Mixi [JP], Japan’s largest social network (17.4 million members at the end of June), yesterday announced [JP, PDF] they acquired a 20% stake in Pikkle, a Tokyo-based social gaming company that was founded in 2005. What’s particularly interesting about this deal is that Pikkle was founded by David “DC” Collier, a veteran in the videogaming sector and a British national.

Mixi bought 385 Pikkle shares and paid 144 million Yen (1.58 million USD/1.06 million Euro), which means Pikkle’s valuation currently stands at 7.9 million USD. Not bad for a 7-man start-up.

The money comes from the so-called “Mixi fund” the company started back in April and which is supposed to support Mixi application developers (background on Mixi’s application platform). Pikkle is the third company getting money from that fund.

Pikkle’s first Mixi app is called Dance Unit [JP] and was started on the platform [Mixi membership required] August 25. Here are some screenshots. I tried the app, it’s pretty hard but fun.

Author Information  Dr. Serkan Toto is a German based in Tokyo. Like us, he is passionate about introducing Japanese IT to the rest of the world. Full-time, Serkan works as an independent web industry consultant for hedge funds, venture capital companies and start-ups worldwide. He is also a writer for mega tech blog network TechCrunch, covering Japan-related technology and web trends. Follow Serkan on Twitter here.

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