Japanese geo-analytics startup Nightley raises US$1.16 million series A from Nissei, SMBC and Legend Partners

vivian

February 27, 2017

Tokyo-based Nightley is the developer for Inbound Insight – a behavioral analysis tool for foreign travellers visiting Japan

Nightley, a Tokyo-based startup developing analytics technologies using geographical data has recently raised 130 million yen (about US$1.16 million) via its series A from Nissei Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, and Legend Partners Inc.

This round follows the seed investment procurement from Netage and Altovision – presently known as Experian Japan, which took place in May 2011.

Launched in January 2011 by Yutaka Ishikawa who previously worked with Japanese web service company NetAge, Nightley leverages on unique location-based analytics to develop several marketing solutions including Nightley GIS Mesh Data and its flagship product Inbound Insight.

Inbound Insight is a behavioral analysis tool for foreign travelers visiting Japan, providing users analytics based on interactions from Twitter, Sina Weibo, and other social media platforms. The tool works on two service plans, namely the Behavioral Data Visualisation Plan (freemium service) Analytics Data Purchase Plan (premium service).

At a freemium level, the plan provides users with a heatmap on the map, popular destination rankings, and behavioral data via charts. While premium users paying a monthly subscription fee of 100,000 yen (about US$800) will get access to a route map showing how visitors are traveling around Japan, estimated nationality deviation, estimated gender deviation, visiting venue data, posted words on social media platform, and attached pictures.

Launched in July 2015, Inbound Insight has now been used by more than 4,300 companies and local governments in the year and a half since its inception. Its customer portfolio ranges from major advertising agencies, convenience stores, railway companies, marketing research companies and so on.

“Initially, what started out was an SNS analysis plan but from there onwards, statistical data other than SNS, such as NTT Docomo’s trend data of anonymous visiting customers, countries, etc, began to flow in and this increased our variations of analysis,” said Nightley’s founder and Director – Yuraka Ishikawa..

Besides, Nightley has also made use of the analysed location data to develop additional technologies including ZouZou – a travel support app for foreigners visiting Japan and ABC Lunch – a lunch recommendation app.

With the latest capital raised, Nightley plans to improve and expand Inbound Insight, targeting tourism-related enterprises promoting measures for foreign visitors in Japan as well as companies providing inbound measure solutions.

By Vivian Foo, VCNewsNetwork

vivian

Vivian Foo is a reporter who writes about Southeast Asia’s technology and startup space. The entry point which led her to write about the startup ecosystem was her fascination of the dot-com boom. She is taking a deep dive into how the entrepreneurial mindset works and hopes to share the insights, innovation, and stories of the startups with her readers.