Japanese startup, Power Technology goes IPO on Korean stock market /Nikkei

Korean stock market operator, KRX, announced that it accepted preexamination of IPO on KOSDAQ market for Power Technology, SEO service provider of Japan. The company is predicted to go public in the middle of August. It does not get listed on Japanese stock market and aims to expand its business in Korea.

KRX strengthens to attract foreign companies such as Japan and China and this is the second IPO from Japan. Power Technology provides a service to advise improvement of web site so that it appears higher up.

Nikkei 6/27/2011

memo

• Power Technology was founded in 2003. It has many shareholders including advertising agencies such as Septeni and Opt, and venture capitals such as NIFSMBC, ngi, Jafco, Dentsu.com, GMO VenturePartnes, and Biglobe Capital.

Starttoday opens store in Korea's largest shopping site /Fashionsnap.com

A fashion shopping site, ZOZOTOWN operator, Starttoday announced to conclude an agreement of partnership with the Korea's largest shopping site operator, eBay Gmarket and eBay Auction. Within August 2011, it plans to open a shop for each shopping site.

eBay Gmarket was founded in 2000, and became a subsidiary of eBay in 2009. The shopping site offers various items from the latest trendy fashion to cosmetics, digital devices, and food for bargain price. In 2010, it established local office in Japan and Singapore. ...

Starttoday opened ZOZOTOWN.com on May 18, which lets users to deliver to 82 countries and five languages are available. In June, it also establishes ZOZOTOWN HONGKONG jointly with SoftBank.

Fashionsnap.com 6/23/2011

memo

• Exporting Japanese fashion to Asia will become a great opportunity for Japanese EC related services.  

MicroAd goes into ad network in Indonesia /MarketZine

MicroAd together with Indonesian local companies, PT Rizki Bukit Abadi and PT Corfina Mitrakreasi, establishes PT MicroAd Indonesia to launch ad network business in Indonesia.

PT Rizki Bukit Abadi is a major share holder of Global Mediacom, a media conglomerate operating broadcasting station, newspaper, and portal site. PT Corfina Mitrakreasi is a boutique advisory firm doing venture investment and incubation for IT startups. ...

MarkeZine 6/23/2011

memo

• Indonesia is becoming a popular market for Japanese Internet companies. Rakuten launched online shopping mall recently and CyberAgent invested in also local shopping mall in April.

[TechCrunch] MyGengo Raises $1 Million To “Own” Translation

Translation service MyGengo has raised one million in seed financing from Point Nine, Mitch Kapor and Wenceslao Casares. Prior to today’s investment, the platform had raised $750k from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups. Along with the funding MyGengo is also announcing the hiring of Kenji Yamamoto as Chief Revenue Officer and Jeff Binstock as Chief Operating Officer.
MyGengo is like Mechanical Turk for translation supplementing automated techniques with over 2,500 translators in every time zone. Using a combination of machine and human processes, service has translated over 5 million words in the first three months of 2011, more than the past two years combined.
...

TechCrunch 6/21/2011

Axelmark and Froute are merged /Cnet Japan

Axelmark, a subsidiary of Septeni Hodings providing contents for mobile phones and a listed company on TSE Mothers, announced to merge Froute, mobile search service operator, at October 1. As a contents market for feature phones is hitting a wall, it aims to become a total contents distributor for mobile combining know-how of both companies.

Axelmark is a surviving company and Froute will be dissolved.

ITmedia 6/16/2011

KDDI forms a capital alliance with Colopl to expand location-based service /Nikkei

KDDI takes 5% of shares to become the third largest share holder of Colopl. The amount is not disclosed but considered to be around 500 million yen. The telecom operator jointly provides contents business based on location information to acquire new customers.

Both companies announced an alliance in location-based game at the last November. With the capital alliance, they strengthen the partnership. From August, they launch service using location information for about 300 restaurants, offering loyalty points or benefits based on a number of visit of customers. ...

Colony na Seikatsu Plus, Colopl's location based game, allows users get virtual money based on length they move for commute or business trip. Partnering with local souvenir shops or others, it gives items linked with a game if the user buy something at the shops. A number of users is 1.95 million as of June 20.

Nikkei 6/21/2011

memo

• KDDI has been very active to collaborate with startups in mobile applications such as GREE, Tonchidot, and Groupon Japan.
• It also starts incubation program targeting for Android application developers from this summer.

CAMPFIRE raises 25M yen /japan.internet.com

Hyper Internets announced to conduct allocation of new shares of 25 million yen in total.

Investors include Kronos Fund, Taiga Matsuyama, Insprout, Shintaro Yamada, Ken Honda, and several other individual investors. The fundraise aims to recruit staffs for its micro patron platform, CAMPFIRE, released in June 2nd.

japan.internet.com 6/14/2011

memo

• CAMPFIRE is a crowd funding platform similar to Kickstarter, which allows creators to raise fund . Patrons can invest from 500 yen.