[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/

[Sd] Japanese mobile livestreaming app TwitCasting raises $634,000

Japanese mobile livestreaming app TwitCasting announced today that it has raised 64.8 million yen (approximately $634,000) from East Ventures, as well as Japanese serial entrepreneur Masao Ito who runs a web traffic analysis startup called User Local. In addition, East Ventures’ co-founding partner Taiga Matsuyama and Masao Ito will join the board of directors for TwitCasting. 

TwitCasting was launched back in February of 2010 by Moi Corp. When we got in touch with the company back in March, CEO Yoski Akamatsu explained that the app’s userbase has significantly grown since the latter half of 2012, acquiring more than 200,000 users every month. The number of users is currently 2.4 million, and it’s expected to surpass 4 million by the end of this fiscal year. ...

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Sd 5/22/2013 [en]

memo

• Niconico and Ustream are considered to be a major service for live streaming in Japan, but these are mainly used by geek or professionals. They are kind of alternative for TV. TwitCasting is very different from these services in use cases. It has more amateur users including teenagers who broadcast their daily life to their friends like using Twitter. It may have greater potential than Niconico considering the wider base of potential users. 
• http://twitcasting.tv/

[Sd] Japanese crowdsourcing marketplace Lancers raises $2.9 million

Japanese crowdsourcing marketplace Lancers announced today that it has raised 300 million yen ($2.9 million) from Globis Capital Partners (GCP) and GMO Venture Partners (GMO-VP). Coinciding with this funding, GCP partner Shinichi Takamiya has joined Lancers’ the board of directors. Readers may recall that we previously wrote about Lancers back in April. 

Since the service launched in 2008, it has acquired about 140,000 members (crowdsourced workers) and has transacted about 7 billion yen ($68.3 million). The amount of the transactions reached 3.5 billion yen ($34.2 million) in the previous fiscal year, which is the same amount as its total dealings up to that point (i.e. from 2008 and 2011). ...

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Sd  5/21/2013 [en]

memo

• Lancers may be one of the first crowdsourcing services in Japan. Crowdsouricng, especially in web or mobile app development, has become very hot since the last year. Other services recently launched include Crowdworks, which raised 300 million yen in the last October, MUGENUP, and designclue. 
• http://www.lancers.jp/

[Sd] Japan’s Netprice.com invests in Turkey’s largest price comparison site Akakce.com

Japanese e-commerce and incubation company Netprice.com announced today that it has invested in Turkey’s largest price comparison site Akakce.com, establishing a strategic partnership at the same time. Detailed figures about the investment were not disclosed. According Netprice, this will be the first investment by a Japanese company into a Turkish e-commerce business. 

Update: According to turk.internet.com, Netprice.com took a 20% stake in Akakce.com. 

Akakce.com was founded in 2000 in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, provides the nation’s consumers with prices and user opinions about a variety of products such as home appliances, health care products, and gaming products. ...

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Sd 5/20/2013 [en]

memo

• NetPrice invested in the Indonesian EC site, Tokopedia last year. It is expected that NetPrice will take advantage of its expertise in mobile commerce to accelerate the growth of  the foreign EC services.
• http://netprice.com/english/index.html 

Grow! Inc. Fundraises From VOYAGE VENTURES And Others / Venture Now

Grow! Inc., an operator of a subscription based EC service Box To You which sells products curated by celebrities, sommelier, or producers announced fundraising from venture capitals and a business corporation.

With the capital, the company strengthens management base as well as partnering with other EC sites and media, accelerating product placement from celebrities and marketing. ...

Investors include insprout, Gain, and VOYAGE VENTURES. ...

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Venture Now 5/20/2013 [jp]

memo

• Most of products are food or drink such as Matsuzaka beef, Belgian beer, or rice. Sellers can decide how often they sell the products. For example, Matuzaka beef and wine set is delivered every coupe of month. Subscription based commerce has been covered often on media in the last few years, but there have not been successful cases yet. It is interesting to see how Grow! will make it happen with the capital injection.
• https://www.box2you.com/

MUSE & Co. Raises 350M Yen / Cnet Japan

Curation based fashion commerce site, MUSE & Co. announced allocation of new shares of 350 million yen. Itochu Technology Ventures, Infinity Ventures, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital are investors.

MUSE & Co. sells products selected by curators who have long experience at brands or select shops. With the fundraising, it aims to strengthen management base as well as curation capability and features as media.

Cnet Japan 5/15/2013 [jp]

memo

• Fashion commerce is becoming a popular field for startups recently. Other players include Origami, which raised 500 million yen recently, and MONOCO. Traditional services such as ZOZOTOWN or Rakuten boast a wide coverage of items, but these startups try to differentiate by curation which they claim makes users to choose product much easier than searching themselves on Rakuten.
• http://museco.jp/

[Tech In Asia] CyberAgent Ventures Gets Into the Crowdfunding Business in Japan

Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures has burst onto Japan’s crowdfunding scene with the launch of its new CyberAgent Crowd Funding platform. Actually, it will launch fully this summer, by which time it’ll be ready to match startup companies and neat ideas with people who want to fund them. The new site aims to be raising $1 million per month for its listed projects. ...

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Tech In Asia 5/14/2013 [en]

memo

• Several crowd funding services have launched in the last two years such as Campfire and Readyfor in Japan. New entrants like Green Girl have followed but still it is not so hot as in the US. The CyberAgent's new service would be more opportunity for these startups rather than threat because a concept of crowd funding will be recognized more broadly.