GBAF 2022 XLIMIT Showcase
Six startups selected for Global Brain’s accelerator program pitched at GBAF.
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. This article covers the pitch event “XLIMIT Showcase” joined by six startups selected for GB’s accelerator program, “XLIMIT.”
Alivas: Tackling Incurable Diseases Suffered by 80 Million People
As many as 80 million patients in Japan are estimated to be suffering from “chronic diseases” such as diabetes, hypertension, and chronic constipation.
Usually, patients with chronic diseases are prescribed oral medications, but these medications basically do not cure the disease. Once we have a chronic disease, we need to continue taking the medication for many years. Having more than one chronic disease means that there are dozens of medications to take.
Some patients are unable to keep up with all the medications. According to one survey, only 30 to 70% of the medications prescribed to chronically ill patients are actually taken.
Alivas is tackling this issue by developing catheters that directly stimulate sympathetic nerves that cause chronic diseases. Unlike drugs, these catheter-based therapies have lasting effects.
Although these catheters for hypertension, diabetes, and COPD are already being developed, there are no players for chronic constipation. Alivas is developing a catheter for chronic constipation targeting this white space.
The company’s strength lies in the quality of its product. Animal studies and other results have demonstrated higher efficacy and safety than similar products of existing manufacturers.
The company is planning to conduct clinical trials in cooperation with medical institutions, also aiming to develop treatment devices for other chronic diseases.
AnyReach: Creating a World Where Gifts Can Be Sent from Any E-commerce Sites
As more people are connected through social media and remote work has become a common workstyle, there is a growing demand for e-gifts that allow people to send presents without asking for the recipient’s address.
AnyReach offers “AnyGift,” a service that allows any e-commerce site to implement this e-gift system. When a gift is purchased on an e-commerce site that uses AnyGift, a URL is issued. The sender can ping the recipient on messaging services like LINE or Slack to share this link, and the recipient only needs to register his/her name and address to receive the gift.
“AnyGift” provides functions with simple APIs and modules, supporting various types of e-commerce sites. It also provides functions that allow the recipient of the gift to freely specify the date and time of delivery as well as choose the size and color of the gift.
E-commerce sites that have introduced “AnyGift” have begun to see positive results, such as a 105% increase in new sales as a result of an increase in purchases for gifting purposes. The product also has a system for converting gift recipients into brand fans, which is being used as a marketing strategy to attract new customers.
Currently, “AnyGift” is mainly offered on e-commerce sites for food, sweets, cosmetics, etc., but the company plans to introduce the service to a wider range of e-commerce sites.
Suishow: An Unparalleled NFT and Metaverse Company
NFTs have been the center of attention over the past few years, but their use is still limited to Twitter (now called X) profiles and social media posts.
Suishow is a startup aiming to create new values by combining NFTs and metaverse. The company has developed “Zoa.space,” a metaverse platform that allows users to display their favorite NFTs on the walls or have their avatars wear them as clothing, creating a world where people can make the most of NFTs.
“Zoa.space” is recently gaining more attention. Although it is a test version, it has already formed partnerships with prominent NFT creators in Japan, and the event for NFT fans held on “Zoa.space” attracted about 1,000 people. (Official product launch is scheduled for March 2023). The company has a solid track record in metaverse development and has worked on metaverse spaces for major companies including Toyota Tsusho. Kenta Kai, the company’s co-founder and COO, says the company’s major strength lies in its expertise in both the metaverse and NFT and that there are virtually no companies in Japan offering services for both NFTs and metaverse.
In the future, the company plans to develop a business that combines artists with the metaverse and NFT. They are not just converting artists, idols, and corporate IP into NFTs, but are also planning to utilize the metaverse as a benefit for those who have NFTs.
Kai said that the current status of NFT and metaverse is “still in the testing stage” and that they would like to continue to test the possibilities of NFT and metaverse through various partnerships.
Bunzz: Striving to Offer “GitHub for Web3”
Web3 services are attracting more attention every day, and demand for such services is growing. However, the bottleneck with Web3 is its difficulty of development.
To begin with, Web3 services consist of an application called "DApp.” The DApp is composed of three technologies: 1) “smart contracts,” a programming language unique to Web3; 2) “back end”; and 3) “front end” which includes HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and other languages that are often used for Web2 services. Of these, smart contracts are more difficult to develop, and the number of engineers who can develop them is limited.
The company is offering “Bunzz,” a DApp development infrastructure, which facilitates this smart contract development. Smart contracts that are frequently used are modularized and provided to engineers in a highly secure state. With this module, there is no need to write code from scratch, and the GUI allows for the immediate preparation of smart contracts.
In the nine months since its release, “Bunzz” has already been used by more than 7,000 Web3 engineers. In addition, the number of DApps deployed from “Bunzz” exceeds 2,500, making it already the Web3 development infrastructure with the largest traction in the Asian region.
Currently, the only modules provided within “Bunzz” are those developed in-house, but in the future, external Web3 developers will also be able to participate in the creation of modules. The company plans to exponentially increase the number of modules by implementing a token economy system. Here, when other developers use the modules you created, Bunzz tokens will be issued based on the frequency they were used.
Co-founder & CEO Akutsu says that the company aims to become the “GitHub for Web3” and will continue to enhance its services to become an indispensable infrastructure for Web3 engineers.
LOCK ON: Simple Crypto Asset Trading for Everyone
Trading in crypto assets is becoming more complex than ever. There are apparently more than 18,000 different tokens, and complicated protocols are being created every day. Just doing some research to understand this complexity is very costly for crypto asset traders.
In addition, the crypto asset market is known to be unstable, with frequent spikes and plunges, due in part to the collapse of the crypto asset exchange “FTX.”
The company is striving to “realize automated crypto asset trading” to address these issues. It analyzes all of the 600 million wallet addresses (trading accounts) on the blockchain and identifies the accounts that continue to generate profits. It packages them thematically, like an index. Traders can then select a particular index and automatically execute the trades that are taking place there.
The company’s such service is known as “social trading” or "copy trading.” An Israeli company called eToro is ahead of this business in this market, but eToro and LOCK ON are different in many ways, explained Kubota, Co-Founder of LOCK ON.
“The largest difference is that eToro requires traders to register with the service, while LOCK ON does not. Traders do not have to take any proactive action as LOCK ON provides original analysis results of accounts on the blockchain.
Moreover, LOCK ON’s interest rate tends to be better than that of eToro as LOCK ON creates indexes based on 600 million analysis parameters.
There are also differences in reproducibility. While eToro can only reproduce trades on its own exchange, LOCK ON supports all types of liquidity in the chain. Also, LOCK ON supports 18,000 cryptocurrencies, compared to 78 for eToro."
At the end of his pitch, he emphasized the company’s vision of aiming for a world where anyone can trade crypto assets as easily as if they were using mutual funds.
ONEBOX: Achieving Digital Transformation in Customer Handling to Enhance Japanese Businesses’ Productivity
The development of various technologies and the spread of remote work have greatly changed the way of communication in companies.
For example, sales and customer support departments in B2B companies generally contact customers by email or phone, communicate with employees via chat, and enter data into CRM tools.
Such costly communication is not only complicated but can also lead to mistakes in customer handling and loss of sales opportunities.
Onebox has identified challenges in this area and is trying to pursue digital transformation (DX) in operations. The company offers “yaritori,” a platform that streamlines internal and external communication.
With “yaritori,” multiple people can check whether emails from customers have been handled, eliminating worries about replying twice. In addition, “yaritori” enables users to assign a member to reply to the emails and discuss what to include in those emails. Since replies can be created with a single click using a template, the workflow can be streamlined as well.
In fact, there have been cases where “yaritori” actually increased productivity. A film converting business in Kyoto, Japan, was able to cut 88 hours per month of the time spent by nine sales team members for handling customers.
“yaritori” is currently used by 160 companies in logistics and IT in addition to manufacturing. The monthly churn rate is 1.02%, which is as sticky as a B2C service.
In the future, the company aims to develop “yaritori” into a “customer handling platform” that connects companies and customers by linking “yaritori” and other tools. In addition, the company plans to develop related products in the B2B domain based on the data accumulated in “yaritori.”