Movida Japan is a company created by Taizo Son, younger brother of Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank. Movida Japan ultimate goal is to build an eco-system in Japan and Asia that allows start-ups to grow.
There are five fields in which Movida Japan is especially interested in investing:
– Mobility of Life
– Global Distribution of Digital Contents
– Redistribution by Social Sharing
– Cloud Accelerated Innovations
– Improvisations by Social Curation
What they look for in start-ups is the passion to want to change the world for the better, and a specific idea of how to accomplish that. A vision of the “bigger picture,” or seeing beyond whatever service you’re building helps too.
Their portfolios include:
Investors from the program
Indixo Galaxy
Website: http://indigo-galaxy.com
Activity: Mobile Social Media Tokyo Photo Sharing Australia
Sttir,Inc
Website: http://sttir.launchrock.com
Activity: Tokyo Music Music Services London Social Network
ALTR THINK
Website: http://altrthink.com/index.html
Activity: Mobile Twitter Applications
Maskachi
Website: http://aorb.masukachi.com
Activity: Japan Mobile Polling
ROCKET VENTURE INC.
Website: http://rocketventure.co.jp
Activity: Japan E-Commerce Tokyo
株式会社coco
Website:http://thecoco.jp
Activity: Japan Data Visualization
3.0 Inc.
Website:http://3-0inc.strikingly.com
Activity:Japan Mobile Tokyo Crowdsourcing Music Events Ticketing
Rising Asia Inc.
Website: http://tabitatsu.jp
Activity: Japan E-Commerce Tokyo
Combinator,Inc.
Website: https://www.combinator.jp
Activity: Japan Incubators Tokyo
Oden Inc.
Website: http://www.oden.co.jp
Activity:Japan E-Commerce Tokyo Web Development
Soundforge
Website: http://www.pedalforge.com
Activity: Japan E-Commerce Music Music Services
Ikkyo Technology
Website: http://www.ikkyotech.com
Activity:Japan Social Media Tokyo Photo Sharing Social Media Marketing Image Recognition Social Media Monitoring
Translimit Inc.
Website: http://translimit.co.jp
Activity:Japan Tokyo Apps Social Games
Eigooo Inc.
Website: https://www.eigooo.com/ja
Activity:Japan Tokyo Education Apps
InQueue Inc.
Website: http://inqueue.jp
Activity:Japan E-Commerce Tokyo
Angler Inc.
Website: http://www.angler.co.jp
Activity:Japan Mobile
3idea Inc.
Website: http://www.3idea.jp
Activity:Japan Tokyo Enterprise Software Productivity Software
Lensy Inc.
Website: http://lensy.mobi
Activity:Japan Tokyo Apps
Mashroom Inc.
Website: http://mashroo.me
Activity:Japan Mobile Tokyo
cocoa motors.株式会社
Website: http://www.cocoamotors.com
Activity: Japan Tokyo Cars
株式会社DENTi
Website: http://denti.co.jp
Activity:Japan Tokyo Apps Media
710 Inc.
Website: http://710.gs
Activity:Japan Tokyo Apps Web Development
P-nect Inc.
Website: http://p-nect.jp/
Activity:Japan Tokyo Games
Newelse Inc.
Website: http://www.wishfeed.me
Activity:Japan Mobile Tokyo Apps
trefu Inc.
Website: http://trefuinc.wix.com/trefu
Activity:Tokyo Internet
OneLab Inc.
Website: http://www.onelab.co.jp
Activity:Japan Web Development Web Design
Beatrobo,Inc.
Website: https://www.beatrobo.com
Activity: Japan Mobile USA Music Hardware
Nana music Inc.
Website: http://nana-music.com
Activity:Japan Music
Grow!Inc.
Website: https://www.box2you.com
Activity: Japan E-Commerce Tokyo USA
Viviane
Website: http://viviane.jp
Activity:Japan Mobile Film
MiCHi
Website: http://michimall.com
Activity:Japan E-Commerce
ShareWis
Website: http://share-wis.com
Activity:Japan Education
Bizzlio
Website: http://shiroyagi.co.jp
Activity:Japan Digital Media News Reading Apps
U-NOTE Inc.
Website: http://u-note.me
Activity:Japan Events Collaboration
Trippiece
Website: http://trippiece.com
Activity:Japan Social Media Online Travel
Connehito, Inc.
Website: http://creatty.com
Activity:Japan Marketplaces Mobile Commerce
InnoBeta, inc.
Website: http://inno-beta.com
Activity:Japan Mobile Test and Measurement
StreetAcademy, Inc.
Website: http://www.street-academy.com
Activity:Japan Marketplaces Education Tutoring
Flier Inc.
Website: http://www.flierinc.com
Activity: Japan E-Books
Prosbee Inc.
Website: http://booklap.com
Activity:Japan Social Media Social Bookmarking
The list of 13 startups joining the Movida Japan’s incubation program has been announced yesterday, 6.06.14.
1. Eigooo!
Eigooo is an online chat-based English learning service.
In similar services using Skype or other teleconferencing tools, a learning course is typically provided on a person-to-person basis, but is likely to require advance booking and charge users per hour. But Eigooo uses a text-based chat, so its teachers can interact with up ten students simultaneously, which requires no advance booking from students but pay a higher compensation to the teachers.
They are also planning to expand to mainland China and Korea in the future, aiming to hit an annual revenue of $60 million and go IPO in five years.
Eigooo co-founders are Peter Rothenberg, and Mizuno Nozue
2. BrainWars
BrainWars is a social quiz app and pits players against one another in three sets of mental exercise games (15 seconds each) to see which player performs better. See these articles to learn how it works.
Download in I Tunes store: https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/id845044428
3. Categorific
Categorific is a data-mining service using the image recognition technology. Ikkyo Technology, the startup behind the service, initially started their business with providing a content monitoring service for web service companies, helping them eliminating pirated content from their web services using the same technology.
They have been consulted by their clients about the possibilities of a new business using an enormous collection of images stored for the aforementioned countermeasure application. As a result of that, their team has invented Categorific.
4. Graph
Graph allows you to find the statistics you want easily and embed it on your blog post. The company plans to focus on increasing the variety of statistics and easy-to-understand infographics. They expect to acquire 1 billion annual page views and monetize it by launching a premium service.
5. Pedal Forge
Pedal Forge aims to allow users to test out a musical instrument before they but it. They will launch a web service enabling users to play the guitar virtually, with aiming to help them choose at home before visiting a guitar shop.
The service will be available in Japanese, English, and French this month
6. Sttir
Sttir wants to focus on serving the latter users and help them easily obtain songs and remix them in a way, as in sharing open source codes in the programmer community. They want to be called the “GitHub” for musicians.
7. Live3
When you have no plan to hang out after hours, it’s likely hard to find an event you may like using conventional ways like typical search engines. Live3 is a mobile app and allows you to match with your nearby events whose organizers still have many tickets unsold.
The service gives you 10 choices of live performances happening nearby every day, and you can buy it on the Live3 website or app if you like it.
8. Movie Lovie
Movie Lovie is an online platform and allows you to create a bulletin board for a movie you like, where you can enjoy interactions with other users before watching the movie. Movie distributors or theater owners can also create their boards online for encouraging consumers to come and watch their movies. The service will go live next month.
9. Combinator
Combinator is an online job site for startups which allows them to find their potential employees from a pool of people who have their current jobs and are not aggressively finding their next jobs. For engineers, you can sign up for the service and tag yourself with your skill sets so that other users can easily touch base with you.
Since the launch of its alpha version back in late March, notable startups such as Vinclu and Wizpra have succeeded in hiring eleven workers in total. The hiring platform has currently 72 projects and 2,000 users registered.
10. Tabi no Tatsujin
Tabi no Tausjin (literally meaning ‘travel experts’ in Japanese) is an online marketplace for international travel, aiming to connect Japanese travelers with Japanese locals living in foreign travel destinations.
In terms of startups giving users similar experience, we’ve seen many startups including Meetrip, but most of these services require you to communicate with locals in English or their languages. So it will be difficult to use for Japanese users who are not good at speaking in unfamiliar languages.
11. 4meee!
Women are always looking for tips regarding clothing dress-up or make-up. They used to get information from magazines but now they depend on online media. There are many curation sites offering useful tips for them, but these typically require much time to finish reading. That’s why Arisa Sakanashi and her team invented 4meee!, a user-generated content site in a four-panel comic strip style, specifically targeting girls 10 and over plus women in their 20s.
They plan to monetize it by advertising, publishing advertorial posts, and embedding affiliate links to e-commerce sites. As of this writing, they have published 1,000 articles and surpassed 1 million monthly pageviews. They are currently planning to translate all articles into Chinese and start serving the Chinese markets.
12. Aorb
Aorb is a mobile app that allows users to present two pictures and ask others to choose the best one. For example, when you can’t decided between two outfits, you can take pictures and upload them using the app. Subsequently, you will be able to see a list of responses from other users.
Every question posted gets 70 answers on average. Almost a half of their users are teenagers, and about 60% of them are females. So their primary users are high school girls. They have acquired users from 20 countries around the world because the app uses pictures, requiring no verbal communication. In view of a huge user base from the Asian regions, they are planning to add an English interface by the end of this month.
13. Hima Switch
When you have spare time, this app helps you interact with other users who are also free. Takuya Moriguchi, the inventor of this app, had difficulty in finding someone who has time to spare via Facebook. The app allows you to chat using as short as 10 Japanese characters, while storing as little as past five sets of interactions.
They are planning to add a new feature of simple games this coming weekend (June 7-8). In order to improve their 7-day user retention rate to over 80%, they also plan to roll out a new gamification feature –
All the best for the 13 participants, brilliant ideas and executions – I can’t wait to see all the products (and their enhancements) on the market . Stay tune !
Check Movida website: http://www.movidainc.com/about/
Join them on Facebook
Source: The Bridge Japan
