Getty Photos Shown to have started in 869AD, the Gion Matsuri is one of the most famous 12-monthly festivals in Okazaki, japan. This year it embraced the digital entire world.
For the 2022 event back in June, an interactive, web based map was made there to show where as soon as to see the 34 vast, ornate floats that paraded across the city of Kyoto over 2 separate days.
Employing GPS, it proved the location of each float. And you could also create a savings fund map to find your mates and chat with these folks. In addition , if you visited a building or maybe street, you could find about its history throughout Japanese or Uk.
The person behind the exact technology is Machi Takahashi, the us president and co-chief govt of Kyoto-based, electronic digital map firm Stroly. A mother associated with two, she is a rare female entrepreneur within a country where the start up scene is still a great deal of dominated by males.
Stroly
“I seemed to be surprised that [the festival organisers] will let us digitise all their map, because I think these traditional societal festivals are quite practical, ” she says.
Often the website-based digital guide is accessed from scanning a QR code. Hideo Yoshii, who is in charge of taking care of one of the biggest floats, claims that Stroly could have gotten some pushback if it had wanted to put QR laws stickers or signs up on walls.
On the other hand Stroly created a fairly postcard that had not just the QR code printed on it, but the pattern to a traditional Japanese map. This complemented the atmosphere of the historic event, and was also used as the design of the digital map Stroly made.
“Before the pandemic, we all gave out your pamphlet, but travelers found it difficult for you to navigate the city, ” says a speaker for the city’s travel and leisure department.
“By using Stroly’s digital map, police officers who are in the grass found it simpler to explain to visitors where to go. We’ve also were able to reduce our daily news waste by a 1 / 3, ” she improves.
The thought to set up a business doing digital maps found Ms Takahashi not to mention her husband and also co-founder Toru although they were both even now working at Kyoto-based technology research institute ATR. He is Stroly’s chairman and co-chief executive.
Among their first people was the movie trade theme park Toei Kyoto Studio Park the government financial aid 2010.
“We inquired Mr and Ms Takahashi to create a video game using Nintendo DS, ” says Norihiro Yamaguchi, who was often the boss of Toei Kyoto Studio Recreation area at the time.
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The map and also GPS-based game the Takahashis produced concerned the park’s tourists having to locate 6 actors playing tv screen villains.
Six many years later, the Takahashis left the research institute to set up Stroly as their own business, using theme park remaining one of its main clients.
“Thanks to touch screen phones which allow customers to access the Stroly map in different dialects, visitors can find out the details of our presents and facilities, micron says a speaker for the park.
Stroly has now produced almost 10, 000 online, digital maps, which include one highlighting often the vibrant nightlife with the busy Shinjuku part of central Tokyo. That had been commissioned by the administration of the capital area.
Stroly
Other road directions include where to find the most effective cheese in the Tokachi dairy farming region of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main tropical isle, as well as work for clients outside Japan.
Needed for members of the public Stroly’s maps are free to use. It instead makes its money by loading its customers, mostly in tourism plus transport, annual subscriptions.
“When I began thinking about starting the business in 2015, there was no partner in this information technology domain so I had to locate my way in this community, micron says Ms Takahashi.
“I had to actually contact [US-based Japanese entrepreneur] Ari Horie from Women’s Medical Lab in San francisco, instead of [anyone] in Japan, to help me out there. ”
Stroly was subsequently selected the truth is first start-ups to get given mentoring with a new regional business support agency identified as Osaka Innovation Heart.
This was where Master of science Takahashi managed to secure funding from Japan investment bank Daiwa Securities. The business also later received money from Kyoto City’s start-up fill.
The difficulty faced by simply female entrepreneurs is simply not unique to Japan. Even in the US, only 2% of venture capital, which invests in new start-ups, went to women in 2009.
In an article for Vogue magazine last month which is where she announced that the woman was “evolving clear of tennis”, US sports entertainment star Serena Williams said this was area of the reason she unveiled her own investment create funding for, Serena Ventures.
Getty Photographs
“Sometimes such as attracts like, micron wrote Williams. “Men are writing your big cheques to one another, and in order for individuals to change that, considerably more people who look like everybody need to be in that place, giving money back to help themselves. ”
Master of science Takahashi agrees. “The decision-making roles will be mostly [held by] men. I think they simply cannot connect with the problems and difficulties addressed by ladies entrepreneurs, ” she says.
The Japanese government found wanted to use the five years from 2015 to 2020 to just about triple the per cent of female executives in the country to reach 30% of the total. However , the on-going level is just 15%, compared with the global average of 31% .
As well as according to the country’s Finance Agency, less than 1% involving Japanese venture capital companies are run by simply women.
Kathy Matsui leads this sort firm, MPower Male partners, which she lately started in Tokyo by using two female young partners, Yumiko Murakami in addition to Seki Miwa. A former vice chair regarding investment bank Goldman Sachs Japan, Master of science Matsui is best known on her behalf “womenomics” drive because the 1990s, which has encouraged the Japanese government to improve its gender ratio amongst businesses .
MPower Partners
“I would say the vast majority of entrepreneurs and founders we’ve fitted so far, here in Okazaki, japan, are male, inches she says.
“But when we think about start-ups, the’re trying to use innovation to create disruptive companies, life-changing technologies. Just in case you’re excluding about half the population from your probable talent pool like a start-up, you’re already trying to win some marathon on one calf rather than two. inches
Back in Kyoto, Microsoft Takahashi’s success to find a gap in the handheld tourism market may just be an exception to the male-dominated rule. There is no denying that it is still a strong uphill battle to produce a greater equal ground in Japan’s workforce.
So does the lady have any advice for younger entrepreneurs, and particularly women ones?
“Jump into the ecosystem, very well she says. “It is amazingly easy to get to know anyone in the field, and once you are aware of somebody, it’s a superb network that you need to swell your business. ”