Global pitch contests aren’t just for Tokyo. Here are the winners from Hack Osaka

Tokyo gets the headlines, but Osaka, the industrial capital of western Japan, is building a strong startup community of its own. At Hack Osaka today, 10 startups, several which traveled to Japan for this event, took the stage to pitch their ideas.

Here is a rundown of the startups, in no particular order:

Cofame

Cofame aims to be a one-stop shop for working professionals to manage business cards, track meeting notes, and deepen social network contacts. Co-founder and COO Kanji Noguchi explains that the Cofame app replaces the need for paper namecards. Upload your namecard into the app and then digitally share it with other people. If your partner does not have the meeting notes, you can email them over. The app also has an interface for recording business meeting notes, including where people were sitting, as well as integration features with social networks.

Up Performa

Sports teams around the world are constantly looking for a competitive edge. Up Performa uses its Eagle Eye device to track the movements of players during a game. It analyzes the location data to determine how well the individuals perform as a team. Founder Shuhei Yamada says his service is superior to existing video-based solutions because the data therein is not as accurate and can be burdensome to manage.

Eagle Eye is a small wearable that can be attached to a player’s arm and will measure position, speed of movement, and the total heat map of the team.

The startup won the bronze prize, which amounted to JPY 100,000 (US$840).

Smart Checkups

Property asset valuation is not the typical sexy startup concept, but the Belgium-born Smart Checkups is digitizing the typically paperwork-heavy, laborious process. Under the traditional workflow, an assessor has to visit a property, take notes, and pictures, and then return to the office to input the data.

Founder Didier Vermeiren’s digital solution is saving workers 50 percent of their working time by allowing them to do their work on a digital interface from the start. Main markets are commercial real estate corporations in Western Europe.

Smart Checkups won the Cross Court Prize, good for one year of free office space in Singapore, Jakarta, Delhi, Ho Chi Minh, or Tokyo.

Blaze

Founder Emily Brooke is a physicist turned cycling enthusiast. Her team has developed a new type of bicycle light. The Laserlight is a general white light which projects a laser image of a bike on the road. Brooke states that this design ensures vehicle drivers will not lose cyclists in their blind spots. Brooke, who hails from England and has cycled the length of that island, is attuned to the concerns of cyclists. The product is not currently available in Japan, but that might change. Brooke notes that Japan has 11.5 million cyclists.

Blaze won the silver prize along with JPY 300,000 (US$2,500).

Ingage

Tetsuya “Ted” Wada made a company to reduce money lost due to complaints made to businesses. Ingage’s primary product, Re:lation, is a customer relationship management tool that records conversation history between a disgruntled customer and the company. To prevent losses due to poorly written emails by new employees, an approval button can also be activated for senior staff to check the messages.

The tool can also be integrated with social media for more a flexible approach to customer interactions.

Cashboard

Tackling a modern problem – declining faith in the banking system – Cashboard proposes that users allow the startup to manage those assets and deliver a return. The service is integrated with banks so Cashboard never takes custody of user money. It will take whatever amount the user wants to invest, and then use its algorithm to invest in a variety of assets – mutual funds, alternative investments, ETFs, and more. There are no fees except for a 10 percent service charge on earnings.

Already showing strong traction in Europe, CEO Robert Henker’s firm has plans to head to Asia by 2017.

mClinica

Farouk Meralli’s healthcare startup – which we’ve heard about before – wants to connect disorganized pharmacies around the Philippines. First, pharmaceutical companies sign up with mClinica. Then, pharmacies which are in the mClinica network can sell drugs to consumers at a discount as long as the consumers confirm their participation in the mClinica network via their phone number.

Meralli touted the firm’s early traction: with 1,450 pharmacy partners, it is already connected to more outlets than any of its competitors. Drug manufacturers and pharmacies are on board because the system ensures more consistent purchases by customers. The mClinica network has access to 20 million patients in the Philippines.

mClinica won the grand prize of the event. The prize came with JPY 500,000 (US$4,200) and a Kindle fire from Amazon Web Services.

M Square

Founder Miwa Jojo is waging the good fight against excessive cash cards and passwords. She has produced a reader, ala the Square dongle, that will scan an individual’s palm to verify their identity. Still in its demo phase, the Depago product will be released this summer at the earliest.

Digit Address

Wei Wang’s startup is betting on the growth of the fledgling drone economy. Identifying the vulnerability of drones to being hacked by third parties, Digit Address has a patented technology to confirm the integrity of the drone and the time and place it is at during a flight. This information can also be used by consumers or organizations to prevent a drone from entering their property’s airspace.

Stamp

Opie Lopansri is a Thai entrepreneur who has made a smart-stamp that allows retailers to award customers with loyalty points without the need for a point-of-sale device. The smart-stamp is elegant for not requiring any linking between the device and the smartphone. Instead, it operates by a simple press on the smartphone’s screen. It received some interest from consumers so far, with 300,000 app downloads and 300 locations served.

See: Can Osaka, Japan’s second city, become a first-class center of innovation?