Japan’s Mobile Giant I-Freek Opens First International Office in Singapore

I-Freek (3845:Hercules) is a listed company that business revolves around the mobile Internet sector in Japan, including everything from content to games, consulting to marketing.

Eyeing opportunities outside of Japan, I-Freek took its first step outward and planted its flag in sunny Singapore. The official launch of the office was held last Friday.

To understand more about I-Freek, I met up with two of its members, Hisanroi Kaneshiro (who heads the Singapore operation) and Masanori Sugiura, over the weekend to have lunch together. While the company is successful in Japan, they admit that they need time to understand Singapore and her tech community. And they are very happy and willing to meet up with local mobile entrepreneurs and players in the region.

I-Freek’s business has always been in one language, Japanese. And with its latest Singapore expansion, I-Freek hopes to target the English-speaking audience. So naturally, Singapore is the perfect location in Asia to hire folks who are well-versed in English and hopefully also in Japanese. Singapore also serves as the perfect location which could help them to extend their reach within the Southeast Asia region in the near future.

As the product side, I-Freek only has one focus in Singapore. Koehon (iTunes link) is a picture bookstore app for kids which has been a roaring success in Japan. Backed by Keohon’s exponential growth, I-Freek wants to offer the app to an English-speaking audience. The English version of Koehon is titled PICVO (iTunes link) and the Singapore office is tasked to look for publishers to digitize and put their books on PICVO. Once books are on PICVO, I-Freek can also localize them and offer them a Japanese audience on Koehon.

Besides PICVO, Kaneshiro and Sugiura emphasized that they are happy to help local startups bring their products over to Japan. I-Freek is also looking to work with network players — i.e telecom companies, online marketplace, mobile social networks — as it looks to expand its distribution partnership across Asia. That is also the very reason why I-Freek invested in Singapore-based startup, Mobileapps.com, a cross-platform mobile apps marketplace.

I-Freek has big plans in Singapore and it is certainly good news for local folks as we now have one more Japanese company to collaborate with and learn from.