Making it easier to collect, secure, authenticate & share personal data with the blockchain
Pikcio Interview
One of the startups that graduated Plug and Play Japan’s 3-month program Batch 1, Pikcio AG is gradually gaining its presence in the Japanese market. We interviewed Mr. Didier Collin de Casaubon, CEO of Pikcio AG about their technology and progress in Japanese market entry.
Pikcio is a Swiss startup that provides a secure and GDPR-compliant blockchain-based personal data exchange platform. Their focus is personal data, especially when they are under strong regulations, privacy regulations, or security regulations and the platform will link B to C (optimizing customer’s credentials provision to business to improve customer experience) and B to B (sharing sensitive information with other businesses).
A lot of the data individuals share on the internet eventually become out of their control, which degrades trust.. Pikcio created a platform where business can collect, authenticate and share individual/customer information. The platform also proposes to customers to store their data in a digital wallet and make it easy to get credentials on these data. In terms of target industry, they concentrate on banking, insurance, and healthcare industries and they have started to explore the retail industry, the ‘smart’ industry, and even HR industries to introduce their services.
Saori: How do you utilize blockchain technology in your service?
Didier: When you use uncentralized traditional storage model, you create the opportunity to be hacked, which in turn force you to constantly add security to the system, which is costly and rather inefficient. When you try to access information in a centralized architecture, it can even become a distribution bottleneck This is not a problem with a decentralized architecture and the distributed ledger system of the blockchain. But the blockchain isn’t a communication tool or a real network, so we add developed a proprietary Peer to Peer network and layers of security protocols on top of it so it acts like a kind of superhighway that allows sharing of data, securing the data, and on top of all transacting the data. The data are stored in different nodes and they move throughout the peer-to-peer network without a central server. Each set of data is aired with certificates to authenticating them, and the certificates are stored on the blockchain ledger for validation.
Saori: Why did you see the Japanese market as an opportunity?
Didier: First of all, it’s a pretty educated, wealthy market. Secondly, it used to be a very strong financial place, it isn’t so much now so financial firms are playing catch-up. Japan has a few cultural similarities with Europe, especially concerning personal data. Geographically, it’s very close to the Chinese and Singaporean markets where we were investing our time. For us, it’s very important to spread our tech across all industries, not just the financial market. Not every market entry is an easy road, it never is, but the responses we have received from Japanese clients/partners have been very positive. The Japanese market has its own challenges, but it's not the most difficult we have run into. There is a significant interest in the security of personal information here. In terms of privacy, regulations have increased recently here in Japan which helps our business model as well.
Saori: Is there any challenges when communicating with Japanese companies?
Didier: For a wealthy, mature market, you would expect more bilingual people sitting in the room but in Japan, there are still fewer bilinguals compare to other countries and language barrier remains. In the pitching and sales cycle meetings, time is short and if a language is a barrier, then it can be frustrating for all parties. Another thing that may be useful for incoming applicants, the visual presentation is a little different. In Japan, they much prefer detailed slides with a lot of information on them whereas there is less info on western presentations. The Japanese people will take a picture of the slide so they can refer to the information later whereas western cultures don’t have the patience or the attention span for such slides. We have missed some opportunities because of that mistake. There are things here that can frustrate a startup coming from abroad, however, if you can endure those challenges there is a tremendous opportunity for startups in Japan.
Saori：Why did you decide to apply to Batch 1 in Plug and Play Japan?
Didier: We are already alumni in Plug and Play and it is part of our strategy to leverage this type of partnership whenever we are trying to make a vertical or geographical move. It’s a great way to prospect those areas. It’s also a great way to test a market for 3, 4, or 5 months and Plug and Play has been a great help in that regards and that’s why we reapplied. It’s a win-win situation. We will probably also apply to the Frankfurt location as well.
Saori: How was Batch 1 for you?
Didier: It was a great learning opportunity for the corporate partners as they are swimming in the unfamiliar waters of startup innovation. But moving forward, I believe things may get better, but other locations typically move a lot faster to PoC. The good thing compared to other locations, we had more attendance from partners. For other locations, you may even want to avoid the ‘innovation team’ because that’s the best way to have things dead-end, but Japan you can get in front of a large variety of execs and teams. Maybe for new startups, I would recommend to them that they have someone here, boots-on-ground, so they can better understand the market and make meaningful relationships with the people that are necessary to have successes in Japan. If partners think you are here, then they are willing to speed up negotiations because you are the person they want to do business with.
Pikcio has won a first prize at an innovation program “Visa ‘s Everywhere Initiative” hosted by Visa Inc. They are also selected for an accelerator program “Tokyo Metropolitan Government FinTech Business Camp” hosted by Tokyo Metropolitan Government and growing its presence in Japan.
We cannot take out eyes off Pikcio on their continuous success in Japan!
