Japan’s Bitcellar Raises $5 Million for Recently Acquired Photo App FxCamera

A few weeks back we told you about the Android photo app from Japan called FxCamera, which at the time had been acquired by Japanese web company Bitcellar. Now today we’ve received word from that latter that it has raised 420 million Japanese yen (over $5 million), with shares allocated to JAFCO Super V3 Investment Limited Partnership.

It’s notable that FxCamera claims to have 15 million downloads (although it has been around for a long time), which Bitcellar says makes it the largest Android camera app in the world. In its announcement the company states that it hopes to strengthen the app’s development team, improve the filter functions, and transform the app into a “visual platform.”

Bitcellar’s monetization strategy for FxCamera is tied to its upcoming cloud photo storage service, called Cellar (Cellar.io). While that service is not public yet, we’re told that the plan is to eventually charge users for storage according to a freemium model (similar to Dropbox).

Since Facebook acquired Instagram, there seems to be a bit of a spotlight on the photo app space. I really liked Line Camera when I looked at it last week, and I think that has a lot of potential too.

If you’d like to try FxCamera for yourself, you can get it over on Google Play.