5 startups from KDDI Mugen Labo’s 5th Demo Day

Yuna is a Korean entrepreneur living in Tokyo. She loves meeting new people and talking with CEOs/leaders over lunch and startup events. You can contact her via Facebook or email.

KDDI Mugen Labo had its fifth demo day in Shibuya, Tokyo last Friday. Five startup teams successfully graduated from the accelerator program of KDDI, Japan’s second-largest telecom giant, and the demo day was organized for the selected startups to pitch to potential investors and partners. The event drew over 300 people to Hikarie, Shibuya to see the pitches.

We have listed down all the five startups below. The winner for this batch is Smaoku.

1. Aoi Zemi

Aoi Zemi (‘zemi’ means ‘seminar’ in Japanese), is an online lecture service for junior high school students. The startup provides users with free live-streaming curriculum, hiring its own teachers to conduct classes over the net. Students on Aoi Zemi can ask questions to their lecturer just like in an offline class. The startup aims to reduce operating costs while providing a conducive online learning environment for its students. Aoi Zemi is now preparing content for high school students; that will be available this Spring.

2. Zukan

Zukan in Japanese means illustrated guide. It is a photo curation and sharing service with an emphasis on knowledge- and information-sharing across all fields, with all its photos neatly categorized by topic so that users can browse for photos of specific things. The startup is seeing over 300,000 monthly visitors.

3. Smaoku

Smaoku is a Japanese mobile name-brand auction app for females. It provides a platform where sellers can list their second-hand name-brand items in 3 minutes on smartphones and get the highest bid among potential buyers within 24 hours. For now, products are delivered to the buyer for free.

4. PEDALRest

PEDALRest is a platform service that provides real-time information on parking space availability to Japanese commuter cyclists. The beta version of the service is now available in Shibuya-Ku, Meguro-Ku, and Setagaya-Ku.