New Startups in Japan: 12 Startup Rising Stars

Japanese Startups Coming out of the Woodwork

New Startups in Japan

Japan is filled with opportunities for startups, both national and global, so there is an increasing number of new companies trying to reserve their place in the market and create successful, lucrative businesses. Among all those, there are 12 rising startups that stand out and seem to be on the right path to success.

Creo Fuga Corporation

Creo Fuga Co. provides Audiostock, a platform for stock music services that sells licenses, such as BGM and sound effects in a royalty-free format. It enables people to both purchase audio snippets from the platform and sell their creations, for which they need to register an account.

The company has raised $2.5 million from Hiroshima Venture Capital, Nippon Venture Capital, Tomato Bank, FFG, Space Shower Network, and HBCC Technology Investments.

Sasuke Financial Lab Corporation

Sasuke Financial Lab Corporation partnered with insurance robo advisor, Donuts, and a household improvement application provider, Wealth Care, and it’s working to include two more providers to create a platform where people can get an optimal combination of personalized personal insurance.

Recently, Global Catalyst Partners Japan, Klab venture partners and Monex Ventures helped the company raise $474,000 in one week only.

Jiraffe

Jiraffe created a platform for comparing prices called Hikakaku. The platform provides lists of new products and their prices, which helps sellers establish the best prices for their products that will result in increased sales and higher ROI. The company raised $4.7 million in its series B, after a few angel investors and some big names, such as Adways, invested in it.

The Japanese market is especially attractive now when the Japanese Government started an action plan to create more global startups.

VAZ

VAZ provides influencer marketing services and other services regarding business and media, as well as employment support. The company is focused on media for the time being, but it plans on providing career support services to help connect job hunters and employers. In its series C, the company has raised nearly $11 million from 21 investors.

New Rope

New Rope is a fashion startup that leverages AI to help its customers find clothing items that they want to purchase. It offers the so-called SBK Scanner that takes photos of various models, fashionistas and Instagram influencers and uses AI to analyze the photos to quickly find the clothing items that people in those photos are wearing.

The company recently raised $473,000 from Tsuzuki International Scholarship Foundation, Reality Accelerator, and Daiwa Corporate Investment.

Quatre

Quatre, with its promotion-matching service, Aircatalog, helps businesses that want to distribute product samples to their target customers to promote their business. This is an excellent business opportunity for the Japanese market, since it’s customary to hand out samples in Japan.

The company recently raised $500,000 from various angel investors, as well as from Nagoya Television Ventures and Hack Ventures.

Yorniture

Yorniture is a company that offers very affordable, customizable furniture. Although it only offers a box-shaped shelf for the time being, it will soon start creating many other pieces of furniture. Genesia Ventures helped Yorniture raise $284,000 in its latest round.

Baseconnect

Baseconnect is a database of contact information of thousands of businesses. It has a contact list of 130,000 companies, helping businesses speed up their sales, as they can access the necessary contacts in just a matter of seconds.

Several months ago, the company raised $880,000 from East Ventures and YJ Capital, while it recently raised an additional $375,000 when it partnered with Uzabase.

SkySeeker

SkySeeker sells industrial drones made by DJI Camp, a drone pilot development program. The company also provides a drone training course and flight basic training, and you can also join the DJI Camp. Apart from selling drones, SkySeeker also provides various research services, such as using drones for an ecological survey of wildlife and using drones in times of various disasters.

The company raised $895,000, which it is now using for developing applications for water, sewer, and agricultural purposes.

AppBrew

AppBrew is yet another very interesting startup that provides its customers with amazing shopping experiences. Online shoppers tend to seek advice from various trusted sources before putting their trust in ecommerce sites, which is precisely what AppBrew uses to its advantage.

It launched an app for cosmetic reviews, LIPS. The users can browse all the reviews and find the best products for their needs, and they can leave reviews as well. The best part is that the app can instantly direct them to Amazon and other ecommerce sites, as soon as they find what they need.

ANRI, Gunosy and Gree helped AppBrew raise a whopping $5.2 million recently.

BONX

BONX provides water- and shock-resistant earphones designed for sports activities. They’re like a walkie-talkie and have high-quality, clear sound and dual-microphone digital noise-canceling technology. You can talk in real-time with up to 10 friends and the tech’s machine learning capabilities enable it to detect voice activity, so you can all talk easily without pushing any buttons.

With this revolutionary communication tool that connects to your phone via Bluetooth, you can stay connected with your friends and loved ones anywhere you are and, more importantly, you can stay safe on the road.

This startup company raised $4.2 million in its series A from various big investors, one of which is the famous Adways.

Liberaware

Liberaware is yet another drone company that keeps raising big funds from Aerial Lab Ventures, Orso Inc. and Drone Fund, to name just a few of its investors. Liberaware is working with a lot of skilled engineers with great knowledge and experience in robot technology, all of whom develop high-quality software and hardware for drones.

The company is currently working on developing drones that can function without GPS and even set out to fly automatically, without anyone behind the controller.

Japan is definitely the land of infinite possibilities, both for national startups and for global entrepreneurs looking to set up a business there. The Japanese market is especially attractive now when the Japanese Government started an action plan to create more global startups.

By launching the startup support program called J-Startup, it’s looking to promote the overseas development of Japanese startups and bring a lot of innovative technologies and business models to the world.

Today’s “otsumami” – a bite size snack:

Numerous opportunities are opening up for startups in Japan and the number of new successful ones rises accordingly.

What do you think?

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