How we participated in the summit in Tokyo and the Asian fintech review

The boom of innovation in the Asian region has been heard for a long time and almost at every turn. You may get the impression of a complete understanding of its local trends and the venture capital market. But until you plunge into this environment and you do not see it from the inside with your own eyes, it is difficult to make a complete picture of what is happening in the technological East.

For 2 days, our team, together with another 24 project teams from around the world, presented their solutions to technology, financial, and insurance corporations at the Fintech Summit. The event took place in September in Tokyo.

According to the results of the pitching, the Wirex team won the main prize from the financial company SBI Group in the amount of $ 1 million for investment support and business development.


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In the photo: CEO and co-founder of Wirex Pavel Matveev (in the middle) and co-founder of Wirex Dmitry Lazarichev (left from the edge)

Below we will talk about the "internal kitchen" of the event and the memorable finalist projects.

In the process of communicating with the project teams that arrived at the summit, we found out that fintech in Japan until recently did not exist in principle. The reason - restrictions at the legislative level. Projects of the Land of the Rising Sun until recently had the right to attract venture capital at a share of a maximum of 5%, while venture financing, as a rule, is a share in the amount of 20-25%.



Japanese big business drew attention to the prospects for fintech projects, and this year the regulatory obstacles were removed. Mandatory approval of each investment transaction is no longer required. There was a feeling that the Japanese were looking at Fintech and start-ups for a long time and now decided to make up for lost time.

In contrast to the European practice of independent venture capital funds, in Japan investments are made by structures affiliated with large corporations, in particular, banks, financial and insurance companies.

For participation in the FinSum semi-final, the jury selected 25 participants in approximately the following geographical proportions: ⅓ - Japan, ⅓ - the rest of Asia, ⅓ - the rest of the world. The selection of participants-semi-finalists took the entire 1st day, during which each project team had 3 minutes to pitching and another 3 minutes to answer the questions of the jury.



According to the results of the semi-final, only 12 projects passed to the final stage, which were presented on the 2nd day of FinSum. Each finalist had 3 minutes for a pitch and another 2 minutes for the product demo.

Project teams presented their decisions on the following regulations: Elevator Pitch, slide show, progress in project development, presentation of ideas and teams.



The project jury consisted of entrepreneurs, representatives of sponsors and venture funds.

The Spixii project demonstrated its solution during the presentation - an automated chat bot acting as an insurance agent. The process of registration does not require filling out forms. The user does not need to delve into confusing insurance terminology. Making insurance occurs in the process of communication with the chat bot user in the messenger. Spixii startup can be called a representative of Insurance Tech - an industry that combines technologies that are designed to simplify and increase the efficiency of relationships between insurance companies and customers.



The solution, presented by the project Domotz , offers users tools for network monitoring and remote technical support systems for IT people and small / medium-sized businesses.



The ToRo- based start-up LastRoots took part in the fight for the main prize, introducing the c0ban service, with which users can receive rewards in digital currency for viewing online advertising. The development won the IBM Blue Hub Award, which includes marketing support and access to the IBM Blue Hub incubation program.



The results of the selection of projects-finalists talk about the interest of the Asian market to solutions for trading and investment.

The Japanese project Kabuto Forecast , which specializes in trading analytics, received 2 awards at once: from the largest Japanese broker Nomura Holdings and the company specializing in financial analytics, Daiwa Securities Group.



Startup Call Levels presented a development that allows investors to receive operational information literally on the go. The solution is based on the monitoring system of financial markets. The application is available for users of the Android and iOS operating systems and can be installed on both smartphones and smart watches.

One of the finalists of the summit was also a trading platform for cryptocurrencies and blockchain assets of Gatecoin .



The summit jury did not remain without blockchain projects:

The solution of an OTDocs startup specializing in trade transaction security services reduces errors and bottlenecks and reduces the risks of fraud. Security is ensured by creating digital, unlabeled original documents and by supplementing paper documents with digital copies. Thanks to the technology of private blockchains, participants retain control and access rights to data without relying on third parties. The OTDocs team won the SMFG Business Development Award.



The AgriLedger project demonstrated a solution to increase the transparency of harvest accounting by small agricultural cooperatives through an application available to each farmer. According to the UN, given on the startup site, up to 50% of the harvest collected by farmers is lost between the place of gathering and the points of sale. The AgriLedger solution reduces corruption, falsification and deception in the agricultural sector and ensures that the harvested crop reaches the point of sale in full. The project team won mentoring and consulting support from the PwC The PwC Accelerate Award, as well as a special prize from the insurance group MS & AD Insurance Group - a meeting with the executive director and vice president of the company.



Wirex received a prize of $ 1 million in investment from the financial company SBI Group in exchange for a stake in the project. The investment process will be preceded by a comprehensive verification of the unrecorded risks of Wirex - the Due Diligence procedure, consisting of:

• Technical Due Diligence - checks of the main components of the platform by SBI specialists,
• Legal Due Diligence - verification of legal documents,
• Financial Due Diligence - Verification of financial statements.

The Wirex team will provide the SBI Group with a report on investment spending, as well as information on project development.



The team of our project was pleasantly surprised by the approach to organizing the event, the level of speakers, start-ups and investors. Particularly memorable was the speech of Professor Tam University Dr. Suja Honjo . Japanese business sensei in national clothes held a master class on entrepreneurship. The peculiarity of Japanese business communication lies in the fact that in the Land of the Rising Sun they study potential partners for a very long time and carry out internal preparatory work in the company. However, after signing the contract, everything goes super-fast.

From April 2017 in Japan, the law enters into force, according to which Bitcoin will be regulated in the Land of the Rising Sun as the official currency. This is another confirmation of the prospects for the development of fintech projects not only in Europe, but also in Asia, and in particular in Japan. We already see this by the number of Wirex-plastic cards issued for money transfers and operations with cryptocurrencies. Unexpectedly for us Asia came out on top by the number of cards ordered.