Editor’s note: This is a sponsored article, which means it’s independently written by our editorial team but financially supported by another organisation, in this case, JETRO. If you would like to learn more about sponsored posts on tech.eu, read this and contact us if you’re interested in partnering with us.
The European entrepreneurial ecosystem is a relatively diverse one, and yet founders, investors, and other players usually spend most of their time looking at, talking to, and reading about startups coming from the Western background. What's really great to do sometimes is to leave your local bubble and check out what's going on on the other side of the planet — for example, in Japan.
It turns out that our readers attending the TECHDAY LONDON event on October 26th are in for a treat — the Japan External Trade Organization, or JETRO, will organize a Japan Pavilion there to showcase seven of among the country's most interesting startups. Founded in 1958, the organisation works to promote international trade and investment between Japan and the rest of the world. That naturally includes all sorts of cross-pollination activities for the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
During the Demo Day on Friday, seven startups will pitch their products, ranging from text recognition to emotion-reading AI to bladder sensors. Let's take a closer look at what to expect.
Authlete
The Backend-as-a-Service startup Authlete enables developers to quickly and securely implement some of the main authentication, authorisation and security protocols, such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and financial-grade APIs - as used by the UK and Australian OpenBanking initiatives.
Unlike other solutions on the market, Authlete can be implemented independently and is agnostic to the existing application framework, which makes it flexible and easy-to-use. In addition to that, it can be deployed either in the cloud — namely on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud Platform — or on-premise in the customer's data centre.
Authlete's clients include major Japanese companies like NTT Docomo, Rakuten, Toppan, MTI Ltd, and more.
Doreming
The industries of fintech and social impact entrepreneurship don't always go hand-in-hand, but Doreming is certainly an exception. The company has created a solution for unbanked or underbanked workers to be able to tap into their earned wages in real time using their mobile phones.
Many unbanked workers have limited access to financial services, which often leads to them falling prey of payday loan sharks. With Doreming, a worker can create a profile on the company's payroll platform and use the money they've earned any day without waiting for the end of the week or month.
Uhuru
Speeding up loT development and making it more accessible, Uhuru's main product enebular is there to orchestrate the three main layers of loT: the cloud, gateways, and edge devices. The service enables developers to write loT applications across these layers and speeds up deployment.
Uhuru is deploying loT in a variety of vertical industries to help our clients realize digital transformation to address new business opportunities and address societal issues such as ageing workforce and labour productivity while remaining cognizant of our environmental and social responsibilities.
Mobilous
Mobilous's product AppExe is a high-speed cross-platform development tool for mobile apps that doesn't require any coding skills. The visual app builder allows anyone — that'd usually be a UI/UX designer — to put together an app and generates native code to run on iOS, Android, Windows, and any browser (using HTML5 and JavaScript).
In addition to the app builder itself, AppExe has voice and handwriting-recognition capabilities that can be used in users' applications. This allows the creation of a wide range of products, from voice assistants to interview transcription services.
Triple W
D Free, the healthtech product created by Triple W for people who suffer from incontinence, is an ultrasound sensor paired with a smartphone app. The sensor constantly monitors the user's bladder to alert them when to go to the bathroom using a proprietary prediction algorithm.
On one hand, the device is of an enormous help to wheelchair users and other categories of people who suffer from incontinence. On the other hand, it can help healthcare institutions and nursing home to bring down the costs by cutting on the time the employees spend on toilet care.
Triple W is planning to start selling D Free in the US and France this year and expand into the markets of the UK and Germany in 2019.
Empath
This startups is solving the problem of “effective utilisation and monetisation of voice data to increase voice commerce sales rate.”
Its first product, Empath SDK, is a solution that allows the integration of real-time emotion analysis into any voice-powered products. The other product — Smart Call Center — is built upon Empath SDK and provides real-time visualisation of the emotions of both customers and support agents on the line.
Empath's products are used by several major corporate clients, including Philips, Fujitsu, NTT Docomo, and more. It offers the API customers to receive the raw emotion data for free or pay $0.01 per API call to get advanced data analytics.
Soramitsu
Soramitsu is — perhaps surprisingly — the only startup in this list that focuses on building products on the blockchain, from complex financial solutions to customer-facing mobile apps. One of its main platforms is Hyperledger Iroha, based on which Soramitsu is building different enterprise solutions like D3Ledger, Sora and Bakong. D3Ledger allows institutional participation in the global digital asset economy, Bakong is a blockchain-based payment system for the central bank and regulator of the Kingdom of Cambodia and Sora ecosystem is implementing a Decentralized Autonomous Economy (DAE) using Sora (XOR) and the Sora Passport for the new economic system.
Hyperledger Iroha was developed by Soramitsu and eventually open-sourced to become a blockchain platform of the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project. Iroha features a command system that makes the development of third-party solutions faster and guarantees consistent quality. It has fast, and highly secure consensus algorithm called Yet Another Consensus, which protects Iroha networks from failures or adversary participants.
Come to TECHDAY LONDON this Friday, October 26th, to see these amazing teams pitch, talk to the founders, and make new connections.
Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
Would you like to write the first comment?
Login to post comments