Tokyo-based Minimal Technologies, the startup behind multilingual website localization service WOVN.io, has raised JPY 130 million (US$1.1 million) in pre-series A funding. Opt Ventures, the investment subsidiary of Japan’s largest e-marketing company, led the round, with Nissay Capital contributing.
Just two months ago, Minimal Technologies announced a business partnership with Japanese job placement and internet services giant Recruit. That deal will see the startup’s WOVN widgets added to the company’s websites, increasing visibility for foreign visitors ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. WOVN’s widgets provide customizable website translations for the 27 most popular languages on the web.
“We’re still working with Recruit and on schedule, but they have not rolled out WOVN on any sites yet,” Minimal Technologies co-founder Jeff Sandford tells Tech in Asia. “As is normal when working with a company the size of Recruit, we are at still at the preparation stage. Going by the schedule, they will start to use WOVN this fall.”
In addition to the startup’s partnership with Recruit, Minimal Technologies also unveiled a beta of its backend service WOVN++. It improves SEO results for searches in different languages by allowing a search engine to see the translated version of a website, not only the original. If you’re running an English website with WOVN++ that supports Japanese, for example, someone searching for it via Yahoo Japan will be able to see results for the Japanese iteration.
It also generates custom, language-based URLs and allows enterprise users to host translated data on their own servers.
“We’re working with a number of websites, large and small, to improve the service and bring it out of beta,” he adds, indicating that WOVN widgets have been adopted by more than 4,500 websites internationally so far.
Today’s funding will be used to hire new talent, specifically developers. The startup previously raised JPY 31 million (US$280,000) in seed funding from Incubate Fund last year.
Editing by Erik Crouch, top image via Flickr user peoplezchronicles
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