Tokyo Pioneers: Why did Europe’s SXSW come all the way to Tokyo for a pitch contest?

Pioneers Festival, dubbed a “smarter SXSW” for Europe, made a pit stop in Tokyo last weekend to host a pitch contest. Ten local startups were selected to compete at Tokyo Pioneers, with the winner receiving an all-expenses-paid trip to Vienna to represent Japan at the main event next month.

Beyond giving Japanese (and Japan-based) entrepreneurs an opportunity to pitch in English in front of an international crowd, the event organizers hope Tokyo Pioneers could open a gateway for European venture capital to enter Asia at large.

“[It’s] meant to expose European investors to Japanese startups and eventually the rest of Asia,” Andre Casaclang, Pioneers’ Tokyo ambassador and event co-organizer, tells Tech in Asia. “A lot of investors in Europe and especially those associated with the Pioneers team are keen to focus more on Asian markets, but have problems with access as they don’t have the network.”

While not on the same scale as SXSW, which also includes a film and music festival, the Pioneers Festival is a four-day affair and one of Europe’s flagship tech events. Now in its fifth year, Pioneers includes a mentorship day for the event’s top 50 startups, an investors’ day to help those startups secure funding, and two days of trade shows and social events for entrepreneurs to show off their work and network with investors and potential collaborators.

Bridging the gap between Asia and Europe has become an important focus for the event’s Vienna-based team.

“We’ve previously hosted events in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Seoul, and Tokyo,” explains Andreas Tschas, co-founder and CEO of Pioneers. “This year, there will be additional events in Tokyo, Hyderabad, and Singapore. Furthermore, we are looking closely into hosting events in Indonesia and Malaysia.”

Tschas doesn’t think that Austrian investors have a specific interest in Japanese startups, though he does hope that those who pitched and others in the domestic ecosystem consider Europe for potential market expansion.

“We see a lot of potential for the growing startup community in Japan,” he adds. “More and more people are starting their own companies and more and more corporations want to work together with startups.”

Without further ado, here are the top three startups from Tokyo Pioneers’ pitch contest:

3rd Place: WOVN.io

In third place was Minimal Technologies’ localization service WOVN.io, which allows webmasters to add a multi-language translation widget to their site. The widget, hidden in a single line of code, supports the ten most common languages on the web – enough to capture 70 percent of non-English speaking internet users, the startup claims.

Unlike Google Translate, WOVN offers options for both machine translation and premium (paid) human translation. It also allows users to edit the translations that the service generates, allowing for maximum customizability. Anyone who’s spent enough time in a foreign country quickly learns that many expressions don’t directly translate, so the option to instantly tweak what visitors see is key.

WOVN co-founder Jeff Sandford is no stranger to local pitch contests, and judges praised him for his clear and confident delivery. His latest pitch debuted a new feature, an iframe that allows users to edit text directly in the page. Sandford also disclosed some new partners and clients, including Recruit, Parco, Benesse, NTT Data, GMO Internet Group, Translimit, and Donuts.ne.jp.

See: WOVN.io isn’t a translation service, it’s a multilingual localization service packed into one line of code

2nd Place: Mister Suite

Runner-up Mister Suite is an AirBnB-esque vacation rental service on steroids. Beyond simply listing your digs (Mister Suite even takes professional photos and writes up the description), the startup provides outsourced support for things like exchanging keys and cleaning up after guests have checked out. For Japanese users worried about hosting guests from overseas, Mister Suite also translates email correspondence.

More than 13 million foreign tourists visited Japan last year, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pledged to increase that number to 20 million by 2020, when Tokyo hosts the Summer Olympics. The sharing economy boom will open up some lucrative opportunities for Japanese property owners, and those without language skills will have to rely on services like Mister Suite.

Down the road, the startup hopes to join forces with ryokan (Japanese style inn) and onsen (hot spring) hotel owners – two unique forms of Japanese lodging that could benefit from a bit of modern technology.

1st Place: D Free

Grand prize winner D Free is a medical wearable designed by Tokyo-based startup Triple W. Worn over the stomach, the device detects activity in a user’s intestinal tract and sends an alert to their smartphone with an estimated amount of time remaining before they will defecate. The frankness of the pitch drew some giggles from the crowd, but losing control of one’s bowels is anything but a laughing matter for senior citizens, the disabled, and those suffering from bowel dysfunction.

As one of the judges pointed out, Japan sells more adult diapers than baby diapers, a reflection of the country’s rapidly aging population and low national birthrate. Even so, restoring dignity – the startup’s core mission – is universal. The device’s name is short for “Diaper Free.”

Beyond D Free’s massive international market, the startup could potentially disrupt the larger field of medical diagnostic equipment. The same technology that detects movement in a user’s intestine could also be used to monitor changes in breast tissue, the prostate, and other parts of the body that are particularly susceptible to cancer.