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It would be easier to write the answer if there were details on the kind of software, previous track record in other countries, and the scale of the operation you envision. But I’ll offer what I can.First of all, you need to realize that Japan is a difficult market to enter, so you’ll need to spend a lot of time on it. Here are some key points:Characteristics of the marketJapanese customers are extremely quality conscious. Product defects that would not be an issue elsewhere can cause major problems here. Example: Customer returns a bottle of wine because they label is slightly scratched.Japanese customers expect immediate, responsive, polite customer support. Examples: Customer’s data on hard disk is lost, so hard disk company recovers his data for free. Driver software is incompatible with customer’s PC, so developers analyze the PC and fix the driver.Products need to match the customer’s work environment. Examples: External hard disk takes up too much space on small Japanese desk, so manufacturer redesigns so the drive is placed vertically instead of horizontally and thereby reduces the footprint by 2/3. Product is subject to failure because its fan sucks in smoke from user’s ashtray, so manufacturer changes the fan to suck air from the rear of the unit.Other companies do anti-competitive tricks. Example: Major PC manufacturer changes their machine to check for your product being installed and shut the whole system down. Developer updates product to circumvent this. Repeat every two months. Or, consortium of major manufacturers publishes a full-page ad in a major newspaper to malign your product with false claims about it. Start a lawsuit if you want.OK, on to distribution channels.Since it is hard to meet the customer’s needs if you are not in the country, you may want to consider distribution to help you out. Most distributors, however, want to take a cut of the profit and do as little as possible. here are actual examples, but I will omit company names:Large, famous trading company A: Agrees to handle your product for a commission. They won’t keep inventory. They won’t create any sales materials or user manuals in the local language. They won’t spend any time learning to use the product because their product line is too huge to allow that. If a customer comes to you and you refer them to the trading company and there happen to be no blocking technical problems and the customer is able to create their own Japanese documentation, then you might get a sale. Don’t count on it though.Smaller trading company B: They will take an interest in your product, train their staff to support it, and deal with customer problems that are Japan-specific. If the product has a problem not related to Japan they will forward it to you. Customers that need to understand how to use the product have to use your own English-language website. They don’t have the ability to market the product, so you have to introduce customers to them. Also, they invest a lot of time in the product, so it is difficult to get them on board.On-line software distributor C: They are mainly interested in the big-name packages that everyone wants, but they are quite adept at selling those. They sell Windows Server, Symantec, Oracle Database Server, etc. They won’t consider your product if you are not famous.Distributor C: Sells all the products that you find in PC shops nationwide. There are distributors for various regions in Japan, so if you want to sell in stores you should go through them. They want to know if you have a track record, so you have to sell directly to some famous PC store first. They won’t hold inventory, and will order one unit from you every time they get an order from a store. After a long time if you go and visit them a lot they might buy 100 at a time.Famous PC Store D: Extremely knowledgeable about the market. Extremely helpful in suggesting product modifications. Extremely concerned about quality and bad customer experiences. Expect to be able to return a product within 30 days, for any reason.ConclusionThe first point that should be obvious is that you probably need to improve the product first. You need to provide Japanese software, Japanese documentation, and Japanese support. Then, you have to motivate the distribution channels.So ask yourself, “How is the distributor going to make money from my product?” Because that is what they will ask themselves. You can pay them an up-front fee, or offer to pay for national advertising, or if your product is incredibly innovative they might really want to take it without money from you, but even in that case you will have to do a lot of preparation at your end. It’s rare that your product is so exciting that they do all the groundwork for you on the expectation that it will pay off.

10 Emerging Technology Trends That Will Dominate 20171. IoT and Smart Home Tech.We’ve been hearing about the forthcoming revolution of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and resulting interconnectedness of smart home technology for years. So what’s the holdup? Why aren’t we all living in smart, connected homes by now? Part of the problem is too much competition, with not enough collaboration—there are tons of individual appliances and apps on the market, but few solutions to tie everything together into a single, seamless user experience. Now that bigger companies already well-versed in uniform user experiences (like Google, Amazon, and Apple) are getting involved, I expect we’ll see some major advancements on this front in the coming year.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here2. AR and VR.We’ve already seen some major steps forward for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology in 2017. Oculus Rift was released, to positive reception, and thousands of VR apps and games followed. We also saw Pokémon Go, an AR game, explode with over 100 million downloads. The market is ready for AR and VR, and we’ve already got some early-stage devices and tech for these applications, but it’s going to be next year before we see things really take off. Once they do, you’ll need to be ready for AR and VR versions of practically everything—and ample marketing opportunities to follow.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here3. Machine Learning.Machine learning has taken some massive strides forward in the past few years, even emerging to assist and enhance Google’s core search engine algorithm. But again, we’ve only seen it in a limited range of applications. Throughout 2017, I expect to see machine learning updates emerge across the board, entering almost any type of consumer application you can think of, from offering better recommended products based on prior purchase history to gradually improving the user experience of an analytics app. It won’t be long before machine learning becomes a kind of “new normal,” with people expecting this type of artificial intelligence as a component of every form of technology.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here4. Automation.Marketers will be (mostly) pleased to learn that automation will become a bigger mainstay in and throughout 2017, with advanced technology enabling the automation of previously human-exclusive tasks. We’ve had robotic journalists in circulation for a couple of years now, and I expect it won’t be long before they make another leap into more practical types of articles. It’s likely that we’ll start seeing productivity skyrocket in a number of white-collar type jobs—and we’ll start seeing some jobs disappear altogether. When automation is combined with machine learning, everything can improve even faster, so 2017 has the potential to be a truly landmark year.5. Humanized Big Data. (visual, empathetic, qualitative)Big data has been a big topic for the past five years or so, when it started making headlines as a buzzword. The idea is that mass quantities of gathered data—which we now have access to—can help us in everything from planning better medical treatments to executing better marketing campaigns. But big data’s greatest strength—its quantitative, numerical foundation—is also a weakness. In 2017, I expect we’ll see advancements to humanize big data, seeking more empathetic and qualitative bits of data and projecting it in a more visualized, accessible way.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here6. Physical-Digital Integrations.Mobile devices have been slowly adding technology into our daily lives. It’s rare to see anyone without a smartphone at any given time, giving us access to practically infinite information in the real-world. We already have things like site-to-store purchasing, enabling online customers to buy and pick up products in a physical retail location, but the next level will be even further integrations between physical and digital realities. Online brands like Amazon will start having more physical products, like Dash Buttons, and physical brands like Walmart will start having more digital features, like store maps and product trials.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here7. Everything On-Demand.Thanks to brands like Uber (and the resulting madness of startups built on the premise of being the “Uber of ____”), people are getting used to having everything on demand via phone apps. In 2017, I expect this to see this develop even further. We have thousands of apps available to us to get rides, food deliveries, and even a place to stay for the night, but soon we’ll see this evolve into even stranger territory.Anyone in the tech industry knows that making predictions about the course of technology’s future, even a year out, is an exercise in futility. Surprises can come from a number of different directions, and announced developments rarely release as they’re intended.Still, it pays to forecast what’s coming next so you can prepare your marketing strategies (or your budget) accordingly. Whatever the case may be, it’s still fun to think about everything that’s coming next.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here8. Workflow and process improvement and automationEmerging technologies: artificial intelligence, computer vision, robotics, blockchainThe advancement of machine learning and other techniques in artificial intelligence are giving businesses and their development teams the opportunities to design data-driven applications that can recognize patterns to become sufficiently “cognitive” to reduce and even automate repetitive manual work. The availability of both proprietary and open data has allowed software engineers and data scientists to use a portion of the available data to train mathematical and statistical models that can predict most likely scenarios or outcomes for a given set of parameters and external inputs.Over time, the feedback loop generates more data and provides more real-world scenarios to the algorithms in the models. This in turn refines the models to become more accurate and efficient in improving or automating repetitive workflows and tasks.While artificial intelligence makes the machines and systems smarter by consuming data to train algorithms and build models that could mimic real-world scenarios and think like humans, blockchain improves and automates workflows through its unique way of processing, storing, sharing immutable transactional information in a distributed peer-to-peer network. In payment and settlement systems in the capital markets, blockchain eliminates intermediaries that are tasked to validate and approve certain transactional information before the transactions settle. In government digital initiatives, putting paper-based records on blockchain and allowing a set of stakeholders in the trusted network to have access to the information reduce manual efforts in record-keeping, reconciliations, auditing, and corruption monitoring, especially in the emerging markets.With the improvement and automation of workflows in the professional industries, employers and employees alike can unleash time spent on repetitive tasks to devote to higher value work in organizations.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here9. Digital identityEmerging technologies: advanced computing, deep learning, computer vision, blockchain, biometrics, IoTDigital identity, at its core, is a machine-readable dataset of attributes that describe a person, an organization, a place, a physical asset large or small.In the digital age in which every organization is a digital company, digital identity is the building block to understand current customers, future customers, and how they are related to each other and to other organizations.Digital identity is the building block to understand the state and the value of the physical assets. Digital identity is the building block to establish trust among individuals, organizations, and any given network of stakeholders so that exchange of information and exchange of value through transactions can take place effectively and efficiently. And digital identity is the building block and enabler for compliance and risk management solutions.Organizations are looking for more advanced ways to identify, verify, authenticate individual users through additional identity attributes such as biometrics and through better algorithms to detect anomalies using techniques such as deep learning.Blockchain can serve as an immutable “vault” for digital identity information with the ability to share the cryptographically secured information only to the need-to-know party.The combination of the rise of digital information about everything and continuous evolution and maturation of emerging technologies will bring innovation to solutions for “know-your-customer,” “know-your-supplier,” “know-your-counterparty,” “know-your-infrastructure asset” solutions, which are essential and mission critical for all organizations in all industries.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here10. Advanced analyticsEmerging technologies: big data management, data analytics, data visualization, machine learningAs mentioned, every organization is a digital and data company, but meanwhile not every company has the expertise, capability, and resources yet to use advanced analytics to extract value from all of the internal and external data to generate greater actionable business insights.Advanced analytics is an end-to-end solution with tools from data management to visualization to predictive modeling.Organizations will need to be able to break down data silos, master the data with consistent hierarchy and ontology to enable standardization, consistency, search, and data sharing. Organizations will need to be able to extrapolate from the data lakes and data stores with accessible data query, reporting and analytics capabilities. Moving further up, organizations can then take historical, current, and forecast data to build predictive and machine-learning models to identify quantifiable trends to inform business operations and strategy.Along this said advanced analytics capability curve, there are still significant pain points for organizations to move up the curve, which presents opportunities for innovative data and technology companies.At Thomson Reuters, we are working with our customers to understand how to further marry trusted data and emerging technologies to optimize and grow their businesses – from blockchain-based data feeds integration to digital identity solutions (KYC, World-Check, Clear, ClearID, Blockone ID) to building the next generation financial analytics platform to data innovation projects.Learn more abut Future Technology Updates here

Father Gasper CalezaThe art of printing first entered India through Goa. In a letter to St. Ignatius of Loyola, dated 30 April 1556, Father Gasper Caleza speaks of a ship carrying a printing press setting sail for Abyssinia from Portugal, with the purpose of helping missionary work in Abyssinia.The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century. Jesuit priests learnt Konkani and printed several tracts. By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and in Kanara languages. Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin, and in 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them.In India, book printing/ publishing has come a long way since 1556 when Portuguese Jesuits set up a printing press in Goa to print religious books for free distribution. Later, printing/ publishing efforts were accelerated by the East India Company and the British government to print government texts, circulars and government notifications in the form of Gazette publications and booklets side-stitched or glued together.However, the early contribution of entrepreneurs like Nawal Kishore Bhargava, Sorabhoji, Mustafa Khan, Chintamani Ghosh and a number of government-initiated and financed establishments involved in printing/ publishing is quite remarkable. The initial work in printing booklets in short runs by Mustafai Press, established in 1855 at Lucknow; Nawal Kishore Press, established in 1858 at Lucknow; Indian Press at Allahabad; Gazette Press at Calcutta and Gazette Press at Delhi established in 1841; Mumbai Mudranalaya, established in 1824 at Bombay; Orphan School Press, established in 1843 at Mirzapore; Cawnpore Lithograph Press at Cawnpore established in 1830; Rourkee Madrasa Ka Chhapakhana at Rourkee established in 1845 and Lodehana Press at Ludhiana established in 1836, were concentrated efforts in printing/publishing and distribution.In the second decade of 1800, noteworthy work was done in the field of publishing by Calcutta Book Society by reprinting science textbooks printed in Europe. In Calcutta alone, Baptists claimed to have printed 710,000 school books in various regional languages by 1820.Soon after the first armed struggle for independence in 1857, there was a sudden realisation of the importance of the printed word for the urban common man. Only print could help exchange of ideas between different communities in the various parts of the country. The British had their own interest in promoting education in the country, to train a large segment of the urban population as white-collared ‘babus’.Both these goals boosted printing/ publishing in various parts of the country. Organisations such as Higinbothams in Madras in 1844; Nawal Kishore Press in Lucknow in 1858; DB Taraporevala Sons in Bombay in 1864; AH Wheeler & Co in Allahabad in 1877; Indian Press in Allahabad in 1884; IMH Press in Delhi in 1885; Gowarsons Publishers in 1888 played an important role in giving the impetus to professional printing/ publishing activities in the pre-independence era.Since Independence, printing/ publishing in India is pulsating with charged energies of professionalism and technology, which has resulted in well-designed and well-produced newspapers, magazines, books. This considerable change in printing/ publishing was possible because of the availability of expertise provided by the professionals produced by Regional Schools of Printing Technology sponsored under the First Five Year Plan.Over the years, more such institutions were opened, besides one IIT (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, which runs an advance course on design), two universities at Jadavpur and Chennai offering graduate and post-graduate courses. Of late Guru Jhambeshwar University in Hissar, Haryana, is offering graduate and post-graduate courses. Although the progress has been substantial, when we take the overall picture of the publishing industry into consideration, it has not been uniform all over the country; in fact rather uneven in certain states.In the first three decades of 1900, when independence movement was gathering momentum and so was publishing and distribution system of the printed word in the form of books, journals and newspapers and the clandestinely printed newsletters, in came the influx of various publishing houses involved with printing and publishing of textbooks for schools and colleges, religious books, books on literature, both oriental texts and newly penned books in various regional languages infused with national feelings.Publishers like Moti Lal Banarasi Das (MLBD) established in 1903; Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind) established in 1903; Nagari Pracharini Sabha established in 1910; Oxford University Press (Indian Branch) established in 1912; and Gita Press in Gorakhpur established in 1927; gave a great push to the Hindi publishing trade in the heartland covering Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, parts of Andhra Pradesh and Bengal.Deep in the south, several printing /publishing houses like Vidyarambham Press and Book Depot established in 1931 in Alleppey; KR Brothers established in 1925 in Calicut; Prasad Printing & Process established in 1935 in Madras; and Commercial Printing Co established in Madras in 1936 played a key role.Sri Saraswaty Press in Calcutta, established in 1932, played a crucial role in the printing of underground publicity materials for the freedom movement. While the freedom struggle was on the printing/ publishing trade in India was dragging its feet due to constant harassment by the British Raj and the lack of essential ingredients needed for the progress and survival of the trade – paucity of funds, as the government assistance was almost negligible and private investors had diverted funds to the cause of the freedom struggle on the sly. The printing/ publishing industry did not keep pace with the technological developments in the west – so very few printers/ publishers could match their products with the products printed/ published in Europe and other western countries.As the freedom struggle gained momentum between 1914 and 1947, the Indian press kept pace with it and most of the English-language newspapers kept on updating and upgrading their plants in the areas of pre-press and printing. Most of these plants were equipped with linotypes, monotypes, big stereo-rotary presses, cameras and block-making units. Bennett Coleman & Co, who owned The Times of India and The Illustrated Weekly, was the first establishment to install India’s first rotogravure press to print multi-colour magazines. But the vernacular press could not keep pace with the English-language press due to unavailable financial resources and the British Raj imposed restrictions, and this imbalance is visible even today.Undoubtedly, the freedom movement in the country contributed greatly to the growth of the printing industry, the reason being the distribution of quick and multiple reproductions of the messages from senior leaders to grassroots participants in the urban and rural areas — and on the other hand, even quicker distribution of British Raj’s repressive administrative and instructional circulars in English and other regional languages through resident commissioners, magistrates and other functionaries. So, the need of the time was quick and effective growth of the printing outfits all over the country, especially in major cities like Allahabad, Lucknow, Meerut, Jallandhar, Ludhiana, Lahore, Indore, Bareilly, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, and Delhi.The printing industry in India is more than 200 years old. Over the years, and more so during the last 50 years or so, it has grown steadily, keeping pace with the growth of information, education, communication and computers. Today, it serves as one of the major media of communication, perhaps even more so than radio, television, and other forms of communication. The industry comprises well over 58,000 establishments and it is involved in a number of activities, such as publication of newspapers, magazines, books, outdoor publicity materials. etc.The quality of printing on these machines was better than platen and stop-cylinder presses and this initiated textbook printing in India, at least for senior school level, in a very small way. As the freedom struggle kept pace with the repressive administration of the British Raj, the printing industry marched along in both sectors — private and government. In spite of repressive measures of the British Raj, newspaper printing/ publishing became an important tool for freedom struggle at that time and several English and regional language newspapers appeared on the scene – broadcasting was almost negligible and totally government controlled.Printing industry in India in 1897 was at its infancy, making hand-impression of the composed and engraved areas. The art of makeready of any printed area was not much known as the platen machines were being used in the first decade of 1900. Stop-cylinder machines were introduced by some printing houses in Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and Delhi, and later in the early 1940s Miehle Presses, which were known as two-revolution presses, were introduced in India initially by government-run presses and then by commercial printing houses in major cities.During the period 1925-1946, many small-time printers contributed in the printing of news bulletins, both in Hindi and Urdu and other regional languages. Textbook printing was also undertaken by these printers which came as spill over from big publishing/ printing houses. Most of these books were either side-stitched and cover drawn upon or centre stitched along with soft cover. Some hard cover copies were also produced and our master binders perfected this art just by manual binding.In pre-Independence days, there were only three big names in the publishing field – New Longman, MacMillan and Oxford University Press. But in the last 67 years, there has been an unbelievable growth in the field of publishing/ printing. One cannot ignore contribution of NCERT in textbook publishing besides Orient Longman, S Chand, Frank Brothers, names like Vakils & Sons; Bolton Fine Arts; Conway Printers; Bombay Offset; Sri Saraswaty Press; Eagle Litho; NK Gossain Press; Prasad Process; Commercial Printing Co; Thomson Press; Mehta Offset — who printed millions of different titles in various languages in association with local, American, and British publishers.However, a major segment of the printing industry remains small-scale even after 70 years of independence, characterised by low investments and somewhat outdated technology. By the early 1980s, 90% of the printing presses installed in the small-scale sector were letterpress units with semi-automatic composing or hand-composing facility. Only 5 to 6% presses in 1975-80 had full mechanical composing, either mono, lino, or photo-composing with offset process printing facilities as compared to the technological innovations taking place during those years in other parts of the globe.There has been rapid modernisation in the printing industry in the last two and half decades. And it is for certain that in the next 10 year’s time, installation of latest and upgraded computerised equipment in pre-press and post-press areas will create a concentrated environment in retaining most of the state-of-the art printing jobs from going to overseas countries like Hong Kong and Singapore.Indian print industry experts and print associations are of the view that time is not far off when India will become a printing hub of entire Asia. Presently, Indian Print Industry is twice the size of Indian Film Industry and is marching towards a turnover of USD 30 billion with a double digit growth.