eExpo, Japan's First Crowd Sourcing For Industry Raises 180M Yen / SankeiBiz

Distty, an operator of crowd sourcing service for industry, eEXPO Sourcing which connects needs of large corporations and seeds of local small and medium corporations and universities utilizing network of local coordinators, raises 180 million yen from Jafco.

The total amount dealt among corporations is expected to exceed 8 billion yen in just 4 months since the launch. ...

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SankeiBiz 12/10/2013 [jp]

memo

• Most of crowd sourcing sites match buyers and contractors directly on the web sites, but eEXPO actually outsources finding suppliers or partners to the coordinators. It seems a good idea because gathering enough number of industrial suppliers on the sites may be difficult. In case of most of existing crowd sourcing services, tasks are basically PC-based such as web design, translation or data input, so it may be much easier. A challenge would be that buyers would not use the service so often, because B2B industrial relationship may usually maintains longer.
• http://eexpo.jp/