TC50: Japanese Companies Take The Role Of Representing Asia

Japan, the world's third biggest Internet market in terms of web users (following China and the US), disappointed at last year's TechCrunch40 conference with no company from Nippon presenting in San Francisco at all. But this year, the country bounced back, with a total of three companies having been selected as TechCrunch50 finalists and two others as DemoPit companies. These are the three Japanese start-ups that presented on stage this year: Opentrace by Rinen Opentrace , an enterprise solution created by two-man start-up Rinen , describes itself as a "massive, world-wide database of product materials". The site aims at contributing to lower the impact of CO2 emissions through a tracking system that encompasses various kinds of products, from food to air planes. The final goal is to become a "green" Wikipedia for users wanting to investigate the environmental impact of any product on the planet.