Tokyo-based smartphone ad-optimizer Nobot announced on Friday they had fundraised approximately USD1.3M from Japan's largest VC firm JAFCO and Nissay Capital[J] who is an investment arm of Japan's largest life insurance company.

Nobot was founded in April 2009, and has introduced a smartphone ad-optimization service called Ad-Maker.   They're currently distributing 100 million impressions per month, and expecting to gain it up to 1 billion impressions per month in the next fiscal year, the company's CEO Kiyotaka Kobayashi says.

Prior to this round, Nobot has fundraised from Tokyo-based seed investor Samurai Incubate and Internet business-focused VC firm ngi group.  Mr. Kobayashi says, the service is being mainly used by smartphone app developers in the US and European countries, and expecting to spread it out to Asian countries.   They expect their revenue reach USD13M in their fiscal year of 2012.

ノボット、ジャフコから約１億円調達。「アジアを中心に展開してく」

2010/10/15 16:05　　by　Venture Now 編集部

	【急募】システムエンジニア／千代田区（ノボット）
	最新iPadアクセサリ一覧

株式会社ノボット

ノボットは15日、ジャフコ・スーパーV3共有投資事業有限責任組合およびニッセイ・キャピタル4号投資事業有限責任組合を割当先とした第三者割当増資により、総額 約１億円の資金調達をおこなったことを明らかにした。各ファンドからの払込は既に完了している。

調達した資金の半額を資本金に組み入れ、増資後の資本金は、9,000万円。各ファンドからの出資額などの内訳は非開示。

ノボットは、2009年４月１日に設立。スマートフォン向け広告収益最適化サービス「AdMaker」を展開。現在の広告配信数は月間 約１億imp。「来年度には10億impくらいまでにもっていきたい」（ノボット代表小林氏）

同社ではこれまでにエンジェルラウンドでのサムライインキュベートからの投資を経て、2010年３月には ngi group の運営ファンドなどから約3,000万円の資金調達に成功している。

今回調達した資金はおもに同社の事業ドメインである AdMaker の開発と、アジアを中心とした海外展開に充てる。「世界中で使ってもらいたい。今は欧米系が多いが、今後はアジアを中心に展開していく。日本よりも海外の比重を高めたい」（小林氏）

2012年３月期売上高 10億円を目指す。

Tags: Company, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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Twitter Japan is finally getting up to speed on how people communicate with their mobile phones in Japan.

Contrary to what people think, SMS does exist in Japan. It's just not used. It never had a real chance, having been buried by e-mail, which became the standard texting communication channel between users on their keitai.

You see, SMS specifications -drafted when bandwidth constraints were high- allow for 140 bytes, that's 140 8-bit characters for Latin languages, 160 7-bit characters for English, but only 70 16-bit characters for Japanese input, very limiting. Plus, as e-mail was becoming widely adopted, Japanese carriers never bothered looking into interoperability: you still cannot send an SMS from DoCoMo to KDDI -even if that may change, maybe even at the end of this year.

To palliate for SMS, mobile subscribers get a @docomo.ne.jp, @softbank.ne.jp or, if you're on an iPhone, a @i.softbank.jp email address which will let you communicate with your network and let service providers contact -or spam- you.

No MMS adoption nightmare. Media-rich out of the box.

Back to Twitter. In the USA and a few other countries in the world, Twitter can be linked with SMS. It means you can get selected updates from accounts you follow pushed to you via text.

You see the issue in Japan. No SMS, no notification.

So, earlier this week, Twitter Japan released a new feature specially built for Japan: e-mail notifications.

To activate the service, one can go to the mobile-ready (and Japan-specific) page twtr.jp, go to settings and add the mobile email where the updates will be pushed to.

This also works from the web interface. If you access it from an international interface, you'll realize that twitter.com/devices lacks Japan as an option.

Now, access the same menu from the Japanese interface and you'll see the email notifications.

After the email validation is done, Twitter kindly offers you time limits, so it won't disturb your sleep.

Twitter Japan is seeking feedback on this feature. You can follow the official Twitter Japan account @TWJ to give your 2 cents. Err. 140 characters.

Tags: Japan by Paul Papadimitriou
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I wonder in what shape the Japanese venture capital industry (and entrepreneur scene) would be without social games. Yesterday, TechCrunch Japan reported about Tokyo-based social apps provider gumi getting a "multi-million dollar" sum from GREE, which counts 21 million members in its mobile gaming network.

And today, Japan- and Australia-based Istpika says it received $2.5 million from IncubateFund, an investment vehicle capitalized at $37 million. One of IncubateFund's goals is to back social game providers, which is not too surprising, given that Japan's other mobile gaming giant, DeNA (Mobage-town), has injected $31 million into the fund (IncubateFund is also involved in gumi).

Istpika's CEO Michinori Fukushima says his company now counts 50 people in offices in Osaka, Tokyo, and Perth, Australia. Istpika has so far developed games for Mobage-town, GREE, the iPhone and Facebook. The fresh money will be used to develop social games for the iPhone and recruit more employees.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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As Shunichi Arai introduced here last month, San Francisco-based digital consulting agency btrax, Inc. organizes an event featuring six Japanese tech start-ups today.   Without being at the venue in San Francisco, you'll be able to watch it live on Ustream from all around the world.

The live starts today at 11:30am JST, 7:30pm PDT and 2:30am UTC.   Be a witness to the scene and share a great experience with the Japanese techpreneurs and tech geeks in San Francisco.

Tags: Community, Technology, USA by Masaru IKEDA
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NHK Online, Japan's public broadcasting organization makes a special website about its 15 years internet activities.

The NHK Online History, a Flash contents, is quite interesting as it covers Japanese and the world Internet news and trend for last 20 years.

Here is the video version in English.

The site also has "special interviews" of Japan's "Internet Father" Jun Murai and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Jun Murai's interview is all in Japanese. His talk is about how inter-university networking research project was run in Japan, how a free Japanese font made by a single person spread to realize Japanese processing over the internet, how should the internet research and discussion be done for future, etc.

NHK releases 15th Anniversary Dance themes Arigatou(Thank you) and Omedetou(Congratulation). Domo-kun is also dancing there.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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