Analyzing and using “data that can only be obtained because communication is online”
During the pandemic, online classes and online meetings became the norm. The tools have also improved, and they are not inconvenient. Still, it is true that some emotions are hard to read online. And conversely, there are also “emotions that can be read precisely because it is online.”
I’m beside you Inc., founded in June 2020, started its business with that in mind. It analyzes the video of online communication such as Zoom. Using AI to comprehensively analyze multiple kinds of information, such as facial expressions, gaze, and voice, it aims to improve the quality of communication.
I’m beside you’s services are already used in many settings. One is online education services: by analyzing class videos and visualizing communication between teachers and students, it checks whether teaching is appropriate. Improving based on the analysis also leads to better student grades and more. Another is online sales: AI finds common tendencies among won and lost deals in past sales meeting videos, helping people think about communication for building better relationships. What is more, with “COVID depression” on the rise, demand is reportedly growing for analyzing online meeting videos to “detect employees’ mental state as early as possible.” The accuracy is quite high, with 95% agreement between psychiatrists’ diagnoses and the video analysis AI.
The service has all kinds of uses, but Kamiya, CEO of I’m beside you, stresses that “we only pitch it as ‘for such-and-such’ by industry or job type to make it easy to understand what kind of service it is; there is one common theme.”
“Teachers and students, salespeople and customers, bosses and subordinates: in the end, it is all people and people, right? We believe the most important thing is for people to communicate well with each other and build flat, good relationships. With the vision of ‘making all of society a school,’ we provide tools aiming for a society where everyone respects each other and every encounter becomes learning.”
“If I can help humanity evolve, my life won’t be in vain”
Kamiya was a “bookworm” as a student, dreaming of becoming a company president or a film director. The reasons: partly because of being bullied, Kamiya had a strong wish to “become someone who can stick to their own views,” and thought being a president could make that possible. And watching the end credits of a movie, Kamiya was moved that “many people are involved in making one thing.”
Both connect to the current work, but Kamiya did not start a company right away. After graduating from university, Kamiya joined NTT DATA. Asked why, Kamiya gave an unexpected answer.
“I have long had a fear of death. When you die, your existence is gone, so I once wondered whether there is any meaning in living. But when I realized that humanity keeps evolving even when people die, I came to think, ‘If I can help humanity evolve, my life won’t be in vain.’ When I got a job, it was the dawn of the internet, and people said ‘IT will change the world,’ so I decided to join NTT DATA, wanting to be involved in IT that makes humanity evolve.”
After joining, Kamiya worked on new businesses and more, gaining a wide range of business skills. While building a career with IT as the theme, Kamiya then found a new theme to pursue.
“I thought ‘IT is what changes the world,’ but when my son was born, I truly thought, ‘No, it is these children who will change the world from now on.’ I began to think about what I could do for my son, who will build the next society, and became interested in education.”
From there, Kamiya started an education business as a side job, launching Nei-Kid, an education service that lets elementary school children interact with all kinds of adults. The vision of “making all of society a school” has not changed since then.
Running Nei-Kid, Kamiya came to want more and more to “visualize children’s individuality and provide experiences and services tailored to each one.” In 2020, as online communication became mainstream during the pandemic, Kamiya noticed that information on each person’s facial expressions and voice had become easy to obtain. Having succeeded in developing video analysis AI, Kamiya decided to start a company with colleagues from NTT DATA.
“Starting a company was simply the best answer for moving the business forward quickly. With activities restricted by the pandemic, some people are grieving family members or acquaintances who have died. That is exactly why we feel a sense of mission that we must play a part in making this experience not end as a disaster, but become a step toward the next era.”
The attitude of “building while learning” that supports high technical capability and rapid growth
That is how I’m beside you was founded. The first revenue came in the month after founding, and monthly sales now exceed 10 million yen.
“When I say, ‘In an era when online communication has become mainstream, this kind of analysis service is needed, right?’ everyone nods. But most people just say, ‘Couldn’t AI do that?’ and leave it there. We simply built and provided the service people wanted, for real.”
In pushing the technology further, there were also happy moments.
When introducing video analysis AI into an online tutoring service, the team repeatedly interviewed experienced specialists and experts, building knowledge and data such as “I judge a student’s state from this kind of information” into the AI to refine its accuracy. At one point, the AI surpassed the know-how of industry experts and discovered things the teachers had not noticed. This is exactly the strength of AI, which excels at learning from data, and the added value AI brings.
I’m beside you’s services are refined every day and are in high demand from many fields. This technical capability comes from the experience and intuition of members who worked on video analysis AI projects in various industries at NTT DATA for more than 10 years. And another big strength is an attitude shared by I’m beside you’s members.
“We are all very curious about new technologies and service models, so building while learning is our basic way of working. There are even areas nobody has worked on before where ‘we have already rebuilt it many times through scrap and build,’ so I think that is what comes across as technical capability.”
Catching up on the latest technology and trying things quickly supports the company’s astonishing speed of growth.
Hiring engineers from the Indian Institutes of Technology, aiming to be a global company
The company is also particular about hiring. Kamiya had been searching for the best way to expand the organization without slowing down development. Then one day, Kamiya had the chance to receive mentoring from Mercari Chairman Koizumi on the voice social app Clubhouse.
“When I asked for advice about hiring, I was told, ‘Assume global hiring, and hire by thinking about where in the world the best people are.’”
That led the company to focus on the Indian Institutes of Technology. Kamiya went to India right away and got approval to recruit interns, and 730 people applied. The company accepted 46 of them as interns and made job offers to eight of the most outstanding. They are the kind of people GAFA would poach, but all of them reportedly accepted the offers and are working with the company.
“From the start, we have said, ‘We will become a global company.’ What I think now is that it is hard to grow as a startup in Japan and then become a global company. That is because Japan is a shrinking market, and if you run your business on the premise of the Japanese market, both your business and your hiring become optimized for the Japanese market. That is exactly why our strategy is to build our business with India as a base and expand from there to Europe, the United States, and global markets.”
A clear strategy with an eye on the world and steady business growth: the company has been featured widely in the media and is expanding its business with a speed and scale hard to believe for a company in only its second year. But Kamiya flatly says, “We have achieved only about 0.1% of what we want to do.” That is because Kamiya wants the company to build systems that become infrastructure once behavior change has advanced further.
“I think much of the pain people carry comes from relationships and communication. As the world becomes one where more multinational and diverse people are connected, there will surely be more people who feel strong loneliness as the flip side, or who convince themselves that ‘no one understands me after all.’ That is exactly why, by analyzing communication between people, I want to provide an ‘AI like a childhood friend’ that understands people and stays close to them.”
The vision is grand. But at the heart of it, for Kamiya, there is always the presence of a son.
“For me, changing society is a means. What I think about most is wanting a society where, wherever in the world my son goes in the future, my son can meet people worth respecting and learn from one another. I think that is my responsibility as a parent, and I run the business to make it happen.”
Kamiya, who jumped into IT wanting to “help humanity evolve,” is steadily changing society by combining it with the theme of “education.” Using I’m beside you’s services, communication around the world will become smoother and kinder than it is now. We look forward to the arrival of that future.
Interview date: September 7, 2021
(Interview and text: Yumika Kuramoto)