GBAF 2023 “XLIMIT Showcase”: Promising Seed-stage Startups Gathered on Stage

Written by the Universe Editorial Team

GBAF 2023 “XLIMIT Showcase” Global Brain (GB)’s annual conference Global Brain Alliance Forum 2023 (GBAF 2023) was held on December 1, 2023. This article covers the pitch event “XLIMIT Showcase” joined by the five startups selected for GB’s accelerator program “XLIMIT.”

grow&partners: Helping parents to “use childcare services” without any worries

grow&partners is a company offering activity-based childcare services that bring smiles to families, aiming to make the entire society a place for children to learn.

Many parents do not have sufficient time for themselves as they are busy with housekeeping and looking after their children. To tackle this issue, grow&partners has utilized a popular mobile messenger app “LINE” and launched “Asu Iku,” a matching service that allows users to find a temporary childcare service in just a minute.

In the process of expanding this service, a major challenge emerged: the sense of “guilt” felt by mothers. According to the company, more than 70% of mothers have a sense of guilt about using childcare services to make time for personal reasons, such as “going to a nice restaurant” or "getting a haircut.”

To address this, grow&partners launched a new business to completely change the experience of using childcare into a fun and enjoyable one. In a tie-up program with East Japan Railway Company called “Eki Iku,” children are accompanied by childcare staff during their three-hour childcare to see shinkansen bullet trains and other trains at stations and ask questions to station staff, thereby learning and growing through enjoyable and educational activities. The program provides children with an exciting experience that will lead to their growth and development. In another program called “Tsuki Iku,” children operate a lunar rover and experience science. Parents are highly satisfied with the new business, with some saying that they were able to enjoy lunch as a couple for the first time after the birth of their child.

While grow&partners’ business model is to generate revenue from service fees from parents, the company also expects an increase in Average Revenue per Paid User (ARPU) by encouraging parents to use its services while their children are in childcare. Keiko Sainowaki, CEO of the company, intends to shift her business to a subscription-based membership system in the future to increase profitability.

Sainowaki reached out to the GBAF audience saying, "We are aiming to change the experience of using childcare services into something enjoyable to build a society where both children and parents can feel fulfilled. We hope to talk with companies that have the same kind of ambitions as us.”

LX DESIGN: Tackling school reforms that everyone had almost given up on

LX DESIGN is committed to transforming society by creating a trillion yen company in school education.

For example, if talented engineers and creators from all over the world came to your school and gave classes, they would greatly inspire the children. However, there are not many schools that can offer classes given by professionals from outside the school. This is because school teachers are too busy to invite people to their schools, and there was no platform for professional people to share their learnings with children.

To solve this issue, LX DESIGN launched “Fukugyo Sensei,” a service that connects schools and professionals outside the school. Currently, more than 1,500 people from 20 countries have registered with the service. Users can check reviews and information on past classes given by each lecturer. LX DESIGN’s customer service also helps users to enhance the quality of the classes, so the schools can order classes without any worries. The structure has been well received, and more than 300 schools have introduced the service. In addition to this, around 3,000 schools are waiting for the service to be implemented in their schools in the next term and onward.

However, CEO Kanatani pointed out that this alone would not solve the issues in the market. He revealed that LX DESIGN was also trying to change the way teachers work, focusing not only on work sharing but also on Digital Transformation (DX).

For example, LX DESIGN uses AI to automate tasks that were conventionally done by the teachers manually. In this initiative, AI automatically generates class newsletters and class reports (for parents and school administrators) based on children’s learning records and areas of interest, thereby transforming school education into a data-driven process.

The CEO was born in a family of teachers for generations and he himself was also a teacher. He spoke to the audience vigorously saying, "We are committed to bring new stakeholders to school education and address schools’ issues that everyone had almost given up on.”

Flamers: To make “metaverse dating” a common option

In recent years, the “metaverse” has been gaining attention as a new place for communication. Flamers aims to build a world where “dating” in the metaverse is just another common option.

Flamers is committed to creating a world where going to the movies and aquariums or going out for dinner can all be done in the metaverse. This vision is based on the experience of Kouch Sato, CEO of Flamers, who went on dates in the metaverse with a woman he met in the metaverse and eventually got married.

The company offers “Memotia,” a metaverse dating app. While usual matching apps use photos for matching and users meet and talk with each other at somewhere like a café, “Memotia” allows you to start a voice conversation without revealing your face and body shape. For this reason, people who do not like being judged by their faces, who are reluctant to meet other people in person, or who are unwilling to use usual matching apps prefer “Memotia.”

During the presentation, the CEO revealed that, among the registered users, five couples have become engaged. What attracts users so much is the various worlds in “Memotia” that are modeled on outer space and Kyoto. In these worlds, users spend an average of 3.8 hours on a date, and some users have spent as much as 16.5 hours in the Metaverse.

The business model is similar to that of conventional matching apps where fees are collected from male users, but Sato says that they are considering a different charging system in the future. While regular matching apps charge the users mainly at the time when they sign up for membership, he noted that “Memotia” has other charging opportunities such as with the worlds, avatars, and gifts, as the dating takes place within the company’s own service.

Sato said that he is willing to develop “Memotia” as a “dating app” instead of a matching app, emphasizing Flamers’ commitment to innovate the dating experience in the metaverse.

Qlay Technologies: For a speedy planning of “how to sell products to who”

Qlay Technologies (Qlay) focuses on consumer analysis. Tomofumi Nakata, CEO of the company used to work at McKinsey, where he supported consumer goods companies with their marketing activities. Based on what he found to be a challenge, he founded Qlay.

Qlay is trying to solve the issue of qualitative analysis conducted by corporate marketers. The conventional qualitative analysis was very labor-intensive and time-consuming as marketers needed to manually read and understand product reviews and comments on social media. In many cases, more than half of the total time spent on consumer analysis is used for this qualitative analysis.

Qlay gathers review data and social media posts related to particular consumer goods and uses the Large Language Model (LLM) to analyze consumer opinions in a second.

The company’s strength lies in the ability to provide profound insights that makes it easier for marketers to take the next action. While similar tools only understand the words frequently used by consumers, Nakata emphasizes Qlay’s ability to even understand the “reason behind an opinion.” This enables marketers to also automate their task of observing reviews, which will lead to prompt planning of the next product and marketing activities.

By further encouraging users to leverage Qlay, collecting data, and teaching Qlay’s proprietary LLM, Nakata says that users will be able to more accurately predict “how to sell what kind of products to what kind of people to win them over.”.

Nakata stressed strongly, “Qlay Technologies’ vision is to centralize the planning of consumer goods and maximize overall efficiency.”

BitQuark: Transforming “talent allocation” in manufacturing easier for everyone

BitQuark provides “assimee,” a simulation service for warehouses and plants to achieve optimized inventory. The company was carved out from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and its members are mainly researchers who had been working on AI for production sites at AIST.

In manufacturing plants, the number of personnel fluctuates daily depending on the status of incoming and outgoing shipments. Managers use their experience and intuition to assign personnel based on past data, which has resulted in chronic delivery delays and overtime work. While an increase in productivity is required due to the shortage of human resources in recent years, relying on managers’ experience results in inaccurate personnel assignment as well as lower reproducibility.

BitQuark’s “assimee” allows anyone without on-site knowledge to easily and appropriately assign personnel. “assimee” features a no-code and easy-to-use UI/UX as well as AI-driven automatic setting of simulation parameters. It is also provided in a SaaS format, so it can be used from anywhere.

Showing a demo video of “assimee,” CEO Komori introduced the product, saying that users can intuitively build models… The business model is based on a fixed annual fee, primarily targeting large companies. The company is planning to approach corporate departments that promote company-wide digital transformation.

Also planned is the expansion of the service to a wider range of industries and issues going beyond personnel assignment and inventory optimization in the logistics industry. In particular, he said that the company will also tackle issues related to lead times and production facility layouts that factories and warehouses face through “digital twin” and other technologies. BitQuark will pursue innovation, aiming to "provide a testing environment where users can test and fail, to the frontline of capital investment where failure is not tolerated.”