ERA Global (https://eranycglobal.com) is extremely pleased to continue supporting Japanese entrepreneurs through two global accelerator programs this fall. 

ERA Global is hosting the third edition of the JETRO X-HUB Startup Accelerator Program for Tokyo-based startups in partnership with JETRO and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the fourth edition of the Ibaraki NY Startup Accelerator Program in partnership with JETRO Ibaraki and the Ibaraki Prefectural Government. 

These programs provide the participants with the resources and insights they need in order to acquire customers, expand their teams to the US, and reach US investors. 

ERA Managing Partner Murat Aktihanoglu and ERA Mentor David Kenji Chang joined the startups in Tokyo for a two-day program to present workshops on B2B Sales in the US and to advise the teams on their product market fit, go-to-market strategy, and customer pitches. 

Managing Partner Murat Aktihanoglu also engaged in the kickoff with the participating teams of the JETRO Ibaraki NY Startup Accelerator Program in Mito City. The kickoff officially commenced the program, and the founders presented their investor pitches to the ERA team. 

Following the kickoff, Murat Aktihanoglu met with the Ibaraki Prefecture Governor Kazuhiko Oigawa-san to discuss the longstanding partnership between ERA Global and the Ibaraki Prefectural Government, as well as the potential and promise of Japanese startups’ expansion to the US market. 

ERA Partners at SMBC, Shinsuke Fujii-san and General Manager of Corporate Advisory Eiko Ooka-san, joined ERA Global to mentor the startup founders for both the Ibaraki and Tokyo programs. 

ERA Global looks forward to working closely with all the participants as they achieve their goals in expanding to the US market this fall. 

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Read more about the participating teams here: 

JETRO X-HUB Program - Participating Teams

Closer is an AI-enabled high-speed, bulk picking, packing, and palletizing food automation system. The system can be easily implemented without major modifications to existing lines and can handle multiple product types by using AI image processing and robot control.

FingerVision Inc. develops tactile sensors for robot manipulation. The tactile sensors are vision-based sensors. The sensors are multimodal, easy to manufacture, physically robust, and cheap. 

Gigalogy is a Saas solution for e-commerce businesses, using AI and LLMs to enhance product discovery, user engagement, revenue growth, and user loyalty. 

Palan provides an easy AR CMS Saas for anyone create professional WebAR, mobile AR experiences without any code. 

Poetics AI’s product, JamRoll is an AI Saas revenue intelligence, which automatically records, transcribes, and analyzes all sales communication. 

‍Pretia is a cloud platform that allows manufacturers and construction companies to develop AR solutions.

‍Qlay is an LLM-powered consumer research tool for CPG product developers and marketers. Qlay extracts consumer sentiments from online reviews and social media feeds and visualizes them on a dashboard. 

Spider Labs’ product Spider AF provides anti-ad fraud solutions from in-app to web advertising for advertisers, ad networks, agencies, and publishers. Spider AF offers real-time blocking for web advertising and detection for in-app advertising. 

Unerry utilizes GPS and beacon technology to collect 40B+ data entries and 150M IDs from smartphone apps a month. Unerry’s AI analyzes big data on indoor and outdoor human flow obtained from smartphone GPS and beacon technology. 

Visual Alpha cloud services help institutional asset owners and asset managers automate portfolio monitoring and reporting. Visual Alpha improves reporting efficiency by up to 80% by eliminating manual Excel and PDF formats. We cover both traditional and alternative assets, including the trending private equity, private debt, and infrastructure assets. 

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JETRO Ibaraki Program - Participating Teams

Air Space Membrane uses graphene, an atom-thick carbon film, to develop and sell unique products such as thin and highly efficient heat dissipation film, fast and low power transistor, flexible transparent conductive film, and thinnest sample support membrane for transmission electron microscope. Using graphene, we will contribute to solving various social issues such as energy, climate change, and health.

Closer is an AI-enabled high-speed, bulk picking, packing, and palletizing food automation system. The system can be easily implemented without major modifications to existing lines and can handle multiple product types by using AI image processing and robot control.

Dots for is building wifi network infrastructure that can be accessed by anyone at an overwhelmingly low cost in villages, and offering installment sales of smartphones as well, creating a local version of NETFLIX that allows unlimited video viewing. In addition to this, the data collected is used to analyze the creditworthiness of rural residents and provide installment sales of higher unit price products, thereby contributing to increasing income, asset building, and productivity of rural residents while realizing high repayment rates, thereby greatly improving their lives.

Thermalytica has a patented materials technology (TIISA®) which is a thermal solution that serves key sectors such as energy infrastructure, aviation and space, and EVs, power-electronics, global hydrogen supply chain, net-zero energy buildings, and efficient smart appliances and functional textiles. 

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