[Tech In Asia] Gesture Recognition Music App piaScore Raises US$138,000

We received news that PiaScore, Japan’s gesture recognition music app, has raised an angel round of US$138,000. 

The round is led by Takeshi Natsuno, Gen Miyazawa, and Hiroyuki Koike who is also the CEO and founder of plusadd, Inc, the company behind piaScore. 

PiaScore is an iPad application which allows musicians to view digital sheet music on the iPad and turn pages with either a hand wave or head nod.

Tech In Asia 10/7/2012 [en]

memo

• Page turning mechanism is the most unique feature of PiaScore, but it is also useful to allow players to write down notes in the score. 
• http://piascore.com/

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Startup Community Site, creww Raises 30.1M Yen / Cnet Japan

creww announced allocation of new shares of 30.1 million yen to Incubate Fund. With the fundraise, it plans to improve the service, activate the community more, and strengthen the team by hiring.

creww is a community site supporting activities of people who create innovative idea or services such as entrepreneurs. Users can place information regarding their idea or services to find investors, advisers, programmers and other necessary persons from supporters who emphasize with the vision. It was launched on this July and currently over 2500 people and 200 projects are registered.

Cnet Japan 10/5/2012 [jp]

memo

• It is a Japanese version of AngelList. It seems the launch has been quite successful to acquire a large number of users and startups. It would be able to monetize by charging fee for recruiting, but also a big challenge to realize scalability. It is interesting to see how it will make it grow.
• http://creww.me/

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Food Service Focused Recruiting Site, Cookbiz Raises 30M Yen From Jafco / Venture Now

Cookbiz plans to use the capital in web marketing as well as development of web site for smartphone and strengthening expansion into Kanto area.

Cookbiz was founded in December, 2007 to provide outplacement and recruiting service centered around Cookbiz, food industry focused recruiting service.

Recruiting sites are not a new service, but it is still immature in food industry. ...

Cookbiz develops the niche market and grows rapidly. It has only seven staffs now but acquires about 300 new customers in the fourth fiscal year to reach 100 million yen of revenue.

Its business model is success fee based matching fee to charge 16 to 20% of annual salary. ...

Venture Now 9/26/2012 [jp]

memo

• Food industry is a quite large market and basically stable. Also, generally speaking, it has not yet fully utilized IT as in most of other industries. So, it must be a good strategy to focus on the industry if the company has expertise in it.
• http://cookbiz.jp/

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Recruiting Site, Galaxy Agency Raises 65M Yen From Jafco / Venture Now

Success fee basis recruiting service operator, Galaxy Agency raises 65 million yen for Convertible Notes from JAFCO.

It plans to use the fund mainly for user acquisition and business expansion of Rebaito, success fee basis recruiting site, and strengthening of administrative office.

Galaxy Agency was established on February 2009. It is based in Osaka operating Agurework, locally-based recruiting site in Osaka, Hyogo, and Tokyo. ...

Rebaito, which was launched in this April, introduces original affiliate system utilizing social media in addition to success fee based model. Users will get 5 thousands yen for referral fee by sharing its dedicated URL on Facebook, Twitter, or mixi and if someone got the job through the URL . ...

Venture Now 10/1/2012 [jp]

memo

• Several social recruiting services have emerged recently such as Wantedly or garbs, which looks trying to use social media for securing credibility of applicants. While, Rebaito focuses on temporally jobs, in which social media may work for spreading information like flash marketing services do. Considering sociability of the service, Rebaito would work better than others.
• http://www.rebaito.com/

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JX Press Fundraises From Mitsubishi UFJ Capital / JX Press Press Release

JX Press conducted allocation of new shares to Mitsubishi UFJ Capital aming to expand its service, "vingow", an information gathering engine automatically collecting news and blog article that you like.

In addition, before the finance, it allocated shares to AMG.

JX Press Press Release 10/1/2012 [jp]

memo

• The amount is not disclosed. JX Press provides social media marketing service and marketing promotion service for business customers as well. vingow is their new service targeting consumer market, which is currently running for closed beta version. 
• http://jxpress.net/

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Glasses Online Shop, Mr. Taddy Raises 215M Yen / Cnet Japan

Online shopping site of glasses, Oh My Glasses operator, Mr. Taddy announced allocation of new shares of 215 million yen to Nissay Capital and SMBC Venture Capital.

Mr. Taddy plans to provide fitting service after purchase cooperating with physical retailers and to build a contact center for customer support with telephone and email. To improve the service before and after purchase, it provides the service at 90 shops of Megane Drug and Marui in the Tokyo metropolitan area. ...

Cnet Japan 9/28/2012 [jp]

memo

• Mr. Taddy was founded on July 2011 and launched the service in January 2012 officially. Selling glasses on Internet sounds tough, but it would be  very good alternative for people who are not satisfied with limited number of products on shelf of physical shops.
• http://www.ohmyglasses.jp/

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Nexon Acquires gloops To Strengthen Mobile Games For 36.5B Yen / Cnet Japan

Nexon announced that it decided on its board meeting to acquire 100% of shares of gloops.

With the acquisition, Nexon said it is seriously entering into mobile game market which is considered to grow continuously in the future. In addition, gloops can take advantage of user base, game operating capability, and partner network of Nexon group to expand its business globally. ...

Cnet Japan 10/1/2012 [jp]

memo

• gloops is one of the most successful startups in mobile social game developers mainly focusing on sports games and card battle games targeting male users. The company recently announced partnership with DeNA to go global.
• http://gloops.com/

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