[SD] NTT Docomo launches startup incubation program, partners with 500Startups and B Dash Ventures

Japan’s largest mobile telco NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) today announced its new incubation program called ‘Docomo Innovation Village’ (first alluded to back in October) has launched. Its goal will be to intensifying business partnerships with startup companies. 

In connection with the start of this program, the company is planning to launch a new 10 billion yen fund (approximately $107 million) (called Docomo Innovation Ventures) by receiving all shares of NTT Investment Partners, a fund management company belonging to NTT group’s stock holding company. The fund will be established in late February. 

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Sd 2/7/2013 [en]

memo

• The second largest telco in Japan, KDDI launched a similar type of initiative last year combining incubation program (Mugen Labo) and venture fund (Open Innovation Fund).  But it is interesting that Softbank, which must be the most entrepreneurial company among the three, does not have the type of program or even looks not interested in startups in Japan although the company invests in several startups outside of Japan. 

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[TechCrunch] On-Demand Taxi Startup Hailo Raises $30M From USV And Others, Including Strategic Funding From KDDI To Launch In Tokyo

On-demand taxi service Hailo is looking east. After successful launches in cities throughout Europe and North America, the startup is intent on bringing its e-hail application to Tokyo. To do so, the company has created a Japanese subsidiary, and it’s raised some strategic funding from Japanese telco KDDI, in addition to Union Square Ventures, Richard Branson, and others. The funding plans were previously reported by AllThingsD. 

Hailo is one of a growing number of e-hail applications that connect passengers with rides, relying on GPS location to find the nearest driver and in-app mobile payments to facilitate transactions. The startup first launched its service in London in 2011, and has since been slowly adding new markets that it operates in. 

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TechCrunch 2/5/2013 [en]

memo

• Tokyo does not seem an easy market to enter for such services as Hailo because of lots of small taxi companies including individuals and also I am not sure but probably some regulations specific in Japan. So, partnering with telcos like KDDI would be one of the best strategies for Hailo considering not only pre-install of the app but also KDDI's credibility as a public service for taxi industry.
• https://hailocab.com/

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[Sd] News curation app Gunosy raises $342,000 from angel investors

Gunosy, a Tokyo-based startup which runs a news curation service, announced today it has raised 31.6 million yen (approximately $342,000) by allocating new shares to several angel investors. 

The service pulls your interests and favorites from your social media accounts, and creates news updates that will likely fit your taste. It delivers a notification e-mail including links to your favorite news at a time of your convenience, usually once a day. With the funds raised this time, the Gunosy team plans to develop an Android app and refine their overall service quality.

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Sd 2/5/2013 [en]

memo

• Along with exponential increase of any type of information, "discovery" has been a hot keyword recently to find something like apps or fashion items utilizing "social" technologies to analyze interest of users. News may be one of these things that people find it more difficult than ever. It might be not so easy to monetize with the current service, but there would be more various opportunity to succeed with their technology to analyze social data.
• http://gunosy.com/

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[Sd] Rakuten to take 32.5% stake of fashion commerce site Stylife for $5.37M

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten (JSD:4755) announced today it would acquire Stylife (JSD:3037), one of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce sites. Stylife is currently listed on the JASDAQ market, a stock exchange for emerging companies, but will be delisted because Rakuten will take 32.5% of the fashion site’s stakes. Two of Stylife’s largest shareholders Burnedest Japan (female clothing) and Parco (a fashion department store) have approved of the acquisition, and will give the shares over to Rakuten. ...

Sd 2/4/2013 [en]

memo

• NTT Docomo announced acquisition of fashion EC, Magaseek for TOB just a few days ago. Since fashion EC is considered to be the high growth area, the competition is becoming more fierce recently. Maybe the M&A trend is also related to transition of main devices for EC from PC to smartphone or tablet. For followers like Stylife or Magaseek, it would be difficult to manage the transition with maintaining the revenue and profit. It is expected that only several big players such as Rakuten, Amazon, or Zozotown and niche players with an edge in competitive advantage can survive in the next few years in fashion EC.

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Yahoo Invests In Minna No Wedding, CGM Of Wedding Info / Nikkei Business Online

Yahoo Japan invested in Minna No Wedding through investing arm, YJ Capital to hold over 10% share. It aims to increase users of the service by utilizing Yahoo's user base.

Yahoo acquires shares of Minna No Wedding from existing investors. The amount is not disclosed.

Minna No Wedding runs Internet site with information of wedding centers and wedding ceremony. In addition to users' experience of wedding, it discloses quotation or statement of costs related to their wedding ceremonies. It is popular with these actual figures, because users can refer when choosing a wedding center.

Monthly visitors to the site is around 1.1 million with over 200,000 reviews of 5,000 wedding centers in Japan. ...

Nikkei Business Online 2/5/2012 [jp]

memo

• Minna No Wedding was spin-out from DeNA on October 2010. It was reasonable for DeNA at that time to focus its resource on mobile games. It is also natural for Yahoo Japan to invest and partner with the company. Yahoo Japan has been very actively developing partnership with vertical consumer services from the last year to take advantage of its current huge user base. Traditional industries represented by consumer electronics in Japan seem still not good at concentrating on core business or partnering with external companies, however the Japanese large Internet companies are more dynamically changing their business domain or strategy.
• http://www.mwed.jp/

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Ad Tech, Dennoo Raised $2M For Additional Money Of Seed Round / TechCrunch Japan

Dennoo develops a technology allowing publishers to count impressions only when ads are actually displayed and to charge display ads cost based on displaying time. The product will soon be released.

The current financing is $1.17 million, which finalizes $2 million seed round along with $0.83 million fundraise before. Investors are Nissay Capital, CyberAgent Ventures and individual investors including new persons and existing shareholders. ...

TechCrunch Japan 2/4/2013 [jp]

memo

• There are several hot topics regarding display advertising recently such as RTB or re-targeting in which several players from both large companies and startups have appeared in Japan basically copying services developed in US or Europe. However, Dennoo's technology seems more unique. It sounds reasonable even now, but will be more relevant if rich video advertising becomes more popular, which is expected to be very near future.
• http://www.dennoo.com/

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iQON Operator, VASILY Raises 300M Yen / Cnet Japan

VASILY who operates a service, iQON allowing users to coordinate photos of cloths, announced allocation of new shares to Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technology Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. ...

The amount for the series B round is 300 million yen in total. ITV and GMO Venture Partners joins following the series A round of 140 million yen in May, 2011.

A number of coordinate since the launch in April, 2010 reaches 300 thousands and monthly "like" entries surpasses 1 million. Users can buy fashion items found on iQON at EC site from which the items are refereed. The service is expected to lead customers to fashion EC sites. Actually, some shops have more than 20 million yen of sales per month through iQON. ...

Cnet Japan 2/4/2013 [jp]

memo

• The smartphone app launched in February 2012 accelerated the growth rate. More and more people are using a smartphone at home instead of a PC. Keyword search or category search mainly used on PC is not the best way to discover fashion items particularly on a smartphone. So, iQON's value proposition, fashion discovery based on other users' taste will work more effectively on a smartphone. This kind of combination of vertical social networking service and E-commerce will be one of the hottest area in 2013.
• http://www.iqon.jp/

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