[Sd] Japanese data analysis startup pLucky raises funds from CyberAgent Ventures

pLucky is the Tokyo-based startup behind the user behavior analysis tool Slash-7. The company announced today that it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures. We figure that it’s worth about 20 million yen ($200,000). 

Slash-7 aims to give website owners sophisticated data analysis for reasonable rates. ...

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Sd 5/30/2013 [en]

memo

• There have been many Web analysis tools, but after Google launched Google Analysis for free, it seems to become tough to make money to realize high growth with just a tool. pLucky may have something special for its technology or any other element, which attracts CyberAgent Ventures to invest in the company.
• http://www.p-lucky.net/

[TechCrunch] SoftBank Capital Raises $50M To Invest Exclusively In New York Startups

SoftBank Capital, the investment arm of Japanese mega-carrier Softbank Corp., has just announced that they’ve raised $50 million that they plan to invest entirely into early-stage New York startups. 

This new New York fund will be headed by SoftBank Capital General Partner Jordy Levy, with the funds coming from the State Of New York itself in hopes that it’ll boost the startup ecosystem there. The one main rule of this new fund is that any company that gets investment from this fund has to call New York home — in fact, it sounds like they’ll mostly be focusing right on the core, New York City. ...

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TechCrunch 5/30/2013 [en]

memo

• It is quite unique that a Japanese carrier's venture fund invests in only New York-based startups. It is interesting that Softbank is not active in venture investment in its home, Japan compared to other two carriers, Docomo and KDDI, both of which have an incubation program and venture fund focusing on Japan. Softbank has had several successful cases for bringing US startups into Japan including Yahoo and Ustream. Some portfolio of the fund will probably replicate the strategy in the future. 

[Tech In Asia] Thailand’s Wongnai Receives Series A Investment from Japan’s Recruit

Founded in 2010, Thailand-based restaurant review startup Wongnai has today announced that it has just concluded a Series A financing round from Japan’s Recruit Strategic Partners (RSP), a subsidiary of Recruit Holdings in Japan. The investment sum wasn’t disclosed. 

With more than 500,000 downloads on the iTunes App Store and a database of 110,000 restaurants in Thailand, Wongnai claims to be the biggest restaurant review company in the country. ...

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Tech In Asia 5/30/2013 [en]

memo

• Recruit invested in Indonesian startup, Krazymarket in 2011. Japanese Internet companies are actively investing in South East Asia, particularly in Indonesia, but there has not been so many in Thailand. It is expected to see more investment from Japanese VC in this country in the future.
• http://www.wongnai.com/

[Sd] Japanese voice-acting service adds new languages, announces investment

Voip is a crowdsourcing service for voice-acting work. Since its launch back in January, it has acquired more than 1,500 registered actors in partnership with actor agencies and vocational schools. 

The startup behind the service is called Grood, and it is trying to provide an easy way to fulfill voice acting jobs in areas like social game development or media production. 

The startup announced yesterday that it has added foreign-language voice acting to its menu. Available languages now include English, Mandarin, French, and Italian. ... 

 Voip also announced on Friday that it has received an undisclosed (small) amount of an investment from East Ventures. This follows the previous funding from Incubate Fund back in March of 2012. ...

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Sd 5/25/2013 [en]

memo

• There are several vertical niche crowdsourcing services targeting on growing market like social games. Among them, voice acting is very unique and there would not be competitors in the field. It is not certain how large the market size is, but considering that increasing contents like games, videos, and animations including consumer generated contents, the market size will become much bigger than now.
• http://voi-p.com/

Resarch and Innovation Raises Capital From 3 Venture Capitals / PR TIMES

My comment operator, Research and Innovation conducted allocation of new shares to Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, and KLab Ventures.

Mycomment is an experience-based research service enabling to research a whole process from purchasing at shops to use at home. ...

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PR TIMES 5/22/2013 [jp]

memo

• Users get rewards by posting comments when buying, eating, or watching something. It is different from existing online survey services by letting users to experience the products or services. It would be a challenge if large online research services copy the method, which would not be so difficult.
• http://mycomment.jp/ 

Translation Management System, Yaraku Raises Around 100M Yen From VCs And Others / Venture Now

Crowd based translation management system, WorldJumper operator, Yaraku announced fundraising of 108 million yen from Nissay Capital, Nippon Venture Capital, and others. With the capital, it aims to speed up development to expand the service. ...

Yaraku was founded in August, 2009. It had investments from several individual investors when its multi language bulletin board service took award in business contest. However, it did not go well and pivoted two years later to WorldJumper. ...

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Venture Now 5/27/2013 [jp]

memo

• Crowdsourced translation services are becoming hot recently. Gengo raised 12 million dollars and Conyac entered into the business market from this year. Different from these competitors, World Jumper uses machine translation first and then professional translators make revisions on them. There may be some competition but each has their own suited market respectively due to the different way of translation.
• http://www.worldjumper.com/

[Sd] After announcing new CEO last week, Japan’s Mixi invests in two startups

In the wake of announcing a new CEO last week, Japanese social network company Mixi (TYO:2121) continued a busy month by announced investments in two startups today. At its financial results briefing, incoming CEO Yusuke Asakura talked about future changes planned for Mixi, including aggressive investments in promising companies. 

The two investments disclosed today is Cloud Study and Reventive. CloudStudy will receive 72 million yen (over $700,000), which will account for 20% of its total funding to date. The figure for Reventive was not disclosed but it is somewhere in the tens of millions. The startup has other investors including Sunbridge Global Ventures and some angel investors, adding up to 70 million yen in total. 

StudyPlus is a social learning management platform that was released back in March of 2012. It hit the 100,000 user milestone after almost a year later in April of 2013. ... 

As for Reventive, its main offering is an app called Close, which is available on both iOS and Android. Close is sort of a Path equivalent, limiting the number of friends you can have to nine people. The app aspires to be the most secure place to connect and communicate with the most important people in your lives. ...

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Sd 5/22/2013 [en]

memo

• mixi plans to establish an investing arm as a subsidairy in July. The two investments may be a part of the move and mixi may aim to make the venture investment as independent business like CyberAgent or Gree are doing rather than pursuing synergy with existing services.
• http://studyplus.jp/home
• http://reventive-world.com/

[Sd] Japanese mobile livestreaming app TwitCasting raises $634,000

Japanese mobile livestreaming app TwitCasting announced today that it has raised 64.8 million yen (approximately $634,000) from East Ventures, as well as Japanese serial entrepreneur Masao Ito who runs a web traffic analysis startup called User Local. In addition, East Ventures’ co-founding partner Taiga Matsuyama and Masao Ito will join the board of directors for TwitCasting. 

TwitCasting was launched back in February of 2010 by Moi Corp. When we got in touch with the company back in March, CEO Yoski Akamatsu explained that the app’s userbase has significantly grown since the latter half of 2012, acquiring more than 200,000 users every month. The number of users is currently 2.4 million, and it’s expected to surpass 4 million by the end of this fiscal year. ...

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Sd 5/22/2013 [en]

memo

• Niconico and Ustream are considered to be a major service for live streaming in Japan, but these are mainly used by geek or professionals. They are kind of alternative for TV. TwitCasting is very different from these services in use cases. It has more amateur users including teenagers who broadcast their daily life to their friends like using Twitter. It may have greater potential than Niconico considering the wider base of potential users. 
• http://twitcasting.tv/

[Sd] Japanese crowdsourcing marketplace Lancers raises $2.9 million

Japanese crowdsourcing marketplace Lancers announced today that it has raised 300 million yen ($2.9 million) from Globis Capital Partners (GCP) and GMO Venture Partners (GMO-VP). Coinciding with this funding, GCP partner Shinichi Takamiya has joined Lancers’ the board of directors. Readers may recall that we previously wrote about Lancers back in April. 

Since the service launched in 2008, it has acquired about 140,000 members (crowdsourced workers) and has transacted about 7 billion yen ($68.3 million). The amount of the transactions reached 3.5 billion yen ($34.2 million) in the previous fiscal year, which is the same amount as its total dealings up to that point (i.e. from 2008 and 2011). ...

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Sd  5/21/2013 [en]

memo

• Lancers may be one of the first crowdsourcing services in Japan. Crowdsouricng, especially in web or mobile app development, has become very hot since the last year. Other services recently launched include Crowdworks, which raised 300 million yen in the last October, MUGENUP, and designclue. 
• http://www.lancers.jp/

[Sd] Japan’s Netprice.com invests in Turkey’s largest price comparison site Akakce.com

Japanese e-commerce and incubation company Netprice.com announced today that it has invested in Turkey’s largest price comparison site Akakce.com, establishing a strategic partnership at the same time. Detailed figures about the investment were not disclosed. According Netprice, this will be the first investment by a Japanese company into a Turkish e-commerce business. 

Update: According to turk.internet.com, Netprice.com took a 20% stake in Akakce.com. 

Akakce.com was founded in 2000 in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, provides the nation’s consumers with prices and user opinions about a variety of products such as home appliances, health care products, and gaming products. ...

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Sd 5/20/2013 [en]

memo

• NetPrice invested in the Indonesian EC site, Tokopedia last year. It is expected that NetPrice will take advantage of its expertise in mobile commerce to accelerate the growth of  the foreign EC services.
• http://netprice.com/english/index.html 

Grow! Inc. Fundraises From VOYAGE VENTURES And Others / Venture Now

Grow! Inc., an operator of a subscription based EC service Box To You which sells products curated by celebrities, sommelier, or producers announced fundraising from venture capitals and a business corporation.

With the capital, the company strengthens management base as well as partnering with other EC sites and media, accelerating product placement from celebrities and marketing. ...

Investors include insprout, Gain, and VOYAGE VENTURES. ...

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Venture Now 5/20/2013 [jp]

memo

• Most of products are food or drink such as Matsuzaka beef, Belgian beer, or rice. Sellers can decide how often they sell the products. For example, Matuzaka beef and wine set is delivered every coupe of month. Subscription based commerce has been covered often on media in the last few years, but there have not been successful cases yet. It is interesting to see how Grow! will make it happen with the capital injection.
• https://www.box2you.com/

MUSE & Co. Raises 350M Yen / Cnet Japan

Curation based fashion commerce site, MUSE & Co. announced allocation of new shares of 350 million yen. Itochu Technology Ventures, Infinity Ventures, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital are investors.

MUSE & Co. sells products selected by curators who have long experience at brands or select shops. With the fundraising, it aims to strengthen management base as well as curation capability and features as media.

Cnet Japan 5/15/2013 [jp]

memo

• Fashion commerce is becoming a popular field for startups recently. Other players include Origami, which raised 500 million yen recently, and MONOCO. Traditional services such as ZOZOTOWN or Rakuten boast a wide coverage of items, but these startups try to differentiate by curation which they claim makes users to choose product much easier than searching themselves on Rakuten.
• http://museco.jp/

[Tech In Asia] CyberAgent Ventures Gets Into the Crowdfunding Business in Japan

Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures has burst onto Japan’s crowdfunding scene with the launch of its new CyberAgent Crowd Funding platform. Actually, it will launch fully this summer, by which time it’ll be ready to match startup companies and neat ideas with people who want to fund them. The new site aims to be raising $1 million per month for its listed projects. ...

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Tech In Asia 5/14/2013 [en]

memo

• Several crowd funding services have launched in the last two years such as Campfire and Readyfor in Japan. New entrants like Green Girl have followed but still it is not so hot as in the US. The CyberAgent's new service would be more opportunity for these startups rather than threat because a concept of crowd funding will be recognized more broadly.

Crowd Funding, "Green Funding", Operator One More Fundraises / Press Release

One More, which provides ASP service and consulting in crowd funding fundraised 20 million yen from individual investors. With the money, the company aims to grow existing business, Green Funding as well as a new efforts such as partnership with foreign crowd funding services.

One More Press Release 5/10/2013 [jp]

memo

• One More operates a portal site of crowd funding services including its own Green Girl and that from other operators such as Tokyo Calender, a popular magazine focused on lifestyle in Tokyo. It also provides its crowd funding platform for ASP to customers.
• https://greenfunding.jp/

[Sd] Japan’s Rebright Partners establishes a new fund focused on startups in Southeast Asia

Japanese seed investor Rebright Partners, led by veteran entrepreneur Takeshi Ebihara, recently formed a new investment fund focusing on the internet and mobile business in Southeast Asia.

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Sd 5/12/2013 [en]

memo

• Rebright Partners also runs Batavia Incubator, a joint venture with Indonesia's Corfina Group to invest in seed startups in Indonesia. With the new fund, it aims to expand to other Southeast Asian countries.
• http://rebrightpartners.com/

[Sd] Japanese online learning platform Mana.bo raises $374,000 from CyberAgent Ventures and other investors

Tokyo-based online learning service startup Mana.bo has raised 38 million yen (approximately $374,000) in seed funding from several investors including CyberAgent Ventures. 

Mana.bo provides a virtual, private tutoring service, helping students learn with a platform that enables whiteboard sharing, as well as audio and photo sharing. The startup was chosen for inclusion in the third batch of the KDDI Mugen Labo incubation program, where it also won the smart device award. ...

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Sd 5/13/2013 [en]

memo

• An education related service is one of the trendy areas in Internet services from iPad apps for kids to Skype English lessons. CyberAgent Ventures is active in the category to invest in Best Teacher, online language learning, and  Language Cloud, learning management platform.
• http://mana.bo

Photo App With 4M Users, Snapeee Operator, Mind Palette Has Series B Fundraising To Acclerate Tie-up Business / TechWave

Mind Palette was adopted for the first service at business plan contest, Startups2010 organized by CyberAgent Ventures. The company launched the social purikura (photo decoration) service, Snapeee in May, 2011. In November of the year, it raised capital from Itochu Technology Ventures and Gree. ...

The series B investors include SMBC Venture Capital, Dentsu Digital Holodigs, Mitubishi UFJ Capital, PSC, Suneight Investment, and Itochu Technology Ventures. ...

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TechWave 5/13/2013 [jp]

memo

• The amount is not disclosed. The series A from Itochu and Gree is 100 million yen. Considering the amount and a number of investors for the B round, it may be a few hundreds of million yen or more. There have appeared many photo decoration and sharing apps among which DECOPIC operator, Community Factory was acquired by Yahoo Japan last year. It is interesting to see how Snapeee will monetize the large number of users and what exit the company chooses in the future.
• http://snape.ee

Fuji TV's Venture Capital Invests In Smarteducation As The First Deal / Cnet Japan

Fuji Startup Ventures had the first deal from its venture fund for Smarteducation. FSV is a 100% subsidiary venture capital of Fuji Media Holdings. The amount is not disclosed, but according to an interview for the venture capital in the past, it plans to invest around 20 million yen and the deal is close to it.

Smarteducation was founded in 2011 and raised 100 million yen from Infinity Ventures in February 2012. The startup develops mobile apps for education such as Oyako de Sumahon, or Kids'n Books in English. ...

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Cnet Japan 5/1/2013 [jp]

memo

• Smarteducation has launched 8 apps on AppStore, Google Play, and Amazon Android application store so far. The total downloads surpassed 3.5 million in April. Partnering with Fuji TV is expected to boost the growth speed.
• http://www.smarteducation.jp/

[Sd] Tokyo Otaku Mode and MTV81.com to partner on Japan entertainment news syndication

Japanese startup Tokyo Otaku Mode and MTV81.com (a MTV Japan website serving international audiences) have today announced a joint syndication deal which will see both parties publishing the other’s content. 

Tokyo Otaku Mode, who we have written about frequently on this site, is a distributor of content relating to Japanese subculture, including anime, manga, and even cosplay. But given that there is significant overlap in this Japanese otaku culture and Japan’s more broad entertainment culture, this partnership appears to be a very natural fit. ...

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Sd 5/9/2013 [en]

memo

• Tokyo Otaku Mode had a fundraising in February from YJ Capital and others when a number of "Like" on its Facebook page was over 10 million which increased to 11.7 million now. It is preparing commerce feature to monetize the huge number of fans.
• http://otakumode.com/

[Tech In Asia] Japan’s Quan Partners with AIS in Thailand for Sticker App

In yet another example of companies from East Asia expanding into the Southeast, Japan’s Quan Inc. has today announced a new partnership with AIS, Thailand’s largest mobile network operator, and the release of an Android app called “AIS myStickerShop” that will allow Thai users to create their own stickers for use with mobile chat apps. An iOS version of the app is reportedly coming sometime later this month. 

The move reflects mobile developer Quan Inc’s desire to expand into Southeast Asia. The partnership with AIS may also give Quan an opportunity to develop future apps for SingTel customers, as SingTel is a stakeholder in AIS. ...

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Tech In Asia 5/9/2013 [en]

memo

• Thailand is the second largest country for LINE with 17 million users. Mobile chat apps are very popular in South East Asia and partnering with Telco would be a great opportunity for the startup to go into the market.
• http://quan-inc.jp/