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Masaru Ibuka : Japanese Electronics Industrialist & Co-founder of Sony

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Don’t work for the profits, work for innovation, this is what the Japanese researcher and the entrepreneur, Masaru Ibuka, had always followed. The co-founder of Sony Co. is one of the revolutionary figures of Japan’s electronics industry. The believer of hard work, Ibuka, is the biggest inspiration for not only the people of Japan but people from around the world. His dedication and hard work gave new means to the global electronics industry.

Early Life

Ibuka was born on 11 April 1908, in Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. He was a studious kid at school and loved performing experiments in the labs. He completed his bachelor’s degree in electrical communications from the Waseda University, in 1933. During the college, he researched on experimental projection-type television system using a nitro-benzol Kerr cell and wrote his college thesis on the same.

masaru ibuka
Image Source: prabook.com

After graduating from the college, Ibuka started working at the Photo-Chemical Laboratories Inc. He was employed as a researcher and was involved in the research work for the technology of sound recording on movie films. In 1937, he joined Nippon-Ko-On where he worked on the development of the home-based movie sound equipment. Later, in 1940 he left Nippon-Ko-On and joined the Japan Measuring Instrument Co., Ltd where he was involved in the research work on the mechano-electronic frequency-selective relays and telecommunication system. In the wake of World War II, he joined the department of Imperial Navy Wartime Research Committee.

Founding Sony

In 1945, Ibuka left his job in Navy and opened a radio repair shop at the Hirokiya Department Store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. Later, with the capital of 190,000 Yen, he founded Tokyo-Tsushin Kenkyusho (Tokyo Telecommunications Laboratory) Co., following a merger into the Tokyo-Tsushin-Kogyo Co. In 1946, another Japanese researcher, Akio Morita, found out about Ibuka’s venture through the newspaper and was wanted to work with him. So he met Ibuka and the two co-founded Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. Morita’s helped the two raise the funds for the company.

With the end of World War II and the big atom bomb attacks on Japan, the economy of Japan was devastated. Both the co-founders wanted to help in the economy of Japan and started their research work under the name of their newly founded company. In 1950, they were able to get a license to work on the transistor technology, becoming one of the first companies to use the transistor technology to non-military purposes. In the same year, the company launched Japan’s first tape recorder, the “G type.” In 1958, the company released another transistor radio, which was first of its kind. The company was soon providing its services to its international clients.

In 1958, the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation was re-branded as Sony, after the co-founders realized that the Americans had trouble saying the name of the company. The next big invention of the company was the world’s first transistor television. In 1967, Sony Co. launched its first colour TV named Sony Trinitron.

Ibuka served the company as the president from 1950 to 1971, and then became the chairman of Sony from 1971, and retired in 1976.

Sony Co., released its first Walkman personal stereo in 1979, followed by a Handycam video camera in 1989, the famous PlayStation in 1994, and a Blu-ray Disc recorder in 2003. The company is a conglomerate and currently manufacture almost everything from a Smartphone to laptops, cameras to television, the electrical vehicle to home-based products. Sony Co. has built an international empire and has set its arms into the finance, entertainment and health sector as well.

According to the records, the company made a total revenue of 507.6 billion yen in the financial year 2017. In 2018, the company had 117,300 employees working in its different branches in different countries.

The company headquarter is located at Minato, Tokyo, Japan.

Personal Life

Ibuka was one of the prominent research engineers who brought innovation in the field of his interest. For his contributions in the rise of technology and the economy of Japan, he was awarded multiple awards. He even received the three doctorate degrees from three different institutions, i.e. from the Sophia University (1976), Tokyo, Waseda University, Tokyo (1979) and Brown University, US (1994). He also received the IEEE Founders Medal in 1972 from IEEE and the highest distinction of the Scout Association of Japan, the Golden Pheasant Award, in 1989.

Ibuka also wrote a book named ‘Kindergarten is Too Late’ in 1971. According to the book, the leaning for humans begins at the age of 3. On 19 December 1997, he died at the age of 89 in Tokyo, Japan.

Cher Wang: A Brilliant Entrepreneur & Contributor in the Rise of Wireless Devices

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HTC is a renowned name in the smartphone manufacturing industry and is also emerging as one of the leaders in the field of virtual reality. The company headquarter is based in Taiwan and was founded in 1997. It was founded by Cher Wang, H. T. Cho and Peter Chou, as an original laptop and computers, designing and manufacturing company.

The company is known for its innovation, and so is its female co-founder Cher Wang. Cher Wang is one of the most successful woman entrepreneurs in the world and is successfully breaking into this male-dominated industry.

Early Life

Wang was born on 14 September 1958, in Taipei, Taiwan. Her father was a businessman who ran a business of plastic until he died at the age of 92.

Wang completed her high school education from The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California and pursued a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981.

cher wang
Image Source: talkandroid.com

In 1980, her sister had co-founded a motherboard manufacturing company, named as First International Computer (FIC). Wang joined the company and started her first job in 1982. During her job in FIC, she got the opportunity to travel to several new countries in the world, where she was marketing the motherboard for personal computers.

Founding HTC

While pitching the motherboard features in front of the foreign traders, Wang realised the need of a portable computer system as the desktop computers were big and wired, so taking them to any other place was not that convenient.

After a lot of brainstorming, she thought of an idea to start a computer manufacturing business and founded HTC along with her co-founders H. T. Cho and Peter Chou. In the beginning, the company started with manufacturing Notebook laptops. In 1998, the company was building one of the world’s first touch and wireless hand-held devices.

Initial years were tough, but having the blood of businessman in her veins, Wang was able to foresee the upcoming success, hence invested a huge amount of money in the business. With time, she realized that the laptop manufacturing business is not working according to the plan, and she decided to switch her focus from building laptops to mobile phones. So, HTC started partnering with other companies to build Windows Mobile PDAs and smartphones.

In 2007, HTC acquired Dopod International, and in the next year the company launched its first GSM mobile phone, named HTC Max 4G. In the same year, the company also released its first Android Smartphone, the HTC Dream.

In 2009, the company rolled out its first touch screen smartphone powered by Windows OS, the HTC HD2, and also released its first user interface the HTC Sense.

In 2010, HTC sold over 24.6 million handsets. In 2011, Luxgen adopted the HTC smart technology to build the ‘Think Ahead’ feature for its vehicles such that the software would capture road conditions and potential hazards to its drivers.

In 2011, HTC won the “Device Manufacturer of the Year” in the Global Mobile Awards. In the same year, the company became the third-largest smartphone manufacturer, after Apple and Samsung. In the third quarter of the same year, HTC became the largest smartphone vendor in the U.S. ahead of Samsung and Apple.

The year of 2012 was challenging for the company, earning the lowest profits of all time, but in 2013, the release of HTC One the changed the scenario. In fact, it became the best phone of the year, winning various industry awards. In 2014, the company changed its marketing strategies, and with the launch of HTC One (M8), the company started selling the phones online, resulting in a rise in its sales.

In 2015, HTC partnered with Valve Corporation and launched its first virtual reality head-mounted display, Vive. After suffering by huge losses in the Smartphone industry due to the raised competition, it was Vive, that helped the company survive.

In 2017, Google acquired half of HTC’s staff that had worked on HTC’s design and research, by paying US$1.1 billion to the company. Google employed the HTC manpower in the manufacturing of Google’s Pixel smartphone.

Currently, the company is expanding in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) and virtual reality. In 2018 HTC partnered with the games and apps developer and publisher Animoca, such that to work in the field of games, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality.

Personal Life

Cher Wang is married to Wen-Chi Chen, the CEO of VIA Technologies. The couple has two children. In 2011, Wang and her husband were named as the wealthiest person in Taiwan, with a net worth of US$8.8 billion by Forbes. Wang was also listed in The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women at #56 in August 2012, and 54th most powerful woman in the world in 2014, by Forbes.

Wang is also active in charity and philanthropy works.

Hiroshi Mikitani : Founder of Japan’s Largest eCommerce Marketplace, ‘Rakuten’

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A degree from a famous business school, and a 9 to 5 corporate job, the dream of every parent for their child. And, there is no denying the fact that most of the youngsters want this settled life for themselves, too. But not every child is interested in the comfortable 9 to 5 race as some are who wants to make their own identity, and do not want to work for others but themselves. A similar situation goes to the success story of Hiroshi Mikitani, who got perfect education and even a perfect job, but his dream of entrepreneurship encouraged him to take the leap and fulfil his dreams.

Early Life

Mikitani was born on 11 March 1965, to Ryoichi Mikitani and Setsuko Miktani, in Kobe, Hy?go Prefecture, Japan. His father was an economist and was Japan’s first Fulbright Scholar to the US, and his mother worked for a trading company. His father even taught at Yale University, so the family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, from 1972 to 1974. He has two siblings, a brother who is a professor of biology at the University of Tokyo and a sister, who is a is a physician. Mikitani’s grandfather was also an entrepreneur and founded Minolta. In 1928.

Hiroshi Mikitani
Image Source: hbs.edu

Mikitani graduated with a commerce degree from Hitotsubashi University in 1988. He, later, completed his master’s degree in business administration from the famous Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1993.

Career

As soon he graduated from Hitotsubashi University, Mikitani was recruited by the Industrial Bank of Japan, in 1988. In 1993, he was transferred to the US, where he took two years of break from his bank job to pursue a master’s degree from the Harvard Business School. Along with his education, he started a consulting service, his first official business.

In 1995, his birthplace, Kobe suffered from great loss due to the 20 seconds destructive earthquake. The incident was very heart-wrenching and led Mikitani to move back to his country to help revitalize Japan’s economy, and leave his job.

Founding Rakuten

After coming back to Japan, Mikitani did not want to start over with a corporate job. Instead, he started looking at the different business model to start his own new business. At the time, the internet was revolutionising the various industries and had initiated the inception of e-commerce businesses. Netscape was working as an e-commerce website, and Amazon was just starting up its own.

The step was risky, but Mikitani was inspired to set up his own e-commerce website. So he founded a company named MDM, Inc. with three co-founders on 7 February 1997 and launched Rakuten, an online marketplace. The website helped many small shop owners to reach new customers and with the growth of their business, charging a small monthly fee from them. The platform also helped the farmers sell their goods online. All the four co-founders invested a total of US$250,000 from their own money. In 1999, the company was renamed to Rakuten Inc. Just in three years of its inception, Rakuten went public on JASDAQ in 2000. The website became popular in no time and had grown to 2,300 stores and 95 million page views per month.

The next year, the company launched Rakuten Travels, an online hotel reservation platform. In 2004, Rakuten started its financial services and launched a Rakuten credit card in 2005. It soon became the largest tech giant operating Japan’s largest Internet bank and third-largest credit company.

As Mikitani’s prime reason to go back to Japan was to help in its economy and infrastructure, in December 2005, Rakuten established the Rakuten Institute of Technology in Tokyo. In 2008, the company began to expand outside Japan, and in 2011, the company invested in Pinterest. By 2012, the company had established its online services in Austria, Canada, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, France, China, Hong Kong, Korea, etc.

In March 2015, the company started trading in Bitcoin. The company also made some acquisitions, earning more profits in the overseas business including Buy.com, PriceMinister, e-book service Kobo, Ebates, and also the messaging app Viber. By 2017, Rakuten had over 14,000 employees, over 42,000 shops on its e-commerce sites, and sales of nearly US$6 billion, with over 100 million members in Japan.

Peesonal Life

Mikitani married Haruko in 1993 and have two children with the marriage. In 2012, Mikitani received the Alumni Achievement Award from Harvard Business School. He was awarded the rank of Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour by the French government in 2014. He was also awarded the Spain-Japan Business Contribution Award by the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in 2017.

Aurum Wellness : An App Helping People Prioritize their Mental Health

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It all started with a thought, “is mental health not as important as our physical health? Then why do we not prioritize it when we should be able to talk about it and get help? Is it fair that treatment should be sought only when extremities like clinical depression or suicidal tendencies set in? If we can provide help in the earlier stages, so much good can be done in the world”

Fresh from graduating from college, Dhwanil Shah and his co-founder Meet Patel knew that they wanted to work in the area of mental and emotional health. Dhwanil’s father has been taking stress management seminars since he was a kid, and it had always inspired him. After noticing the end number of interactions in the seminars, it dawned on him that people in all areas of life have immense stress, anxiety, or some issues that they want to tackle, but they don’t, due to constraints of time, accessibility, pricing etc., and it takes a toll on their mental health to a great degree.

The two of them, along with working in a corporate, started meeting a number of well-known psychologists and counsellors and realized that although there is a small shift happening within the community, there is still a long way to go in making people open up. He says, “There is always room to do more and more in this space. Affordability also is a major issue in seeking help. Most people do not believe that it is worth spending Rs 500-1200 for a 45-minute session, because somehow to them, their anxiety, their stress can take a backseat. We want to change this. What scares us is if we do not communicate about our emotions and mental health, we will ultimately suffer from the physical health front to a big extent. Is that ideal?”

“We conducted a lot of surveys and talked to a lot of people to figure out the pain points and decided to come up with a solution that would address them. The main concerns were accessibility, affordability and continuity. People were just not able to allocate time and money for regular sessions. They usually stop after a couple of sessions and try to resolve their issues on their own, possibly falling in the same trap again. That is how Aurum was born. We wanted Aurum to be an app which provides affordable and expert services for mental, emotional and diet wellness, a new age holistic wellness platform. We wanted to bring more to the table than just anonymous counselling. There is a section for people who still do not want to communicate with counsellors called “program” which using a very tuned algorithm, let them recognize their own problem areas, set their own improvement targets and provides simple, yet effective soothing exercises. One more very important factor in this whole holistic wellness area is that many people have issues like body image problems, Non-communicable chronic issues like diabetes, cholesterol etc which are directly related to their diet. So these diet-related issues eventually take a huge toll on the persons mental health as they are constantly in anxiety about their diet-related problems. So we also have on the platform professional diet counsellors who understand the importance of diet with respect to overall well being and they are trained to provide such quality counselling. We have on board some of the best psychologists and dieticians who are keen to be a part of a team which is so dynamic and ready to do what it takes to help in alleviating these mental and emotional health problems of the masses.”

The statistics for people suffering from holistic wellness issues like stress, anxiety, depression and diet-related issues like Obesity Diabetes, Chronic Depression, Hypertension is alarming.

Some stats which will help put things in perspective:

  • 15% of the Indian population suffers from a mental issue,
  • There are only 2000 estimated psychologists in India,
  • 45% of the working population suffers from high levels of stress.

There just aren’t enough qualified professionals in the traditional network to support these populations. Technology is the way forward, and as such we have done our best to come up with a solution, which can be both effective and appealing at the same time. They have got a very positive response, since the time it has launched. More than 2000 downloads on the play store and almost 100 paying subscribers have validated the fact that there are a lot of people who want to do this, and who find it useful. “We want to keep doing this to help those who want it but are not too willing because of the above-mentioned concerns. We aim to become a top brand in this space that people can trust and come back to whenever they feel like it”.

Tony Xu : The Co-founder of the Dashing Food Delivery Service ‘DoorDash’

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The food industry is blooming with every second that passes. Now that the food industry has got technology-induced in it, one can order any kind of food, anytime, anywhere. It requires nothing but a simple three taps on your tech-savvy devices. In this growing food industry, DoorDash emerges as a key company leading the change. Tony Xu, the founding CEO of the company shares a success story which speaks that a simple problem can turn on the light in our minds to figure out something innovative.

DoorDash Inc. is an on-demand food delivery service which was founded in 2013 by Andy Fang, Stanley Tang, Tony Xu and Evan Moore. The founding story of DoorDash, as described by Tony, is an ‘unlikely one’.

It was 2012, and all four of the founders were working on an app which focused on building the technology for small businesses. They used to go and talk to the owners of coffee shops and restaurants. It all started when they were in a small macaroon store, in Palo Alto. The manager of the store, Chloe, expressed all the problems in her day to day business. However, as they were about to leave, Chloe showed them a thick booklet, which contained pages of delivery orders, and said, “This drives me crazy. I have no drivers to fulfil them, and I’m the one doing all of it.”

Tony Xu
Image Source: Bloomberg

All four of them had their lightbulb moment. They spent the next few weeks interviewing and questioning other small businesses (nearly 200) and heard the same thing over and over again: ‘Deliveries are painful’. They started coding keeping in mind that they can improve this backlog and were ready with their first prototype within a few hours.

On January 12th, 2013, Palo Alto Delivery was born. The service spread so quickly that all the four members were delivering all over the Stanford campus. In the day, they were students and, in the night, they were delivery drivers. The name ‘Palo Alto Delivery’ was changed to DoorDash, in June 2013, and the delivery drivers were called the ‘Dashers’. “We learnt so much from driving in the streets. Now, anyone who joins the company, has to be a Dasher for at least 1 week,” said Xu.

“When we first started, we were trying to solve our own problems of getting food delivered. But soon, it grew quickly within the Stanford community and beyond. We found out that many families and office workers in the area have the same problem. When we deliver food, it’s as much about delivering happiness as it is about bringing convenience,” DoorDash posted on Medium.

Tony Xu, is a first-generation American. His first job was at his mom’s restaurant. His education includes B.S. (High Honours) in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley, M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was an Arjay Miller Scholar at Stanford. He started his professional career at McKinsey and Company. After that, he worked in Product at Square and led special projects for CEO and CFO at eBay.

When he started DoorDash, his simple mission was to enable every merchant to deliver easily, and that mission has come a long way. DoorDash has drawn investments worth $700 million with key investors being: Khosla Ventures, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, GIC, Kleiner Perkins Caufield, and Byers. During 2018, the company was valued at $1.4 billion in a round of funding.

In April 2018, DoorDash stepped into the grocery deliveries with a partnership with Walmart. Further, in the year, DoorDash surpassed Uber Eats to become the second largest company in US food delivery sales behind only GrubHub.

The company took everyone by surprise when its valuation took place in February 2019. The company’s value increased 5 times and valued $7 billion when the rounding was done by SoftBank, Vision Fund, DST Global and Y Combinator.

Tony Xu, has also kept the focus of the company on an issue very important to him personally. Project DASH was launched and has since focused on the efforts to save food from wastage.

“Today, more than four and a half years after we first launched the company, we’re still passionate about transforming local businesses helping them thrive in this digital and convenient economy.” Tony Xu, the founding CEO is leading his company with its dashing food delivery services to new heights and is setting an example in front of the world that if innovation stays, then progress to success will always be on the tracks.

Kanika Tekriwal – The CEO & Founder of High Flying JetSetGo

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When it comes to ultimate comfort in travel, airlines are at the top. But the airlines have their path and destinations set, and at the time of emergency, the only thing you can do is, co-operate with them and wait. But then, there come the affordable private flights that JetSetGo provides even on urgent basis. JetSetGo is a multi-faceted organization dealing with low-cost private services. It focuses on delivering innovating and transforming ideas into the general aviation industry. The co-founding CEO of JetSetGo, Kanika Tekriwal is someone who shares a story which is a set example for everyone and speaks that sometimes discomfort can lead to great ideas. All one needs is a spirit and a willingness to fight back their own backlogs.

Kanika hails from a business family but had to face a non-supportive journey. Aviation was looked up as an industry with male dominance, and her parents were against it from the very beginning, but her passion towards her goal changed their thinking and made them support their daughter. “Doing a job in aviation, and being a women entrepreneur are two different things. Though you find women in plenty in the industry, and the majority of them are employees and not the employers. Being a woman employer in aviation is indeed a tough task. When I told my parents about my dream, they were drop-dead against it. But I was adamant, and when they saw a little success and passion of their daughter, they supported me,” said Kanika in an exclusive interview.

Kanika Tekriwal
Image Source: beboldpeople.com

She always aspired to be in the aviation industry, to do something for the betterment of the services. Kanika pursued B.A. in Economics from the University of Mumbai, and later, moved to the United Kingdom for her M.B.A.

It was after her coming back from the UK, in 2011, when she started to think about turning her dream into reality. That’s when a major setback hit her hard. She was diagnosed with cancer. But that did not stop her from achieving her goals. During the nine months of rigorous treatment, she conceptualized the whole idea of JetSetGo. She sensed the need for an aggregator in the private jet space. “I would meet a number of people using private jets who complained that booking one in India was a very shoddy experience, and they felt cheated that the entire private jet experience is a far cry over travelling business or first. At the same time, private jet owners were selling planes due to the escalating costs, regular maintenance, and other hindrances as well as not getting the real pleasure of actually owning an aircraft.”

She started the company ‘JetSetGo’ in 2014 and aimed to cater to a wide clientele. JetSetGo offers exclusive ground services, unparalleled personalized inflight services, the highest aircraft dispatch rate, state-of-the-art technology, and ensures 100% safety. The company is referred to as the ‘Uber of the Skies’ delivering the ultimate pleasure of private aviation. JetSetGo has been showing a massive 7X growth ever since with investments coming in from large personalities, Yuvraj Singh and Puneet Dalmia.

“The very thought of having a chartered plane gives one a feeling, which is beyond imagination. Affording a chartered plane is indeed a matter of luxury today. But, probably after a century, when we all would have gone to dust and bones. People will own their own jets. And I am talking about people with decent earning and not the high and mighty. I believe time will come that in India, too.” said Kanika when asked about the company and indicated that private flying will get cheaper in India. She expects India to become one of the largest private aviation markets in the world, in the next 10 years. She makes sure that in her company, gender equality remains intact as she is a huge supporter of women empowerment.

“JetSetGo, today, has 162 visitors monthly out of which 64.5 are first-time visitors. JetSetGo is looking at capturing a minimum of 20 per cent market share by the end of the year, and we will raise the bar without compromise to indulge and cater to each customer’s need,” mentions Tekriwal. JetSetGo is growing at a rate of 70% per year. Its customer range starts with a net worth of $10 million. In 2016, the company did 4,691 hours of flying with a dispatch rate of 99.2% as compared to 74% of the global average.

JetSetGo acquired Indo Pacific Aviation Limited with an undisclosed amount. “This acquisition now gives a significant boost to our ability to grow our fleet and offer unique services and next-generation aircraft for personalized on-demand mobility”

Kanika Tekriwal, the founding CEO of JetSetGo expresses cancer as her the best experience so far because it gave her a new life to experience. She clearly is an inspiration to everyone and shows that nothing can stop you from achieving non-turbulent flights to success.