Interviews with Startups

DataMesh talks about their collaboration with Fujitsu

The debate on the most popular technology in the past decade would include Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR).MR includes augmented reality (AR) for adding virtual information based on real and augmented virtuality (AV).
Through MR, a user can have a rich experience by providing a smart environment in which the reality and the virtual are naturally connected.

DataMesh, a startup based in China, started its company with the mission of revolutionizing workflow for firstline workers. With AI powered Intelligent Search Engines and Mixed Reality training/simulation/content creation products, DataMesh leads enterprise digital transformation by speeding up the quality control process, improving employee training, and transforming every worker into an expert in the modern workplace.

Founded in Seattle with headquarter in Beijing, DataMesh now has offices in Tokyo, Shanghai and Guangzhou. DataMesh is the only Microsoft MRPP (Mixed Reality Partner) in China that has global Co-Sell certification, Cloud Gold Certification and the only next-generation Kinect depth camera early adoption partner in China. They also won FastCompany best creative design award and is Microsoft CoSell Ready & Cloud Gold Certified.

DataMesh participated in the FUJITSU ACCELERATOR Season 7. We asked Nikita Huang who manages the company’s operation and global marketing delivery, about their experience with Fujitsu’s program.

Q: Please tell me about DataMesh. When did the company start and what does DataMesh do?

Nikita Huang (A):

We opened our business officially in 2015. Our company uses Mixed Reality to help enterprises incorporate smart design, fasten service deployment, and implement low-cost planning processes through products and services based on data analysis, knowledge graph, machine learning and visualization.

Q: Why did DataMesh apply to the FUJITSU ACCELERATOR?

A:

The reason why we applied to the FUJITSU ACCELERATOR is because we wanted to build the client base in Asia. We set up our Tokyo office in 2017 and we actually had some work collaboration ongoing already with Fujitsu before joining the FUJITSU ACCELERATOR.

Mr. Hiromitsu Okiwa is an evangelist in Fujitsu who promotes the technology throughout the company and drives adoption of technology inside. He was the one who gave us the idea of joining the program. He actually used our products at the Fujitsu Forum event and that helped us be promoted to Fujitsu internally and their clients externally.

Q: How did the business collaboration with Fujitsu progress?

A:

First, we learned about each other’s team and business. We learned that Fujitsu had their own internal evaluation about us as well. After that, we worked closely with Fujitsu Business Units. We discussed how we are going to work together, what targets we will work for Demo Day, and prepared for it.3 months may sound very short to do so many things but we actually achieved a lot during the program and we’re very satisfied with it.

Q: It sounds like the program exceeded your expectations. What was the expectation that you had about the program before you joined?

A:

We have high-end new technology and we saw how this technology would change the future of the world. We knew that Fujitsu has the best consulting services and they have the ability to actually distribute our products to their clients. Fujitsu had already planned it for their customers. If we work with Fujitsu, we thought we could focus only on our technology because we can utilize their best consulting team, sales team, channel team, project management team, which of all we really need to grow our business. They have great resources and we can focus on our technology, exchanging what we got is just a win-win. We started working together with their South East Asia team and after joining the program, we gained our first customer in South East Asia, which we thought would take a lot of time. We thought that it’s almost as if they are trying to get us the best possible customers we could have, those customers that we can’t reach out on our own.
The sales team in the South East Asia team at Fujitsu got trained to promote our products in Malaysia and Thailand. Thanks to Fujitsu, we could acquire our very first customer in South East Asia. We really appreciate that.

Q: That’s great that your company’s plan to reach out to South East Asian market was achieved after joining the program. Were there any other things Fujitsu helped DataMesh with?

A:

Fujitsu helped us with three different areas.
(1) PR release and branding. You know as a non-Japanese startup, we first had to let the people know about us. Fujitsu did a great job for us on that. Our story was covered on most of the Japanese media that we wanted to be featured on.
(2) Customer acquisition in the South East Asian market, as I mentioned earlier. Before when we tried it by ourselves, it was very difficult to gain customers in South East Asia. Fujitsu definitely helped us acquire our customers in the market.
(3) Customer acquisition in Japan. When foreign companies try to enter a new foreign market, they say it’s so difficult as they have no knowledge about the market, no network and no language skills, we entered the Japanese market so smoothly with no difficulty, and I think we were very lucky to have Fujitsu behind us.

Q: Do you think Fujitsu also benefited from working with you?

A:

Oh I think so and hope so. We have advanced technology and Fujitsu has a broad range of customer coverage. How to apply the standard products integrate that into the Fujitsu roadmap and consolidate the solutions to existing customers is always a big goal for us. Without Fujitsu, using our own sales channel team and resources, we would’ve been able to sell our products and services, let’s say only 10 units per customers a year. With platforms Fujitsu has, it was about 1000 units. That’s a huge difference. Just like we benefited from them, Fujitsu was able to add value to their existing customers with our high technology. I mean they could add more innovative solutions to their customers.

Q: Were there any challenges?

A:

On our side no, but I think Fujitsu had a lot of challenges. The biggest challenge for them probably was that they had to internally communicate. Fujitsu is a huge organization so there might have been a pressure to help us while sharing all their experience with their team. But they never gave us any pressure. The FUJITSU ACCELERATOR program office figured out everything for us.

Q: What are the next steps?

A:

We will work closely with Fujitsu at different angles across the company with the sales team, marketing team, and business units. We have more opportunities to work for other clients that are introduced by Fujitsu. Thanks to Fujitsu, we’ve done so many things already but we want to see more progress in Japan, and widely in Asia with having more standardized products and services. We hope we will go bigger and help our clients go bigger as well with our products and services, and our technology will help the world better.

Text by Kim Yuna

contact-fap@cs.jp.fujitsu.com

The Program is for private Startups that own products and services developed by themselves. If you are interested in the program, please contact our office.

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