Tag: AnyMind Group

Singapore – Japan-based end-to-end commerce enablement company AnyMind has raised ¥4b in funding, around US$91.7m, to strengthen the company’s advancement in the e-commerce enablement space and fund future acquisitions.

The Series D funds were raised from new investors including JIC Venture Growth Investments, Japan Post Investment Corporation, Nomura SPARX Investment, and PROTO Ventures Inc., along with existing investor Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.

In addition, the funds raised will be used for future acquisitions both in Japan and internationally. To date, AnyMind Group has acquired seven companies from various parts of the region including Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and India. The reasons to make these acquisitions were either to acqui-hire a company’s leadership, expand into new businesses or regions, acquire additional sales channels, or all three. 

Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group, said, “Despite COVID-19 and geopolitical situations impacting the world, we have still been able to achieve solid growth as a business. On the other hand, we are seeing economies across Asia, including our operating markets of ASEAN and India, rapidly regaining growth momentum.” 

He added, “We will continue to grow our business at a pace that matches our ambitions, look towards expanding our capabilities through M&A, and strengthen our investment and profit structure for growth, as we continue to become the next-generation infrastructure for commerce in Asia.”

In March this year, the company launched AnyChat, a conversational commerce platform, and in April, the company launched e-commerce management platform AnyX, which optimises e-commerce operations through central management of multiple e-commerce channels. Funds from this round will be used to further enhance existing platforms and strengthen market share across the company’s operating regions. 

On the company’s various business and product movements, Sogo said, “We will continue to make it exciting for everyone to do business by enhancing and expanding our innovations that form the infrastructure for the next generation of commerce. Over the years we have developed platforms across the end-to-end spectrum of commerce that can be used individually, and can now also be used as part of an integrated suite of tools to deliver more effective and efficient commerce for businesses.” 

He added, “We are just at the start of our journey, as we power some of the most exciting enterprises and forward-thinking publishers and influencers in this part of the world.”

Singapore – AnyMind Group, an end-to-end commerce enablement company, has today launched new features on AnyCreator, a platform for influencers and content creators, including functions for the management of fans, chat and email communication, and creating and delivering surveys.

The features come at no cost but are available by invitation-only. Among the new features is the new chat function where the group’s conversational commerce platform, AnyChat, has now been integrated into AnyCreator, enabling communication across connected messaging apps and platforms.

New functionalities also include those for email and surveys. Users can now create, schedule, and deliver emails as well as track email performance. For surveys, creating survey forms is now enabled where users are able to view and export responses and deliver these forms. Most especially, a new capability allows users to map, manage, and view people who have purchased a product from the influencer’s own brand – through the integration with Shopify – and also those that have communicated with the influencer through chat or email, and/or participated in a survey created by the influencer. 

The new features, together with the ‘link in bio’ feature launched last month, look to advance AnyCreator from being just a platform for influencers to join influencer marketing campaigns and glean social media insights, into an all-in-one platform for influencers to grow.

Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group, said, “We are looking to make it exciting for influencers and content creators to do business and grow – from content monetization and strategy to creating, launching, and growing their own brands and products – providing influencers with the technology to do just that. With influencers interacting with their followers across multiple channels in addition to social media, we can now power this engagement out of a single platform.”

The company first started working with influencers for brand collaborations on its influencer marketing platform AnyTag, and in 2019 expanded into content monetization and distribution with the acquisition of Thailand’s Moindy and the launch of its own influencer network.

In 2020, the company launched a program that enabled influencers to create and launch their own brands and products by tapping on platforms such as AnyFactory for manufacturing and AnyLogi for logistics, and in 2021, launched PopBox, an online retail store for influencers to sell their products.

Singapore – Marketing technology solutions provider AnyMind Group has integrated data enablement platform LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution and programmatic digital advertising company PubMatic’s Identity Hub into its publisher and e-commerce growth platform, AnyManager.

These integrations enable AnyMind Group’s online publishers and advertisers to communicate with enriched data, delivering greater measurability, whilst preserving audience privacy throughout the process.

Through these integrations, AnyManager’s header bidding solution for publishers will be able to provide connected demand sources with more information to better reach and engage with desired audiences. It also enables the easy implementation of LiveRamp’s people-based, privacy-first identifier, RampID, through the Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS).

Once a publisher and AnyMind Group enter into an agreement, ATS is implemented on the login screen of the publisher’s site. ATS allows publishers to match authenticated user data with RampIDs in real-time, enabling advertising without reliance on third-party cookies or device-based identifiers. Advertisers leveraging RampID can unlock premium inventory, additional reach across browsers such as Safari and Firefox, and improved marketing tactics such as people-based audience targeting and frequency capping, amongst others.

Meanwhile, PubMatic’s Identity Hub integration enables publishers to simply turn on the integration with just a single button click on AnyManager for their header bidding wrapper and provides access to partnered ID solutions on Identity Hub including LiveRamp’s RampID, ID5 ID, and The Trade Desk’s Unified ID, amongst others.

CheeChien Chung, LiveRamp’s director of addressability for SEA, shared that the deprecation of third-party cookies and other identifiers has been a forcing function for innovation and improvement across the advertising industry, but more importantly, it’s highlighted that people-based marketing delivers superior performance, today.

“Publishers leveraging LiveRamp’s solutions via AnyMind can easily enable their inventory to be accessible to advertisers looking to buy and measure at the person-level on RampID, and can achieve outsized business results at scale, without compromising privacy,” said Chung.

Meanwhile, Hitoshi Maruyama, AnyMind Group’s managing director of publisher growth, said that web publishers in Asia have started exploring new business models such as media commerce and other means of content monetisation, whilst the ad tech industry has innovated to provide means for publishers to continue benefiting from ad revenue. 

“AnyMind Group is now where the facets of next-generation commerce, ad monetisation and media improvement meet, providing web and app publishers with various possibilities for exponential growth,” said Maruyama.

Singapore — End-to-end commerce enablement company AnyMind Group has announced the launch of AnyX, a one-stop e-commerce management platform for individuals and businesses that connects various e-commerce channels and AnyMind Group’s various platforms.

Through the convenience of AnyX, an individual or business can manage operations across e-commerce marketplaces and platforms, and consolidate and activate data across available e-commerce stores. With AnyX, businesses can also easily embark on cross-border e-commerce activities by tapping on the platform’s integrations with e-commerce marketplaces across the region.

At launch, AnyX is already connected to regional e-commerce marketplaces and platforms namely Shopee, Lazada, Rakuten, Amazon, and Shopify. Additionally, it is also connected to numerous AnyMind Group platforms such as AnyTag, AnyChat, AnyManager, AnyFactory, AnyDigital, and AnyLogi.

Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group, commented on the launch of AnyX, saying that over the years, they have constantly made it exciting for everyone to do business through their technology, and AnyX is yet another milestone for AnyMind as an end-to-end commerce enablement company.

“We will continue to connect even more functions across our proprietary product suite, enabling easier and more exciting commerce for all. We’re looking to advance next-generation commerce by enabling commerce to be done anywhere, bringing forth a world where every business is borderless,” Sogo said.

AnyX is now available to AnyMind Group customers internationally, with customers having the option to use the company’s various platforms individually, or as part of a suite through AnyX. In the near future, AnyX will also support the automated triggering of actions across platforms, including order management, inventory allocation and management, and revenue/pricing management.

AnyMind Group is also working on connecting further with local or niche Asian e-commerce marketplaces and more third-party applications and will integrate future products that the company develops.

Singapore — AnyMind Group, an end-to-end commerce enablement company that started in 2016, has announced the public launch of its conversational commerce platform, AnyChat. The tool is optimised to help businesses digitise online CX and CS which was limited traditionally to retail assistants in brick-and-mortar retail stores.

Presently, AnyChat provides e-commerce and direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses with a platform to easily manage and execute real-time chat conversations across chat apps, facilitate purchases, and design chat flows for end customers. This will allow AnyChat users to design and trigger automated end-user notifications and messages for purchase confirmation, product delivery, offers and discounts on products, and more, by tapping on customer and purchase information from e-commerce platforms. When integrated, these components intend to replicate the support that shoppers experience from an actual retail store assistant.

In addition to these features, the platform also supports the storage, analysis and utilisation of conversation data for chat flow and conversion optimization, and will be connected with other AnyMind Group platforms such as the company’s logistics management and marketing platforms. AnyChat is currently integrated with LINE, with plans to subsequently be connected with other chat and e-commerce platforms.

Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group, commented on the launch of AnyChat, saying, “Over the years, we’ve constantly expanded the depth and breadth of our products across the spectrum of commerce, from cloud manufacturing and e-commerce enablement to marketing, logistics management, and publisher and creator monetization. AnyChat further expands our capabilities in driving our purpose to make it exciting for everyone to do business, enabling greater efficiency and effectiveness for online commerce.”

The company has started delivering AnyChat on select brands from its ‘D2C for Influencers’ program in Japan and Thailand, and will subsequently launch the platform across its various markets to both influencer D2C brands and enterprise D2C brands.

AnyMind Group is currently operating out of 13 markets across Southeast Asia, East Asia, India and the Middle East and focuses on two business areas termed ‘Brand Commerce’ and ‘Partner Growth’.

Singapore – Marketing technology solutions provider AnyMind Group has recently announced that it is opening up its influencer marketing platform, AnyTag, to talent management agencies, influencer agencies, and multi-channel networks.

The AnyTag platform, which is already being used by marketing and public relations agencies across Asia, has a feature for influencer companies that enables deeper social media and channel analytics of their own influencers, identification of brand collaboration opportunities, and real-time campaign reporting. It also provides influencer companies with a single platform to better understand their talent and keep track of brand collaborations that their talents are working on.

Furthermore, influencer companies can also tap on AnyMind Group’s offerings in the direct-to-consumer space, including cloud manufacturing, e-commerce, and logistics, to enable their talents to create their own brands and sell their own branded products.

Following this endeavor, the company has also announced new features for marketers including lookalike modeling of influencers through natural language processing (NLP) – where they can easily identify influencers who are similar to high-performing influencers from previous campaigns – and easier identification of brands an influencer has worked with before – which can also aid in decision-making when selecting influencers for a campaign.

Both initiatives aim to make influencer marketing more collaborative, addressable, and accurate.

AnyMind Group’s Chief Operating Officer Rohit Sharma said that they now have the technology and business infrastructure to drive greater industry advancement across Asia and beyond.

He further shared that over the years, they have built a highly robust platform not just with a keen focus on functionality, but also one where they help marketers unlock opportunities for big data utilization in influencer marketing – from understanding user conversions and conversations to predictions, recommendations, among others. 

“We will continue innovating and pushing boundaries in the technological aspect of influencer marketing and drive the next stage of evolution,” said Sharma.

Most recently, AnyMind Group announced the launch of the new features on its publisher platform, AnyManager, to help mobile and web publishers to tap on the continued growth of mobile usage. The company also announced a strategic partnership with Japan-based multi-channel network (MCN) UUUM to mutually utilize UUUM’s resources and AnyMind Group’s technology and data for influencer marketing and direct-to-consumer (D2C) offerings.

Singapore – Marketing technology solutions provider AnyMind Group has announced the launch of the new features on its publisher platform, AnyManager, to help mobile and web publishers to tap on the continued growth of mobile usage. 

AnyManager is a web and mobile app publisher monetization platform that allows users to consolidate, manage, and track their revenue streams across a wide range of demand sources. It also provides publishers with features including header bidding and automated pricing optimization, along with integration with Google Analytics and 3rd-party ad verification, viewability, and brand safety tools.

Initially launched as a platform with features just for web publishers, AnyMind Group has expanded the functionality of its AnyManager platform for native mobile app publishers in the past year.

The new suite of features center around helping web publishers leverage progressive web applications (PWA) infrastructure, and for native mobile app publishers to gain more insights from their app store data, and are designed to provide both sets of publishers with greater accessibility and insight into user acquisition and monetization.

According to AnyMind Group’s Managing Director of Publisher Growth Hitoshi Maruyama, in a mobile-first region like Asia, and in some markets even mobile-only, it is imperative that publishers are able to grow further by fully maximizing their potential audience while keeping up and capitalizing on the latest technologies. 

“We are also seeing, and in fact powering, more fluidity by mobile app and web publishers in expanding opportunities by leveraging further on social media channels and e-commerce, augmenting possibilities for borderless growth,” said Maruyama.

Through AnyManager, web-based publishers that are looking to better tap on the world’s mobile-connected population can now leverage features for PWAs. By implementing PWAs, they can improve user experience such as speeding up site load speeds and creating a push notification system to inform users of the newly published content.

Web-based publishers can tap on targeted push notifications to specific user segments based on device, location, and other parameters including users that have clicked on a site during a certain period or frequency of clicks, allowing web publishers to notify users of new content, promotions, and opportunities, directly on their mobile device. Data from push notifications is also linked to a publisher’s own Google Analytics data and advertising yield data, both available through AnyManager. They can also tap on customizable Add-to-Home screen prompts and formats to easily cue browser notifications for site visitors to add a site as a PWA on their mobile devices. 

Meanwhile, native mobile app publishers can now access analytics features for app store and conversion improvements along with competitive analytics. This is in addition to current functionality for advertising demand activation and mediation and an app health score feature that provides publishers with a rating of their native mobile app based on factors including development, monetization, analytics, and user acquisition.

Furthermore, publishers can tap on a new feature called AnySDK, a software development kit (SDK) for ad monetization that enables the delivery and mediation of ad requests from major mobile platform partners through a single SDK. Native mobile app publishers can gain greater insight into user opinion of their apps by tapping into natural language processing-driven features such as sentiment rating and analysis of user comments, and identification of keywords and phrases based on app store rating, which helps publishers to better understand and highlight potential app issues, improvements, and fixes.

Singapore – Technology company AnyMind Group has announced that it will be forming a strategic partnership with Japan-based multi-channel network (MCN) UUUM with an objective of rebuilding the creator and influencer industry in Japan through mutual utilization of the resources from UUUM and AnyMind Group’s technology and data for influencer marketing and direct-to-consumer (D2C) offerings.

As an initial part of the partnership, both parties are looking at creating the largest influencer network in Japan for marketers, with a launch date set for the second quarter of this year. This network will enable marketers and agencies in Japan to tap on the largest-combined pool of content creators available, combining UUUM’s creators, expertise, and reach with AnyMind Group’s proprietary software, along with creators from AnyMind Group-owned GROVE.

In addition, UUUM will look to launch influencer D2C brands by tapping on AnyMind Group’s tools including AnyFactory (for cloud manufacturing) and AnyShop (for e-commerce), with further details to be announced later this year. 

For Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group, their partnership with UUUM is all about “creating the infrastructure for next-generation businesses in Japan.”

“AnyMind Group has been creating intrinsic value for individuals and businesses across 13 markets around the world, with a focus on developing and providing technology and data-driven platforms, along with supporting businesses in the D2C domain. [This] will become a core foundation for rebuilding the creator and influencer industry in Japan and the world. We will continue to create synergies with UUUM and provide even more value for influencers and brands,” Sogo stated.

Meanwhile, Kazuki Kamada, CEO of UUUM said, “We are convinced that this partnership will enable us to realize a completely new influencer marketing across industries and to propose an evolved marketing plan by promoting data utilization. Together with AnyMind Group, we will open up a creator-influencer-driven future.”

Singapore – Marketing technology solutions provider AnyMind Group has recently acquired ENGAWA, a Japan-based marketing company that focuses  inbound and outbound marketing solutions for Japanese businesses and local governments in Japan to reach international audiences.

The recent acquisition is the fourth move of AnyMind Group to acquire a Japan-based business to further bolster its efforts in the direct-to-consumer base market expansion in Japan. Furthermore the acquisition will tap into ENGAWA’s expertise in merchandising and distribution, and network of over 700 manufacturers throughout Japan.

ENGAWA, which is a subsidiary of the SUNNY SIDE UP Group, also focuses in providing marketing and influencer marketing solutions, and helps Japanese manufacturers and businesses distribute their products internationally. Additionally, ENGAWA owns and operates Tokyo Weekender, an English language lifestyle print and digital publication in Japan.

“The lifestyle of consumers and the ways businesses reach their customers are changing dramatically, with digital becoming increasingly important. New digital solutions will be the key element for market recovery in the future. By providing AnyMind Group’s superior technology and offerings to local governments and regional clients together with Engawa’s strong marketing know-how, we will look to create a new infrastructure for businesses in Japan and the region,” said Takanobu Ushiyama, CEO and founder of ENGAWA.

AnyMind Group has previously made a joint venture with the SUNNY SIDE UP Group in July 2019. The joint venture, known as AnyUp, provided g marketers, public relations professionals and influencers in Japan with a combined offering of AnyMind Group’s influencer network, AnyCreator, and platform for influencer marketing, AnyTag (formerly known as CastingAsia), together with SUNNY SIDE UP GROUP’s public relations expertise.

“Consumers today expect businesses to have more digital touchpoints, whether it is interacting with a brand or buying products. As such, businesses need to quickly transform to fit the needs of modern consumers. The acquisition of ENGAWA takes us a step closer to creating the business infrastructure for next-generation businesses, ultimately enabling us to fulfil our mission of making every business borderless,” said Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group.

Singapore – AnyMind Group, a company that produces software in direct-to-consumer, cloud manufacturing, entertainment, marketing, and HR, has announced its plans to connect its various offerings and to build a runway for future expansion.

AnyMind Group has renewed its vision, and now aims to “make every business borderless,” through removing borders and barriers for organizations whether it be geographical, online and offline, industries, platforms, and mediums.

Having launched, developed, and acquired brands across various industries such as marketing, entertainment, and direct-to-consumer, the company aims to offer end-to-end solutions from brand building, product manufacturing, and marketing.

Commenting on this development, Kosuke Sogo, CEO, and co-founder of AnyMind Group discussed the company’s plans to expand its offerings. 

“Having grown and established strong offerings across multiple spaces, we are looking to move into a position to connect our various offerings to form one of the first end-to-end brand enablement platforms. Apart from leveraging on our individual products, we’re moving towards helping businesses and individuals tap on a comprehensive solution to seamlessly turn previously-siloed data into action, in the future.”

“True to our underlying philosophy of Growth for Everyone, we can enable businesses and individuals to become borderless, from brand establishment,product creation, marketing, selling, and very soon, fulfilment.”

In addition, the company will be renaming its flagship brands in influencer marketing, and influencer management, and advertising. 

In a nutshell, said brands will now be renamed to carry the word “Any.” CastingAsia, its influencer marketing platform will now be called AnyTag. Meanwhile, its influencer management network CastingAsia Creators Network has been renamed to AnyCreator. 

The AdAsia brand on the other hand, which includes AdAsia Digital Platform, the AdAsia Premium Marketplace and AdAsia360 will be discontinued, with the AdAsia Digital Platform software being renamed to AnyDigital and its publisher platform names, AdAsia360, FourM360, and Acqua360 to be consolidated under the name AnyManager.

Sogo said, “In line with becoming an end-to-end brand enablement platform and longer-term plans to expand out of Asia, we have renamed our products to fit in with the wider AnyMind Group branding and to position ourselves for future growth through a unified branding strategy.”