Month: March 2017
MADAME launches mobile app Po-Ong to provide house calls for pet memorial services
Mobile application development startup MADAME on Monday has launched Korea’s first Online-to-Offline (O2O) pet funeral service application known as Po-Ong, which literally translates to embrace in Korean.
Po-Ong’s target customers are pet owners which make up about 20 percent of South Korea’s population – more than 10 million individuals – which have one or more pets. This has, in turn, caused the upsurge of various pet-related services ranging from pet insurance to pet funeral services.
However, the reason why pet funeral services have become prevalent is because the nation’s current pet law mandates the proper handling of a pet remains. That is pet remains are required to be either disposed of as household waste or to be buried at least 1 meter in private soil.
In these cases, both options do not appeal to attached pet owners, making cremation by a pet funeral company a viable alternate option. MADMADE CEO, Lee Dae Eun said that Po-Ong’s goal is to ease and simplify the pet funeral processes for the millions of pet owners in Korea, often faced with a lack of information during the emotionally difficult times parting with their pets.
It assists the entire pet funeral process. For while it used to be common for pet owners to bring their pet’s corpse to a vet for funeral processing, the Po-Ong app provides house calls services whereby owners can request a “Po-Ong funeral manager” directly on their smartphones.
The funeral manager will take the pet remains to a cremation center and visits again once the process is complete. Owners have various options to customize the remains box of their pet according to their needs. With extra surcharges, the bones of the pets can also be melted at high temperatures to produce small crystals for a keepsake.
Po-Ong also shares an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with a cremation services company and has professionally trained staff to ensure the highest quality of services to pet owners. The company removes the often inflated price and unnecessarily complex funeral process found in existing cremation companies.
At present, Po-Ong is only available for Android via Google Play.
By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media
Chinese short video mobile app maker Miaopai likely to IPO later this year
Yixia Technology, a Beijing-based developer behind Chinese top video blogging app Miaopai is getting ready for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO) later this year.
The company is reportedly going to appoint a senior management team next month, which further advocate news about its listing.
According to sources, “They are planning to get listed in the second half of this year, most likely in the U.S. market given that Weibo, a major investor of Yixia Technology is listed on NASDAQ.”
However, not much information has been revealed about the IPO timetable, as sources explained that on one hand, the board hasn’t reached a consensus. While another reason being that they would like to progress gradually as circumstance could change in big deals like this.
Additionally, rumors surrounding Yixia Technology’s IPO has been around for some time. As prior to this, several Series C investors of the company, the founder of StarVC as well as Zhou Wei, partner of KPCB, has discussed the firm’s IPO plans.
Founded in 2011, Yixia Technology is one of the leading video app developers to have ridden China’s video and live-streaming boom. Its flagship product Miaopai is a leading video clip editing and sharing app which claimed over 1.7 billion daily views as of September 2016.
Its growth is often attributed to its convenient integration into Weibo, the leading Twitter-like social media and strategic investor of Yixia Technology. But Weibo’s investment has been paid off even before the Yixia Technology’s listing as its shares have recently jumped to historical high due in parts to the boost from Yixia.
Besides that, two of Yixia Technology’s video platforms, video-dubbing app Xiaokaxiu and live streaming platform Yizhibo have also recorded significant growth during the past year. According to data from the company, Miaopai and Xiaokaxiu have a combined daily user base of 70 million with Yizhibo covering 10 million daily users.
Investors have been enthusiastic about the Beijing-based firm for some time, where it has pocketed nearly US$800 million funding in overall six rounds of financing from Weibo, Sequoia Capital, and RedPoint Ventures. The company’s most recent US$500 million round raised the company’s valuation to between US$3 billion to US$5 billion.
Prior to this, founder and CEO of Yixia Technology, Han Kun has answered inquiries from local media regarding its IPO plans, stating that: “Not a single startup that aspires for long-term and sustainable growth would forgo their IPO plan. However, going public is different for every company, taking every aspect of the company into consideration.”
By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media
An application to browse apps, AppBrowzer secures US$500K led by Deepak Gurnani
Bangalore-based Roid Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates instant mobile app store AppBrowzer, has raised US$500K led by Deepak Gurnani, a member of Singapore Angel Network with participation from a group of angel investors.
Deepak Gurnani is a distributor and producer of Indian movies and has invested in more than 50 companies across the globe, holding stocks in Singtel and HSBC. This round of investment in AppBrowzer is his first investment in India.
Founded in 2015 by Sunny Gurnami and Venkatesh Rao, AppBrowzer is an application that allows users to search, discover and use various apps without any download or installation. This helps users in saving storage space on their mobile devices and data costs used for the installation and update of apps.
Last month, the company had a soft launch of its business-to-consumer (B2C) offering, that is a marketplace of mobile applications housing over 150 popular apps from various segments, including shopping apps Flipkart and Amazon, news apps CNN and TechCrunch, as well as education app Khan Academy where users can instantly access any of these apps without installation.
The startup also plans to launch its business-to-business (B2B) platform soon where developers and businesses can build and host their own instant apps. In this platform, the process of making apps is made easier whereby a developer can build an instant app in less than a day or two.
“We are looking to achieve at least 25,000 downloads before launching our B2B platform,” the co-founder and chief executive of AppBrowzer, Sunny Gurnani said. “We have also taken and merged the best bits of the web and native app technologies to create this platform. When a developer builds an app, it’s a web app but it gives a native experience to the users.”
The company also claims that the soon-to-be-launched B2B platform will be its main monetisation window, although the B2C platform would also contribute to a smaller portion of its revenues, primarily from advertisements and sponsored apps.
AppBrowzer competes with Tapzo, which was earlier known as Helpchat, a personal assistant platform. While Tapzo ties up with companies like Uber, Ola, Freecharge, Zomato and Swiggy to integrate their APIs to build apps within the platform, AppBrowzer keeps the builder platform open for developers and businesses to build and host their apps on the platform.
“A significant amount of the capital will be invested in building and launching the product, as well as the for talent acquisition. We haven’t done any marketing so far. Now, the focus will be on expanding the team and marketing the product to initiate good traction,” Sunny adds.
By Vivian Foo, Next Unicorn
Japan’s sports entertainment startup Ookami raises Series A from IMJ Investment, GREE Ventures, others
Sports startup company Ookami, the company behind sports entertainment application Player! made an announcement that it has secured an undisclosed Series A funding from IMJ Investment Partners, GREE Ventures, Asahi Shimbun, and other individual investors, alongside the release of an updated Player! which comes in line with the opening of the J-league and B-league.
The updated version of Player! will feature the real-time coverage of the upcoming 1040 games in the J-league (football) as well as the complete 1090 games in the B-league (basketball), in addition to news function, live chat function, and relative information.
Launched in September 2014, sports entertainment app Player! is an application providing a third viewing portal to sports, acting as an alternate to viewing live at the stadium or in front of the TV.
The application functions as a newsreader, providing users access to browse news sites of sports-genre as well as sports game information in real-time. Additionally, users can also communicate with other users who share the same interests.
The beginnings of Player! according to Ookami’s representative director Ogata Tai, however started out from a different service concept, originally centered on ‘news x community’ where users can make commenting statements on sports news. However, this was soon contended by the influence of Yahoo! news, a leading giant in sports news and community at large, and the idea could not be extended further.
The idea was later changed to a ‘live x community’ concept whereby sports league content and communication is centered, an idea that Player! is now based on.
“As I manage the service, I gradually come to understand that there is a need for live viewing. And so far, live viewing meant that we had to go to the stadium or to watch it on television,” Ogata explained. “But with the smartphone, we could communicate with each other in addition to watching. With this, we could build a new style of watching live, next to the stadium and television.”
Furthermore, with the alliance formed between Asahi Shimbun and Ookami, both companies could extend their sports content coverage whereby Player! can feature Asahi Shimbun’s reporting of 180 sports events annually. This includes the Koshien (Summer National High School Baseball Tournament) and Ekiden (All Nippon Ekiden Relay School Championship Tournament), etc.
Meanwhile, the Asahi Shimbun can reach more readers via a layout different from its usual news reporting which will help both companies gain an edge up in addition to this business capital tie-up.
Ookami plans to use the latest capital to accelerate the development of new functions and strengthening their service management processes for growth, in addition to facilitating the recruitment and training of engineers and designers.
With Japan being the host for the 2020 Olympic games, Ookami’s investment partner IMJ said, “The sports industry is expected to be one of the nation’s growing industry. But among the players in the industry, Player! Is a new media that realizes sports live contents and smartphone optimal customer experience. We also have great faith in the executive strength of the management team which is the reason for our support.”
By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media
Darma Tech Labs, operator behind Makers Boot Camp accelerator to launch US$17.5 million investment fund with Kyoto Bank
Darma Tech Labs, the Kyoto-based operator behind the Makers Boot Camp (MBC) hardware startup-focused accelerator, announced on Tuesday that it is forming an investment fund worth 2 billion yen (about US$18 million) with Kyoto Bank as an anchor limited partner.
The fund is known as MBC Shisaku No. 1 Investment LP and its redemption period extends through a period of 10 years. The fund will mainly support the trial production and investment of domestic and international IoT startups as they did in the accelerator program Makers Boot Camp which has supported the trial production of IoT startup Monozukuri.
Additionally, the fund will intensively invest in early stage hardware startups in Japan, North America, and Europe. While looking at priority investment areas including IoT, robotics, sensing, networking, big data analysis, medical devices, nursing care, lifestyle, environment, and energy.
The Makers Boot Camp, previously being initiated in August 2015 by Darma Tech Labs in cooperation with Shimogyoku-based Kyoto Prototype Net has previously aided the prototyping efforts in more than 10 startups including wearable AI Bonbouton, smart digital window Atmoph, and e-money reader Coban, among some.
Along with the formation of this fund, Mikuni Kimura, the former chief investment officer for Future Venture Capital and the certified public accountant, Manabu Kuwahara will participate as managing directors at Darma Tech Labs.
At the same time, the company will also expand their alliance partnership with New York-based FabFoundry, in addition to appointing CEO Nobuhiro Seki as a director of Darma Tech Labs, in order to prepare for investments in startups which are centered on the East coast of New York, Boston, Pittsburgh etc.
Ultimately, this fund will also serve as a further investment to strengthen and accelerate the growth of Kyoto as a manufacturing city of IoT.
By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next ›