The Japan government has promoted new companies to stimulate innovation and growth, and the possible unicorns basin, those valued at $ 1 billion or more, reached a record in 2024. Tokyo. They revitalize local communities to market avant -garde and Japan products and abroad.
Build new intelligent agriculture teams
In Saitama, north of Tokyo, farmers collect cucumbers and other vegetables. As in other prefectures throughout the country, the population ages and decreases, with less personnel for agriculture and other industries. This is a challenge that the local startup Agist Inc. wishes to succeed through its agricultural robots and its intelligent agricultural system.
In a greenhouse in the city of Hanyu, Saitama, a robot arm moves along the rails between cucumber plants. Using their cameras and downloading knowledge on the cloud servers, identifies the cucumbers who are in a position for the harvest, then cut them gently with their scissors. The branches of the plant are not broken in the cut and the cucumber enters a basket. A farmer supervises the procedure through a PC or a smartphone connected to the controlled cloud -based formula through synthetic intelligence (AI). The robot can save hard work prices and assistance to build agricultural performance, according to Agist.
“That local revitalization is essential to revive the Japanese economy,” explains Saito Junichi, co -founder and representative director of Agist. “Our vision in Agist is to announce agriculture that can be lasting over the next hundred years. “
Saito worked in Silicon Valley before the great Japan East Japan Trewke 2011, an occasion that encouraged him to attend regional communities in Japan. He exported classic cedar gifts from Miyazaki prefecture in southern Japan, where he spent time with farmers and listened to his considerations not to be agriculture as a business to his young stars with an average age of 67 years, the farmers of Japan face the harvest of hard work, as well as the demanding situations of the reaction to the adjustments in world market demand.
Saito Co -FOEND Agist with Current Director Hata Hiroki in the agricultural city of Shintomi, Miyazaki, in 2019 and began gathering a team of engineers and experts from Wise Agriculture. With a population cut from around 16,000 people, Shintomi was an unlikely position for a startup agritech with wonderful dreams, but it is ideal for Saito and Hata because they also grow vegetables. One is the pepper, a harvest for which Miyazaki is famous. The aged’s pepper robot, brought in 2024, moves in greenhouse rails. Like the cucumber, select, cut, cut and automatically pick up the peppers in a basket without damaging the plants. It can work for more than 10 hours in a single battery charge.
An exclusive facet of Robots Agist is that they paint with the Azure cloud computing platform in Microsoft and its co -driver system, which allows farmers to perceive a greater knowledge of crops and increase income. The intelligent agricultural package of the company, AI and robots can be purchased for about five million yen (US $ 32,000); The load varies according to the scale and applications. Beyond helping individual producers, Agist needs to energize Shintomi and other agricultural communities in Japan.
“As there are many pepper manufacturers in Miyazaki and production is prosperous, we with peppers because we can take the robot to farmers, get their comments and solve problems temporarily,” Saito said. “Robots were a way to identify relationships with farmers while we are looking for the objective of sustainable agriculture. “
Since then, Agist has expanded its operations in Japan, and now postulates with the cooperatives of the Municipalities and Ja de Hokkaido in Okinawa. In addition to gaining distinctions, adding an innovation that is worth 2023 for robot Bell Pepper, the company attracted investments in giant companies. In addition to central government agencies, the company has benefited from local governments and regional banks. Saito points out that this assistance from the central government and local organizations is a difficult network for new companies.
Agist is now making plans to bring their knowledge to assistance farmers in countries like India, who will have to develop productivity. Summarizing its objectives, Saito says: “We need to help farmers move from agriculture as a way of life to agriculture as a corporate founded on knowledge that can make it successful. “
Creation of new memorable reports on user data
Like Saito, Yamano Tomohisa also encouraged to enter business after the earthquake of 2011. The crisis caused a wonderful destruction and loss of goods. When thinking about this, Yamano learned that gratifying memories are more vital than curtain goods. Only 3 days after the earthquake and Tsunami have devastated the northeast of Japan, Yamano has established a startup that facilitates recreational and entertainment reports thanks to virtual transformation technologies (DX).
“Our project is” enriching recreational life, “explains the CEO of Asoview Yamano Volohisa.
Now called Asoview Inc. , Tokyo supplies the B2B software as a service (SAAS) to the operators of travel and recreational corporations, as well as the B2C Study and Reserves Service for tourists and others. Two characteristics that make exclusive Asoview are the way in which it digitizes facilities for historically analog facilities, such as temples and sanctuaries, and how it creates its own new facilities based on their own knowledge studies to what consumers want.
“Our project is” enriching recreational life, “explains Yamano, CEO and representative director of ASOView, who began promoting paperless tickets for recreational services in 2016. ” We need other people to be memories. “
The B2B service allows operators that in the past are inclined to sales of counters and telephone reserves sell online tickets 24 hours a day, optimizing their income flow. In cooperation with local municipalities, ASOView provides combined knowledge about recreational services to economic activity and distributes classic tourist destination posters through SNS and websites, expanding its scope.
With the B2C Corporate, users can choose a destination on the company’s website, for example, and download discounts on Hot Springs resorts, museums, aquariums and other recreational facilities. Most users are daily tours that need more detailed and localized promotions than those presented at the main portal sites. The corporate also offers exclusive reports such as Circle of Relatives occasions in jazz clubs and staging positions of the Kyogen Classical Theater, where young people are rarely seen.
Another service presented through Asoview is navigation in the rewards presented through Furusato Nezei in Japan, or a fiscal formula for the reinvestment of the hometown. Within the framework of the program brought in 2008, taxpayers can obtain a deduction after having given a component of their income tax for local municipalities in exchange for products or at small prices, ranging from agricultural products to appliances in the remains at the hotel.
Thanks to these services, Asoview tries to bring consumers of the recreational industry to the less known regions of Japan. By stimulating tourism, Yamano needs to revitalize regional communities and expand the economy.
“This does not necessarily cannot bring population titles to those of primary cities, however, regional spaces can obtain advantages of tourist reinvestment,” Yamano explains. “Regional operators have tricks with DX, however, our service allows them to be open to the global while taking the game difficult. “
Asoview organized an occasion when parents and young people appreciated Kyogen, a classic Japanese art.
ASOView has accumulated more than 16 million users, investments in giant corporations, as well as honors such as popularity through the Ministry of Economy, Commerce and J-Startup of Industry and Technology Deloitte Tohmatsu Quick qualification of 50 Japan. Recently, recreational reports began to comply with the wishes of Japanese tourists.
“Now we can analyze the knowledge of the popular, then offer original content,” Yamano explains. “We need to be like a Netflix for experiences, through the identification of trends in the knowledge we collect and then generating new experiences. “
Note: All Japanese calls of this article are given in the classic Japanese order, with the circle of relatives called first.
For more information about Agist Inc. , click here.
To get more about Asoview Inc. , click here (in Japanese).