Asiajin

Niconico douga is a rapidly growing video sharing site in Japan. Site’s feature is not very different from Youtube, but one cool difference gained big attraction. The difference is a comment feature which enables users to write timely comments on the video screen itself.

The feature allowed users to share ‘experience’ with other users.

Niconico douga attracted many users quickly. At a start, they superpose comments on streaming videos from youtube servers. Resultingly, Youtube started to refuse accesses from Niconico servers. They were forced to set up their own video servers.

Their own video servers are heavy burden to company’s balance sheet. The company, Dwango is its name, has spent about 600 million yen for servers.

Dwango changed the problem into a revenue. They limit peak time usage, and allow unlimited access only for paid users. 144,000 users are paying the fee and, the sum is 68 million yen per month. Advertisements and affiliates are making 18 million and 15 million yen accordingly.

Niconico douga’s success is backed by a powerful team. Lead developer is Akihiko Koizuka, a very powerful programmer. 2ch’s Hiroyuki is doing an advisor.

Currently Dwango is earning most revenue from ringtone services.

See also (in English):

1. Dwango company site
2. Tokytronic’s detailed article

Niconico douga:

• Page views: 59.5 million page views per day
• Video plays: 15 million plays per day
• Comments: 3.2 million comments per day
• Revenue: 101 million yen per month
• People: Developer, Akihiko Koizuka

Dwango (FY 2007):

• Founded: August 1997
• Revenue: 22.2 billion yen
• Loss: 1,408 million yen
• People: Chairman/CEO, Nobuo Kawakami
• People: President/COO, Hiroshi Kobayashi
• People: Managing Director, Hideki Mori

Tags: Company, Japan, Video by shunichi arai
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Drecom is a public company, specialized in making a blog tool. Drecom is viewed as a Web 2.0 company. Because they provide many RSS related services. Also they sponsor ‘Drecom Award on Rails’ which awards good Rails’ applications created by many participated developers.

Recently, Drecom’s financial activities are questioned by bloggers.

Drecom has IPOed with mere 238 million yen ($2 million) sales. And 61.8% of its sales are from Drecom’s share holders. This is not a excellent record.

Gree’s CFO, Aoyagi is publicly criticizing Drecom’s financial activity in his blog. Aoyagi said buying of a Hikari Tsushin subsidiary is very questionable. Also, Aoyagi forecasts cash insufficiency will bring a big trouble to Drecom.

Will it be a scandal? Can Drecom survive the coming year? I will keep an eye on Drecom.

Drecom:

• Type: public (3793)
• Founded: 2001 Nov.
• Public: 2006 Feb.
• Sales: 843 million yen (2007)
• Loss: 114 million yen (2007)
• Employee: 226+
• People: CEO, Yuuki Naito (born 1978)

Tags: Company, Japan by shunichi arai
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Mobage town has been started in 2006 by Tomoko Namba, a Mckinsey alumna. “Mobage town” is short for “mobile game town”. So, Mobage provides numerous small games and a social network service for mobile phone users. Essentially users are using Mobage as a social network service.

The service has 7.4 million registered users and 13 billion page views per month. 47% of users are teenagers. 37% of users are in their twenties.

Mobage has a very clever growth/revenue model. Each user has an avatar. Avatar needs to be clothed. Clothings can be bought with a virtual money called ‘Mobagold’. Users can obtain Mobagold by registering to adviterser’s services. Its business model is similar to Korean network game site ‘Han game’.

Namba started a company ‘DeNA’ in 1999 as an Internet auction service company. Soon, Yahoo! Japan became a clear winner in Japanese Internet auction market. Her company experienced a long slump. In 2005, DeNA gained a certain success with mobile commerce services, and successfully IPOed to Tokyo stock market.

Mobage’s huge success boosted the company’s profit. DeNA’s revenue reached 14 billion yen, and a profit is 2.5 billion yen.

See also:

1. Company’s site (in English)
2. Mobage town article with screen shots (in Japanese)

DeNA:

• Type: public (JP:2432)
• Founded: Mar. 1999
• Went public: Feb. 2005
• Sales: 14 billion yen ($129 million)
• Profit: 2.5 billion yen ($23 million)
• Employee: 415
• People: CEO, Tomoko Namba

Tags: Company, Japan by shunichi arai
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Rakuten is a giant. Rakuten group has an Internet shopping mall ‘Rakuten‘, a hotel reservation site ‘Rakuten Travel’, ‘Rakuten Securities’, ‘Rakuten Credit Card’ and so on. Rakuten has $1.72 billion annual sales.

The mall and the travel agent has the biggest share of their markets like Amazon did on the book market.

Mikitani started his business as a normal Internet shopping mall. His strong selling team made Rakuten adopted by many small and medium sized companies.

Rakuten travel is the most popular Internet hotel reservation service in Japan. It was formerly called Tabimado and owned by a ship building company ‘Hitachi Zosen‘. Tabimado made a huge success of it. Rakuten bought the service in 2003 with 32.3 billion yen ($276 million) and changed its name.

Before starting Rakuten, Mikitani was working for a big bank, and has a Harvard MBA. Now he owns a baseball team and a soccer team. Very very Establishment, isn’t he?

See also (in English):

1. A Rakuten’s company information site
2. Rakuten Travel in English

Rakuten:

• Type: public (JP:4755)
• Founded: 1997 Feb. 7
• Went Public: 2000 Apr. 19
• Users: 37.2 million
• Sales: 203 billion yen ($1.72 billion)
• Profit: 30 billion yen ($255 million)
• Employee: 3200+
• People: CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani (born 1965)

Tags: Company, Japan by shunichi arai
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Hatena started its business in 2001 with Jinriki Kensaku Hatena (similar to Yahoo! Answers). They have released 16 services so far (as of 2007) and became a famous role model of a geek company in Japan.

As a private company, their financial statement is veiled. Their announced number of users reached 400,000+ in April 2006. Monthly pageviews are over 400 million as of August 2005. Their other popular services are Hatena Diary (Japan’s first blog service), Hatena Bookmark (social bookmark), and Hatena Antenna.

In 2006 the founder, Junya Kondo, moved to the Silicon Valley and opened a company branch. The following year they released Hatena Star and Hatena Message as their first services in English.

Hatena

• Type: private
• Founded: July 2001
• Employees: est. 20+
• People: CEO, Junya Kondo
• People: CTO, Naoya Ito
• People: Board member, Mochio Umeda

Tags: Company, Japan by shunichi arai
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Kakaku.com started from a website which lists the retail prices of Akihabara, the Japanese electric market. It quickly became a famous site which shows the best deals of electrical products.

Their revenue sources are through affiliate and advertisement. Now Kakaku.com is not specialized in electric products. Their business was expanded into travel, insuarance, and foreign currency trade.

A founder of Kakaku.com is not a famous person. Mitsuaki Makino created Kakaku.com in 1997 and made the site profitable, then quietly retired from CEO in 2002. Yoshiteru Akita took the position of CEO and successfully grew Kakaku.com into a public company.

In 2005, Kakaku.com was cracked and customers’ email addresses were leaked. The site was closed for ten days. The company’s awful explanation upset their customers.

Here is the English version of the financial statement. It’s worth a look.

See Also (in English)

1. A Japan Inc. article about the Kakaku.com founder Mitsuaki Makino

Kakaku.com (as of 2007)

• Type: public (Tokyo: 2371)
• Founded: 1997
• Public: Oct 2003
• Page views: 427 million per month
• Sales: 4.8 billion yen ($41 million)
• Profit: 1.3 billion yen ($11 million)
• Employee: 110
• People: Founder, Mitsuaki Makino
• People: ex CEO, Yoshiteru Akita
• People: CEO, Minoru Tanaka

Tags: Company, Japan by shunichi arai
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