Ain’t no mountain high enough: Japanese startup raises $1.5m to help hikers stay connected

Hiking and outdoors community and map provider Yamap announced US$1.49 million in funding yesterday from smartphone games and location service platform Colopl as well as Japanese venture capital funds Daiwa Securities and Dogan.

Yamap founder and CEO Yoshi Haruyama wants to use the money to expand into the United States.

Yoshi got the idea for Yamap while on a seal hunting trip in Alaska when he noticed that not even eskimos could navigate their way through a snowstorm.

Yamap uses GPS and map data to help hikers find their way even without an internet connection. Users can also keep travel logs with pictures that can be shared with the online community. Yamap believes that it is important to support safe outdoor activities and even makes its maps available for users to print. Rescue workers have already used Yamap to locate five people caught in a winter storm in January.

Although currently focusing on growing its user base, Yamap is exploring different business models like selling outdoor gear and providing insurance. Yamap is also looking at partnerships to have its application coming preinstalled on outdoor goods such as Casio’s upcoming Android outdoor smartwatch.

According to CNET, since its release in March 2013 Yamap’s application has been downloaded over 260,000 times and has over 160,000 active users. Its website sees over nine million page views per month. Yoshi has previously estimated that the company will generate US$6 million in revenue from users of its online store Yamap Gears in 2016. We will see if this prediction holds. Yoshi told Tech in Asia that revenues are still not up to expectations and emphasized again that they will focus on user growth first.

Yamap hopes that its social media features will help keep it ahead of the competition like GPSies which also features similar map functions. The push for America opens up a new market three times the size of Japan according to Yoshi. Yoshi also tells Tech in Asia that the American outdoor market has a larger percentage of people under 30, compared to Japan’s market which is 40 percent over 60 years old. Yamap believes the key to success will be partnerships with outdoor stores and brands like Rei, Patagonia, and The North Face.

Update on March 15 2016, 1:09pm JST: The article previously stated that revenue of US$6 million has already been achieved. This has been corrected.

Update on March 15 2016, 11:38am JST: Article was updated to include Yamap’s response to the American market and safety record.

Converted from Japanese Yen. Rate: US$1 = JPY 113.72