[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/

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[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. 

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[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/

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[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/

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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/ 

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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/

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[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/

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