GBAF 2022 Startup Pitch Battle (1)
Eight promising startups funded by Global Brain mainly over the last 12 months pitched on stage.
Written by the Universe editorial team
Global Brain (GB)’s annual conference Global Brain Alliance Forum 2022 (GBAF 2022) was held on December 2, 2022. Its final program “Startup Pitch Battle 2022” was joined by eight promising startups selected from among other startups funded by GB over the last 12 months.
This year’s judges were as follows.
Nobuhiro Ariyasu, entrepreneur/angel investor Kiyotaka Kobayashi, Co-founder and CEO of Knot Inc. Yusuke Sato, CEO of hey, Inc. Masanori Sugiyama, outside director of ACSL Ltd.
We will feature the startup pitch battle in a two-part series. YuaBread, Inc. (YuaBread) Estate Technologies Inc. (Estate Technologies) TURING Inc. (TURING) JOSYS INC. (JOSYS)
YuaBread: Helping Local Bakeries through Freezing Technology and IT
Recently, Japan is undergoing a “bread boom.” Despite the declining population in Japan, the bread market is expanding as Japanese people tend to eat more Western food and prefer meals that are easy to prepare due to the increase in dual-income households.
Looking at overseas markets, the bread market has been steadily growing along with the expanding population, reaching JPY 50 to 60 trillion (USD 344.8 billion to USD 413.8 billion) in market size. In developed countries, people now tend to prefer bread made by small-quantity/large-variety producers as an antithesis of mass-produced food products.
The Japanese JPY 1.5 trillion (USD 10.3 billion) bread market consists of JPY 490 billion (USD 3.4 billion) from mass merchandisers such as supermarkets, JPY 410 billion (USD 2.8 billion) from convenience stores, and JPY 370 billion (USD 2.6 billion) from bakeries. However, since the majority of bakeries sell to local consumers, YuaBread’s business is focused on how to connect the bakeries with a wider consumer base through freezing technology and IT.
YuaBread’s unique feature is its proprietary freezing technology that uses film to freeze bread while keeping it moist and soft. Based on this technology that requires no investment in equipment such as instant-freezing machines, the company is operating a subscription business, sales channel expansion platform, sales operation system, and other services.
Its B2C subscription service which delivers bread to consumers from bakeries nationwide has surpassed 30,000 registered members and is growing rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although the current business model of bakeries naturally limits the number of bakeries located in a single city, the company’s model allows for more bakeries to sell their items throughout the country and even overseas, according to Yano, CEO of YuaBread. Together with local governments and communities, he plans to co-create towns in regional areas where bakeries can make sales even with a small population.
Estate Technologies: Digital Transformation in Real Estate through a Win-Win-Win Relationship
At the beginning of his presentation, Sawa stressed that digital transformation (DX) would inevitably occur in the real estate industry as well. He is a serial entrepreneur who listed Datasection Inc. in 2014 on the TSE Mothers market. Founded in 2019, Estate Technologies operates a business mainly targeting the JPY 36.5 trillion (USD 251.7 billion) Japanese real estate distribution market that accounts for roughly 7% of Japan’s GDP.
The market is approximately 13 times larger than the C2C consumer goods distribution market where companies like Mercari do business. According to Sawa, the key to DX in this huge transaction market is “providing reliable information.” Survey results show that the most important information customers want to know is the “fair price” when considering purchasing/renting an investment condominium or a home. Accordingly, Estate Technologies aims to realize and expand a sustainable and enriched society through fair and transparent real estate transactions.
The company’s organization consists of highly skilled members, including the CTO Ikegami, who listed Datasection Inc. together with Sawa; a Grandmaster of world-class competition Kaggle; and Professor Osawa, an authority on artificial intelligence and data analysis at The University of Tokyo. The company’s strength lies in its leading technology for accurate real estate price valuation with minimum error rate that utilizes machine learning, big data analysis, natural language processing, etc. Major businesses in areas such as real estate purchase/resale, real estate brokerage, real estate loan, and wealth management are already using its service.
“The technology triggers higher pricing accuracy, which leads to increase in corporate use and transactions. More and more information is accumulated, which increases the accuracy of the technology. The key to success is to accelerate this spiral together with companies. We will continue to pursue our business by valuing the win-win-win relationship among individual customers, corporate users, and our company," concluded Sawa.
TURING: Automaker beyond Tesla
“We overtake Tesla” is TURING’s mission that aims to overcome Tesla as an automobile manufacturer. The automobile industry is said to be worth JPY 300 trillion (USD 2.1 trillion) globally and JPY 50 trillion (USD 344.8 billion) in Japan and is currently facing three major waves, namely 1) self-driving, 2) electric vehicles, and 3) UI/UX around software. The CEO says the automobile industry needs to flexibly address these changes.
Yamamoto developed Ponanza, a shogi (Japanese chess) AI that is famous for beating a shogi grandmaster. He was an initial member of HEROZ that went public in 2018 and later founded TURING in 2021 with the vision to realize a bigger dream.
TURING has developed an AI-Based PoC self-driving system and raised JPY 1 billion (USD 6.9 million) in seed-stage funding. It is conducting self-driving tests in Kashiwa City, Japan, where the company is based. In October 2022, the company demonstrated that it could go around Hokkaido Prefecture by self-driving. The company is unique because it not only develops software and automated driving systems to become a complete car manufacturer but also designs cars from scratch. Its members include Aoki, co-founder and CTO of the company, who spent many years researching self-driving at Carnegie Mellon University; an AI expert; an engineer from Nissan; and many other talented individuals.
By combining automotive hardware and software with good leadership, TURING is preparing to make even more innovative cars in Japan.
JOSYS: Centralizing IT Devices and SaaS Management
The spring of 2020 saw COVID-19 spread across Japan. In just a few weeks, companies of all sizes around the world began to introduce remote work, as many people were ordered to stay home and were unable to go to the office, which prevented employees from communicating and conducting business. Now, two years have passed, remote work has become a common workstyle, and various supporting software has been rapidly adopted.
It is said that about 80 SaaS products are used per company in the U.S. including digital transformation (DX) of communication with Slack and DX of meetings with Zoom. In Japan, about 17 SaaS products are used per company, and although still small, the number is increasing every year. In line with this trend, companies are now expected to rebuild IT infrastructure in view of remote work and hybrid work, respond to the increasing workload for managing the growing number of software used, and address increasingly complex security matters.
JOSYS supports companies’ information system divisions for enhancing post-pandemic IT infrastructure. Specifically, it streamlines non-core operations (purchase and initial setup of devices, issuing and deactivating SaaS accounts, etc.) of the information system division that occur when employees join/leave the company or are transferred, seconded, promoted, etc.
In addition to providing its integrated management platform for devices and SaaS, JOSYS also plans to offer a structure that allows companies to outsource their streamlined non-core operations.
Challenges for managing IT devices and SaaS products are common throughout the world, as businesses in other countries also have the need to manage the same devices. To create globally competitive products from Japan, JOSYS has organizations in Japan and India and is expanding its business in both countries.
In the next article, we will introduce the following four startups.