The Nikkei: GINKAN’s Restaurant Review App Forms Business Alliance with Ceres
SynchroLife was recently interviewed by The Nikkei (The Nihon Keizai Shinbun), one of Japan’s largest newspapers and the most famous financial news service in Japan!
The Nikkei is very popular with business people in Japan and covers a wide variety of financial and economy related topics daily. Reporter Tsubasa Suruga visited our Tokyo office to talk to CEO Tomochika Kamiya about SynchroLife in depth, and he did a great job of introducing the basics of SynchroLife to the general public with this clear and simple piece!
We’ve translated the article into English below, and you can also read the original exclusive article in Japanese here: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO3410217013082018000000/
The Nikkei — August 13, 2018
The Nikkei: GINKAN’s Restaurant Review App Forms Business Alliance with Ceres
GINKAN Inc., managing company of a restaurant discovery app that uses blockchain technology, has announced a business alliance and seed round with Ceres Inc. Ceres and one other individual investor participated in this 720,000 USD (80 million Japanese yen) seed round which was an allocation of new shares. The funding is to further grow and develop GINKAN’s social restaurant discovery service which gives users token rewards for their posts.
GINKAN’s social service “SynchroLife” uses artificial intelligence to analyze each user’s location, preferred genres of food, what restaurants they’ve viewed, and other factors to give personalized restaurant recommendations. It is currently available in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean, and the service already has over 37,000 users.
SynchroLife has long used gamification such as “titles” you earn based on how frequently you use the service or post restaurant reviews. Starting August 2018, they have now also added a new feature that rewards users with tokens as well. When a user posts a new never before reviewed restaurant or posts a review that attracts a lot of attention from other users, they can earn rewards. “We’ve included a system that calculates the value different actions contribute to the service when distributed rewards, to encourage high-quality content,” comments founder and CEO Tomochika Kamiya.
Mr. Kamiya started GINKAN in 2015 hoping to assist restaurants in attracting and retaining new customers. In September 2017, their Hong Kong-based subsidiary company held a fundraising round with cryptocurrency (ICO) and raised approximately $450,000 USD. This fundraising helped spread awareness for SynchroLife globally and attracted a lot of users from South Korea and other countries. Mr. Kamiya comments “Our goal is not to be just a Japanese service, but a global one.”
SynchroLife is currently centered around the social media aspects of users sharing restaurant information and reviews, but they are developing features for restaurants to join the service as well. Soon, participating restaurants will be able to offer dining tickets which can be bought with tokens and they will be able to accept tokens for meal payment as well. SynchroLife plans on a results-based compensation business model that takes only a small percentage of the total bill as payment from restaurants when a user visits the restaurant.
（Written by Tsubasa Suruga）
Thank you again Tsubasa Suruga for the great article, it was great to meet you! For those interested the original Japanese article can be read here: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO3410217013082018000000/
You can also learn more about SynchroLife’s recent funding announcement in our recent press release here:
Please visit the following links to learn more about SynchroLife! 📲
Official Website: https://synchrolife.org
White paper: https://synchrolife.org/whitepaper.html
Twitter: https://twitter.com/synchrocoin
Facebook: https://facebook.com/synchrocoin
Telegram: https://t.me/synchrocoin
SynchroLife Mobile App:
iOS App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id557532449
Android Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.synchrolife
Other Medium Articles by the SynchroLife Team:
・SynchroLife Major Launch Announcement — Becoming the World’s First Restaurant Review Platform with Token Rewards
・SynchroLife CEO Tomochika Kamiya Interviewed by Plug and Play Japan
・SynchroLife Nominated at “THE COIN” in Tokyo, CEO Tomochika Kamiya Presents
・How SynchroLife Takes a Unique Position in the Competitive Restaurant Search and Discovery Market
・Current Features of the SynchroLife Beta App
・Why We Decided to Use Blockchain Technology with SynchroLife
・SynchroLife’s Token-Based Economy: How Users Can Earn & Spend SynchroCoin (SYC)
・Behind the Scenes: The Meaning of “SynchroLife” and Our Seahorse Icon
・How SynchroLife will Handle Fake Reviews
