launch Trippiece?

I just started the project with four people including myself. All of us have lived outside our home country, in places like Mainland China, Spain, and Portugal — and that might have contributed to how we developed the concept. We launched it in late February of this year, and succeeded in fundraising seed money from Samurai Incubate.

What kind of travel plans are your users listing on the service?

It varies greatly. There were planned tours to visit the earthquake-hit areas for helping survivors’ relief efforts on a voluntary basis.

(Author’s note: as of this writing, there is a ‘piece’ (travel plan) for taking part in La Tomatina, a festival held next week in Valencia, Spain. Participants throw tomatoes at each other.)

How do you monetize it?

We just launched the service less than a year ago, and we are still in the alpha version focusing on engaging users. We’re now planning to launch an information resource hub specializing in self-planned travel experiences, that is expected to receive attention from many potential users and bring them to our main portal site. Currently our service is provided completely free. But we may have a business model that allows us to earn revenue by accepting advance booking for tours on the site, instead of tour planners collect the travel expenses. Also we just would like to explore possible business partnerships with travel agents and travel enthusiast groups such as Tabippo.com.

Is there any plan for the international expansion?

I expect we’ll make it available in Asian countries. Japanese people may feel better in using products and services having an Asian flavor. Similarly I think Asian people may feel better using Asian-made web services compare to those from Western countries. Through our experience-sharing platform, we expect to have Asian travel enthusiasts on the planning side, and many European travelers on the participant side.

There are lots of travel resources online — Lonely Planet, Global Trotters, Michelin, and lots more. If you are tired of checking the conventional travel websites, give Trippiece a try. I’m hoping its English version will be available very soon.

At the time of writing, Ian is staying in San Francisco. If you’re interested in seeing this very ambitious man, just kindly drop him a line via his Twitter account @IshidaIan.

The service is a PDF e-book distribution platform with a social learning element, and it allows you to share textbook notes with other users reading the same book. It somewhat similar to Social Books in the US but Lindoc is focusing specifically just on e-textbooks, at least for now.

I had a chance to speak to Akinori Machino, the CEO and founder of Lindoc. Here is our conversation below as he shares more about his business.

What made you start developing Lindoc?

I’m majoring in physics and I had been thinking that it’s hard to note a formula using mathematical symbols (like integrals, for example). When I was at university, I developed an app that allows you to note mathematical symbols on a web browser. This won the grand prix at a business contest held by the university’s VC arm. We were also chosen as a nominee for the Japanese goverment’s tech and science incubation/mentoring program in 2009. I then decided to quit graduate school, found a company using the prize money from the program, and be committed to developing more practical apps and services.

Why did you choose textbooks for sharing on your platform? Why not novels or comics?

I just wanted to change our education system. By sharing textbook content and notes with other users, it would be easier to learn difficult topics. Secondly, textbooks (especially for science studies) are very expensive due to their low-volume printing, and publishers can’t gain a significant profit from selling textbooks any more. Compared to best-selling novels and comics, it is much easier for us to make publishers and authors understand and give us their approval for selling ebooks on our platform.

How can you monetize this business?

So far, we have three ideas in our mind. 1. Giving amateur writers opportunities to publish their own e-books on the platform. 2. E-book and textbook note storing services could follow a freemium model. 3. Providing children and pupils with remote tutoring services using e-textbook and textbook notes-sharing functions in partnership with education business companies.

What types of user privileges can we set on shared notes?

There are three privilege levels: For yourself only, group and all.

Can we ping our friends via social media networks when we publish textbook notes on the platform?

Sure thing. It can be shared via Facebook and Evernote. You may also mail it to your friends, and print it too.

Are there any competitors for Lindoc?

In the US, there’s a similar start-up called Inkling which has backing from Sequoia Capital. But it use the E-Pub their original publishing format, which means a low variety of available content despite the fact that it’s been running for two years. We chose PDF as our standard format. It’s handled on the backend, content can been seen on the service’s browser app and users do have not access to the original file. It allows completely free drawing on a e-book content, and I believe this may help us get a wide variety of e-book content on our showcase quicker.

When does the service goes public? Are you planning to make it available worldwide?

We’re currently working very hard on it, and it’s now mostly in the final phase. I think we can release it in September or October. The fundamental technology and interface used for the service has no language barrier, we just would like to make it available worldwide and set up an e-textbook store distribution platform on a multilingual basis.

Sounds great. I’m looking forward to your service. Thank you!

Thank you.

Lindoc was founded last September, and teamed up Mr. Machino with two programmers and a designer. Mr. Machino also has a technical background but works as a key player for their business development stuffs right now. The most remarkable thing is they’ve given up E-pub, often called the world’s e-publication standard, and have chosen PDF as their key format for storing content.

I’ll be keeping my eye on their development and looking forward to a day when their solutions might change the Japanese education system from a conservative system to something more social, interactive and progressive.

On Friday, KDDI’s Mugen Labo, a start-up incubation program by Japan’s second largest telco, announced five tech start-ups chosen for its first incubation period. During the next three months, the program will provide management advisory, a development environment, and also help them spread their respective services throughout the country.

After their further development, apps or services gaining high evaluations will be published on the telco’s local Android app market, au one Market.

Services/apps chosen to participate in the program are:

1. Synclunch by Makoto Fukuyama, an ex-Googler.

• In development
• Arrange “power lunch” appointments with someone by using your Facebook social graph.

2. Rearge by Kenta Nakahira, Galapagos

• In development
• A customizable social game for the Android in which you can be the star.

3. Qlippy by Yoichi Shirakata, Spinning Works

• A web-based platform for sharing comments among the same e-publication readers.
• Also an alumni of Digital Garage’s incubation program Open Network Lab.
• See video below.

4. Giftee by Mutsumi Ota

• Giftee allows you to send a “REAL” gift to someone in return for their nice tweets or messages.
• Also an alumni of Digital Garage’s incubation program Open Network Lab. We covered this last April.

5. A location-based social network for store owners to accelerate their business, by Yuichi Kyoho, Real Samurai

• In development
• A LBS for sharing updates with retail stores and their customers.

About KDDI Mugen Labo

Inside the labo’s office in Roppongi, Tokyo

KDDI Mugen Labo was launched three months ago, as the first attempt in this-kind program by Japanese telecom companies. (There’s no SingTel’s Innov8-like program in Japan.) The program basically provides no financial support or investment but focuses on back up the start-up’s efforts for service spread-out and business development. We’ll keep our eye on their future growth.

Genesix, a smartphone application developer backed by Tokyo’s web service juggernauts EC Navi, may have solved this problem.  Tomorrow it plans to release an iPhone app called Jumvo, which enables “Push-To-Talk” voice messaging. Your message can be recorded within a 15 seconds limit, and it can be transfered to up to nine parties (they must have the same app on the iPhone.)

There’s an app called Heytell that falls in the same category, which has gained more than five million users worldwide. However Jumvo has a simpler interface and allows you to record a message without tapping anything. I think it’s especially useful for busy people who have loved one living in a different time zone or someone who follows a different daily schedule.

According to the development team’s blog, the intention is for Jumvo to spread out worldwide, and to that end its backbone environment has been designed to tolerate more than one million users. Genesix has developed more than two dozens apps for the Android and the iPhone since its launch in May 2010.  The Jumvo name is an amalgamation of the Swahili greeting, ‘Jambo ,’ and the word ‘voice.’

Prior to this fundraising, Nobot succeeded in raising 140 million yen from several VC firms last fall. By acquiring the start-up, KDDI is expected to take second place in smartphone ad distribution in Japan earning three billion impressions a month, following behind Google’s AdMob which holds the top spot.

As we write this Nobot sent us along its press release, in which it mentions a plan to launch an office in Singapore by the end of this year. The company also expects to expand its service to Asian countries including Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Readers may recall our interview with Kiyotaka Kobayashi, the CEO of Nobot Inc., when he visited Singapore a couple of weeks ago. He explained about the company’s mobile advertising network AdMaker, which is currently serving up 2.1 billion monthly impressions.

He is now staying in Singapore, and I had an opportunity to interview him before he left Tokyo last week. (Thanks to Hiro Maeda for arranging the interview.)

Why are you doing this world interview tour?

What is the main objective of the tour?

Which countries are you expecting to visit?

]]> http://www.techinasia.com/japanese-man-travels-world-seeks-global-entrepreneurs-nomad-workers/feed/ 0 http://placehold.it/350x150 http://www.techinasia.com/tokyos-android-bazaar-and-conference-innovating-for-japan/ http://www.techinasia.com/tokyos-android-bazaar-and-conference-innovating-for-japan/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 01:00:34 +0000 Masaru Ikeda http://www.techinasia.com/?p=44437 Read more »]]> The Japan Android Group recently held its semi-annual event, the Android Bazaar and Conference 2011 Summer, at Waseda University in Tokyo.

The event was began with a keynote speech by Dr. Fujio Maruyama, the chairman of the group and visiting professor at Waseda University. He explained how much grassroots efforts have been contributing to the rapid recovery from the earthquake/tsunami devastation. He mentioned developing Android apps for Japan’s tsunami survivors, cloud-hosted information resources, and also collaborative work for collecting safety information of disaster victims.

Several web juggernauts presented their recent efforts on community development for the Japanese Android community, as well as their views on Android-related trends in this country.

Naoya Ito, the CTO of Japan’s largest social game platform GREE, introduced a story that the popular photo sharing iPhone app Instagram has engaged more than seven million users worldwide, despite being developed and maintained only by four people. This kind of success is indicative of a radical change that we have never experienced before.

Android for the Birds?

A developer duo called Zako no Karaage (meaning fried small fish) exhibited an augmented reality app that allows users to see a 360-degree image of sightseeing spots through an Android handset screen.

Shingo Hisakawa from Toriningen Inc. (meaning ‘bird-man’) exhibited a prototype of laser pointer exclusively targeting the ISS or the International Space Station. It is named Hikoseki or levistone. It uses orbit data provided by NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command to calculate the ISS’s realtime position on his cloud server. The Android CPU is insufficient to finish the calculation in a short time, he explained. The position data is the transfered to an Android device that controls the angle of the laser pointer.

Practical tips

The Traffic Hazards study group exhibited an app called Bump Recorder, which has had great success in track and map bumps on the roads. Every Android handset has a GPS and an acceleration sensor. The group put it on the dashboard of their cars, driving on major roads in the Tohoku region to track and record data after the March 11 massive earthquake. This provides rescue workers and disaster survivors with convenient information for safety driving and choosing better routes.

If you imported any web apps maintained on GitHub to your environment on FluxFlex, any new revision will be automatically deployed.  The service intends to provide an ideal development environment that allows developers to really focus on app coding and forget about related complications.

FluxFlex was founded and developed by two Japanese tech entrepreneurs, one in San Francisco who was previously working with Kyoto-based blog hosting company Hatena, and a Tokyoite who was formerly in charge of developing and maintaining Japan’s Second Life-like metaverse Meet Me.

The app will collect a history of posts you’ve liked on Facebook, and generating a set of your interests on the app called “tags”. Go out into a town, shake the app (the iPhone), and you may find like-minded people around you and strike up a conversation.

Wondershake is developed by a team led by Satoshi Suzuki who was previously working with Tonchidot, best known for its augmented reality (AR) app Sekai Camera. The app has been chosen as one of the projects that Tokyo-based incubator Open Network Lab supports, and it also won the first prize at TechCrunch Japan’s tech start-up contest last April.

The team has a unique marketing strategy, and the app is available in limited areas only. Starting with Shibuya, Tokyo, they plan to expand its service availability to New York City and San Francisco in August. In my view, for ensuring a sufficient user experience of finding the people with the app, it appears they are currently deploying the service only in highly populated areas.

Mr. Suzuki explained that when you fall in love with someone nearby but don’t see any chance to start talking with her (or him), Wondershake will greatly help you break the ice. Of course, a little courage doesn’t hurt either!

Update: Their future expansion is also planned in Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego and Singapore as well.