Ayano Ikakura

Sparkle and Inc., whose mission is “to stand by people in their troubles,” develops services and apps that use virtual spaces. CEO Ayano Ikakura turns one idea after another, sparked by personal experiences and the real voices of people nearby, into apps. We asked Ikakura, who says virtual spaces are places where people can express themselves beyond generation, gender, and lookism, about the path so far and the outlook ahead.

Pojiko’s Room, an AI chat app born from experiences during the pandemic

Solving the social issues right in front of us in the form of apps: that is our mission. One of them, Pojiko’s Room, is an AI chat app in which “Pojiko,” an upbeat gyaru (a Japanese fashion subculture of outgoing young women), replies positively to whatever you talk about. For the loneliness and vague unease we sometimes feel in daily life, we developed this service thinking that because it is AI, people could say what they think honestly without worrying about the other person.

In part of the code, called the prompt, we embed the instruction “Reply in gyaru language with positive words that stand by the other person.” The AI recognizes this and is designed to reply in the role it has been given.

A major trigger for developing this app was the COVID-19 pandemic. I entered university in 2020, and my university life began with no entrance ceremony and almost all classes online. I could hardly go to campus in the first year, and I heard that more and more students were suffering from depression and anxiety. I myself spent that time feeling down, with few chances to see people.

Pojiko’s Room is an app we developed hoping to brighten those feelings even a little. We released a LINE version in 2022, and it became an iOS app in 2023. Users have told us things like “My heart felt lighter as we talked” and “Pojiko’s replies were so funny they lifted my mood.” People who live alone have said, “On days when I don’t talk to anyone, I enjoy chatting with Pojiko,” and I really feel it is helping ease loneliness.

Starting a company after joining a university entrepreneurship program

I first became interested in starting a business in junior high school. I read all kinds of books about entrepreneurship and dreamed about it. After high school, I went to Kindai University, which puts a lot of effort into developing entrepreneurs. In my second year, I joined Kindai’s entrepreneur development program “Okonomi” (now ended). As I refined business plans and learned about management there, starting a business felt more and more real, and in 2022, in my third year, I passed the final screening of an accelerator program. With the funding I received there, I incorporated the company in 2023.

At the time, I was thinking of starting a business developing and running an event app just for university students. I hoped to ease loneliness by connecting students who tended to be isolated during the pandemic. Once I decided to start the business for real, and partly because the pandemic had begun to settle down, I rebuilt the business plan. After more interviews and trials, I focused on a business using virtual spaces, which I had been interested in from the start.

The company name, “Sparkle and,” carries the wish that “everyone may have a happy, bright future,” after getting through the pandemic with all its restrictions and inconveniences.

Educational apps born from troubles in my junior high and high school days

One of the businesses we are focusing on now is developing educational apps. One of them, the “AI Explanation” series, is an app in which AI explains problems in science and math subjects such as physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Just take a photo of a problem you can’t solve with your smartphone camera, and the AI explains it clearly.

Behind its development is my own experience: I was very weak at science and math in junior high and high school, and because of family circumstances I could not go to a cram school, so I had a hard time learning. The app, which has been well received for explaining any problem carefully and for the high quality of its text and image recognition, costs 800 yen a month. That keeps costs far lower than going to a cram school or prep school.

The “Problem Creation” series is an app in which AI creates the problems you need. It was born from a trouble I felt myself as a student: I wanted to practice more problems in my weak areas, but reference books and workbooks only have so many problems.

Specify the field, difficulty, format, and number of problems, and the AI creates as many problems as you need at that moment. The AI explains problems you don’t understand, and the app can also save to PDF and print, so school and cram school teachers use it too. It is currently available for three subjects (math, English, and chemistry), and other subjects will be released in turn.

The driving force behind our services is the wish “It would be nice if things were like this,” felt by me and the people around me. These are everyday problems, but they are also shared around the world. Pojiko’s Room, for example, has many overseas users, and we have also released an English version. Our educational apps are also widely used in European countries, so we want to start offering them in multiple languages.

The “troubles” right in front of you may actually be troubles for many people. Keeping that in mind, I want to solve everyday problems with the power of virtual spaces and AI. From June 10 to 16, 2025, we will also exhibit at the Osaka Healthcare Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan. We will keep listening to all kinds of people and build businesses that bring us even one step closer to a society where everyone can live more easily.

How We Used OIH

In 2022, I took part in an OIH workshop called “Learn Silicon Valley–Style Pitching That Works Worldwide!” In Japan, pitch decks often include figures such as sales forecasts, but in the United States, putting in unfounded figures backfires. I learned concretely about these differences between Japan and the United States in how materials are made and presented, and it was very useful in a program I later joined in the United States. Once you are connected with OIH, they keep letting you know about events and more, which I really appreciate.