Startup Arena alumni Studio Ousia lands $1M in new funding

Studio Ousia, the Japan-based startup behind text-linking service Phroni, has announced 100 million yen (US$953,000) in new funding from Nippon Information Development. While the cash infusion will be focused on new products – Linkify and Linkplaza – Phroni was featured at Tech in Asia’s very first Startup Arena pitch battle in 2012.

Linkify, which launched last December, is a search enhancement tool for mobile app
developers that uses “entity linking” – technology that determines the identity of a target word (often a proper noun) based on the text that surrounds it, then hyperlinks it to a corresponding knowledge base (usually Wikipedia). The global service is integrated into several major web browsers including iCab mobile, Dolphin Browser, and Sleipnir Mobile.

Linkplaza, currently in public beta and only available to Japanese consumers, takes entity linking a step further by picking out keyword entities based on retail purchases. Ikuya Yamada, co-founder and CTO at Studio Ousia, says that the future of entity linking will go beyond web text and break into the physical world.

After Startup Asia Singapore 2012, Studio Ousia went on to raise a 70 million yen (US$665,000) series A round. Check back tomorrow for a play-by-play of our very first Startup Arena in Japan – this time focusing on growth-stage startups gunning to be Asia’s next billion-dollar company.

See: Keywords search tool Phroni launches as an add-on for 2 more mobile browsers