According to The Australian Financial Review, student accommodation booking site Student.com has ramped up its Australian operations after traffic data showed the most searched study destinations worldwide were Sydney and Melbourne. 
The UK-based business - the "booking.com" of student accommodation - has hired a new growth and partnerships expert, Bede Moore to manage the Australian market, which is tipped to be the global student accommodation industry's rising star. 
Student.com's Australian revenue has doubled in the past 12 months. In total, the company said it turned over $US110 million in gross bookings last year. 
"Australia has the biggest growth in student accommodation anywhere in the world – it's an undersupplied market with huge demand," founder and entrepreneur Luke Nolan said. 
"In all major Australian metropolitan locations there is currently less than one bedroom of purpose-built student accommodation for every 10 students. All of the major Australian cities have less provision than more established markets."
The Australian student accommodation market continues to lag the rest of the world, which has undergone rapid expansion in the past 24 months to notch up $US14.9 billion in investments.
While transactional activity is still slow in Australia where development sites are held for housing development, several accommodation providers, including Iglu, Urbanest and Scape Living have made a good headstart in the sector. 
Student.com lists their rooms online and students book them using the language of their choice. It also lists serviced apartments from independent providers. 
The service is free to students but a booking fee is paid by the accommodation provider. 

Ref: http://www.afr.com/real-estate/studentcom-sees-australias-student-accommodation-sector-as-next-big-thing-20161020-gs6w6w
 
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According to The Australian Financial Review, it is the most successful and profitable – and least known – Australian start-up and global technology company.
It is more profitable than the likes of Atlassian, WiseTech and Campaign Monitors and has been entirely self-funded since being founded in a Bondi garage 10 years ago.
Meet Envato, which last year made a pre-tax profit of $US33 million ($43.3 million), and which provides four debutants on this year's BRW Young Rich List.
The company runs a series of markets for web designers, with its popular Themeforest site selling blog and website templates and themes for WordPress users, as well as some videos and music for websites. Themeforest is among the top 300 most visited websites in the world. Though it does not design the templates, it provides the forum or market for users to sell their designs, taking a share of sales when transactions are made.
 It has been an extremely successful strategy. Envato's 2015 financial year pre-tax profit (its 2016 financials should be lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission within about the next month) was double that of the previous year and revenue reached $US73 million.
Envato was founded by husband and wife team Cyan and Collis Ta'eed, and a long-time family friend, Jun Rung, in Collis's Bondi garage in 2006 and has not taken external funding since. Vahid Ta'eed, brother of Collis, joined the company in 2008 as an executive director.
The quartet all debut on the Young Rich this year. Collis & Cyan Ta'eed have combined wealth of $184 million while Rung and Vahid Ta'eed are worth an estimated $43 million each.
The company now reportedly boasts about 6 million members worldwide and is closing in on the 180 staff mark.

Ref: http://www.afr.com/technology/envato-the-most-profitable-startup-you-havent-heard-of-20161025-gs9xm6

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According to The Asahi Shimbun, there is a booming domestic market for second-hand clothing in Japan as more young consumers embrace cast-offs from yesteryear.
Start Today Co., which operates the Zozotown clothes shopping website, started the website Zozoused in 2012 to buy up and sell used clothing.
Zozoused has proved popular mainly among women in their 30s. Sales on the website came to 900 million yen (US$8.7 million) for the business year ending March 2013, but the figure rose to 8 billion yen for the year ending March 2016.
When users send garments they no longer use in Start Today's bags, company officials decide their prices and the total sum is transferred to their bank accounts.
The dedicated bags are available for free and users do not need to pay shipping charges by themselves.
The purchased clothing is sold through Zozoused. About 600,000 items are constantly available on the website and as many as 10,000 items are added each day.
“We want to establish the practice of reusing old clothing as a well-accepted culture,” said a Start Today official.
In the meantime, Bookoff Corp. set up special counters for its old article buying service Hugall, which is managed by a Bookoff subsidiary, at Mitsukoshi and Takashimaya department stores in 2015.
The move is aimed at expanding the market by handling luxury brand bags and clothes as Bookoff rarely sells such pricey goods.
Three such buying counters have been installed to date. Bookoff officials monthly buy up 60,000 to 70,000 items through the counters or by visiting people who want to sell their cast-offs.
“Even customers who hesitate to drop by pawnshops or shops along streets can easily visit our counters housed in department stores,” said a public relations official, referring to the company’s plan to install more buying counters at department stores.
Pass the Baton recycled goods shops, established by Masamichi Toyama, who is known as the founder of the famous Soup Stock Tokyo soup restaurants, are working to attract fashion-minded customers with their “fashionable” interior.
There are three Pass the Baton outlets in Tokyo’s Omotesando district and the Gion district in Kyoto as well as elsewhere, and their shelves are lined with unique accessories and clothes to boast a boutique-like atmosphere.
More than 20,000 original and used items are available at those shops and proceeds from the sales of secondhand clothes are split 50-50 between store operators and those who originally owned them.
Meanwhile, an apparel company released a unique service that combines clothing rental and cast-off sales.
Major apparel firm Stripe International Inc., based in Okayama, began a new service, Mechakari, in autumn 2015 that allows users to lease as many new garments as they want through a smartphone app in exchange for a monthly fee of about 6,000 yen.
The rental clothes are not only leased to customers but finally sold as cast-offs.
“We want young consumers to try various fashion goods at cheaper prices so that they will purchase our products in the future,” said a Stripe International public relations official.
Stimulated primarily by younger customers, the market for second-hand articles has been gradually growing.
According to an estimate by the Environment Ministry, sales of preowned goods, including home appliances and books but excluding automobiles or motorcycles, rose from 1.027 trillion yen for 2012 to 1.058 trillion yen in 2015.
A survey conducted in 2015 showed only 23.7 percent of people aged 60 or older had bought at least one used article over the previous year, while 41.9 percent of people in their teens and 20s had purchased one or more second-hand items during the period.

Ref: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201610250003.html

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According to The Asahi Shimbun, Toyota Motor Corp. will start selling hydrogen-powered fuel-cell buses in early 2017, marking a first for Japan.
The fuel-cell bus is likely to be priced at about 100 million yen (US$962,000), which is about four to five times the cost of ordinary diesel engine-powered buses.
Toyota hopes more than 100 of the buses will be on the road--mainly in the Tokyo metropolitan area--by 2020, when Tokyo hosts the Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
Toyota's aim is to show off Japan’s eco-friendly vehicle technology at home and to the rest of the world.
Hino Motors Ltd., a Toyota subsidiary, will manufacture the vehicle using the same core parts that were used to build Toyota’s Mirai fuel-cell car that went on sale in 2014.
The 10 hydrogen tanks on the bus can be filled in about 10 minutes, allowing it to travel more than 200 kilometers.
Electricity is generated in fuel-cell vehicles through the chemical reaction between oxygen in the air and hydrogen.
The metropolitan government’s transportation bureau plans to initially run two fuel-cell buses. It will install large hydrogen fueling stations by the end of March.

Ref: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201610240038.html
 
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According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Panasonic and Tesla Motor are broadening their battery partnership to include the manufacture and marketing of powerful, low-cost storage batteries for homes.
The U.S. electric automaker recently revealed that in light of its plans to acquire SolarCity, it also plans to cooperate with Panasonic on making residential solar panels in New York state.
The move shows the two are laying the groundwork for offering sets of residential solar panels and storage batteries for homes, with an eye on the growing renewable energy market in the U.S.
Tesla and Panasonic will make the storage batteries at the Gigafactory, the US$5 billion plant being built in the U.S. state of Nevada to produce lithium-ion batteries for Tesla's cars. Panasonic's share of that investment could reach as high as US$1.6 billion.
The Gigafactory will begin serious production in November and reach full operation in 2020, when it will be able to make batteries with a total capacity of 35 gigawatt-hours each year -- enough to equip 500,000 cars.
Although the primary role of the Gigafactory is to make batteries for Tesla's Model 3 automobile, the two companies now also plan to use the facility to make residential storage batteries, starting sometime in or after 2017.
By doing so, they can boost the operating rate of the factory and recover their investment more quickly. The factory may also make commercial storage batteries.
Tesla entered the market for storage batteries in April 2015 and is already using a line at the unfinished Gigafactory to ship the products in small volumes. Its standard residential storage battery, which can hold 7 kilowatt-hours of electricity, costs US$3,000 excluding installation -- half that of rival products.
By teaming with Panasonic and leveraging the Japanese company's technologies, the goal is to develop products with greater storage capacity that can be manufactured more efficiently, to lower prices even further.
Tesla and Panasonic will cooperate to market these batteries in North America and may expand sales to other regions.

Ref: http://asia.nikkei.com/Tech-Science/Tech/Panasonic-Tesla-broaden-partnership-to-residential-storage-batteries
 
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According to The Australian Financial Review, a Queensland family business is set to become a critical player in helping India meet its ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions.
Toowoomba's rich-list Wagner family will form a joint venture company with India's JSW Group, a conglomerate turning over $11 billion and supplying 13 per cent of India's steel, to produce a material that replaces cement in the production of concrete and is poised to disrupt India's $36 billion-a-year cement market.
Most concrete worldwide is made with Portland cement, whose production involves the burning of limestone at 1450 degrees celsius and emits enough carbon dioxide for the humble material to account for 5 per cent of global emissions.
Before December's United Nations climate deal, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy by 35 per cent by 2030, yet forecast consumption of high-emission coal would double over the same period as it tried to put 300 million citizens living without electricity on to the grid.
The incentive for India to use "earth friendly concrete" was strong in light of this contradiction, said Joe Wagner, who runs Wagners' concrete division. A system of carbon credits operates in India, which has also introduced specific policies for reducing use of traditional cement. 
The formula of Wagners' cement-replacement is secret but its foundation ingredient is slag, a byproduct of steelmaking and therefore available to JSW at little cost. The other foundation ingredient is fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal, however Mr Wagner said its lack of limestone clinker still meant that concrete made with the Wagners material emitted 80-90 per cent less greenhouse gas.
Wagners already uses the cement-replacement in the 50,000 cubic metres of concrete required for the runways at its Wellcamp Airport near Toowoomba, which it completed in 2014.
Despite the commercial traction it was gaining, Mr Wagner said the family had not patented the recipe for its cement-replacement.
It took eight years of trial-and-error to get its "earth friendly concrete" exceeding the performance of "normal" concrete, and Mr Wagner said the identity of the chemical activators required for it to do so are best protected internally.
"Not any one person knows absolutely everything," he said. "Some ingredients are made specifically for this product so people would struggle to break the chemistry around it anyway."

Ref:http://www.afr.com/business/construction/wagners-concretewithoutcement-inks-deal-with-indian-giant-jsw-20161023-gs8kbp

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According to The Asahi Shimbun, a car that takes to the air to light the Olympic cauldron might sound like a fantasy, but young engineers are working here to make it a reality at the 2020 Tokyo Games.
The automotive and aviation engineers are aiming to run their vehicle on the track of the new National Stadium and fly it to the Olympic cauldron to light the flame at the opening ceremony.
To develop a car that can be both driven and flown, a group of 20 engineers ranging in age from 26 to 35, which calls itself Cart!vator, is conducting experiments at a disused school deep in the mountains.
The group was established in 2012 by Tsubasa Nakamura, 32, an automobile expert, to “provide a dream for the next generation.”
Its goal is to improve the vehicle so that it can travel freely to avoid traffic jams or airlift injured people during times of natural disaster even when roads cannot be used.
“If technological innovation is achieved in the battery performance and other fields, the vehicle could be commercialized in the future,” said Masafumi Miwa, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Tokushima University's graduate school, who is working with the group.
Under the current plan, the flying car will measure 2.9 meters long and 1.3 meters wide. It will be based on a single-seater electric tricycle, with two propellers--one at the lower part and the other at the upper section--at each of the four corners.
The vehicle can take off and land vertically. It will be operated with the steering wheel and accelerator pedal either in the air or on the road.
The Cart!vator group is looking to upgrade the vehicle so that it will ultimately be able to fly 50 kilometers at an altitude of 150 meters.
Members exchange information through video calling on weekdays and engage in development together at the former school premises on weekends.
They created a smaller prototype of the flying car in 2014. Last year, the group purchased a full-scale prototype made by a joint researcher, using 2.6 million yen (US$25,300) raised online.
Nakamura and his colleagues are now working to improve the body of the prototype and the computer program to control the rotation rate of the propellers.
“The larger the body becomes, the more difficult it becomes to elevate it in the air in a stable manner,” said Nakamura.
So far, the current model can fly at an altitude of only 1 meter for up to just five seconds.
The group said it plans to reduce the vehicle’s weight from the current 180 kilograms to about 100 kg by replacing the aluminum frame with one made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic.
The biggest challenge is how to raise the necessary funds. The group estimates an additional 30 million yen is needed for a manned flight and is calling on companies and investors to provide funding and parts.

Ref: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201610200008.html

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According to The Australian Financial Review, BHP Billiton has adopted one of the most ambitious gender targets of any large company by pledging to make half its workforce women in just nine years, with chief executive Andrew Mackenzie saying diversity will improve performance at the resources giant. 
At BHP's annual meeting in London on Thursday Mr Mackenzie will announce an "aspirational goal" for gender balance by 2025 at the Melbourne-based mining and energy group where women currently make up 17 per cent of the global workforce. 
Although Mr Mackenzie acknowledged in a note to staff that the "challenging" target is not binding and requires "significant change", he described the plans as a "huge leap" for the 130-year-old company. 
BHP's target covers its entire workforce including the board with senior managers now given a specific performance goal of lifting female representation by 3 per cent each year. It is not just an ambitious goal for a large company operating in the male-dominated resources industry but represents a lofty ambition for any global corporation.   
The Male Champions of Change group comprising of 30 senior executives including ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott, Qantas boss Alan Joyce, CBA boss Ian Narev and Telstra chief Andy Penn have committed to a "significant and sustainable increase in the representation of women in leadership".
The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors has adopted a target for women to comprise 30 per cent of all ASX200 boards by the end of 2017.
The Australian government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency found that in 2014-15 only 16 per cent of employees in the mining industry were women. 

Ref:http://www.afr.com/business/mining/bhp-billiton-wants-half-its-workforce-to-be-women-by-2015-20161019-gs6a3n
 
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According to The Australian Financial Review, the sustained economic growth in south-east Asia is becoming a new focus for companies involved in Australia's oldest business relationship in Asia with Japan.
Potential co-operation between Japanese and Australian companies in south-east Asia was a key theme of the annual conference of the Australia Japan Business Co-operation Committee (AJBCC) this month as the participants sought new opportunities beyond resources.
The discussion about the ASEAN region has also been fuelled by the example of two of the largest investments by Japanese companies in Australia outside the traditional resources sector: Kirin's purchase of various food assets within its subsidiary Lion Company and Japan Post's purchase of Toll Group.
AJBCC chairman Rod Eddington said the conference had underlined the new business opportunities in the region between the two countries on Australia's doorstep.
 "It's clear if we are going to meet the challenges and create opportunities we need to find new ways to work together," he said.
South-east Asia has been on the agenda of the AJBCC for some time since Australian and Japanese companies mounted a joint trade mission to Indonesia looking at possible areas where they could mount joint bids.
There have been few concrete examples of the idea so far despite the suggestion that businesses from the two countries each have specific skills and contacts which could be pooled. Kirin's plans to combine its Asian marketing links with its Australian food products has seen it step up its focus on selling dairy products in the past year.
Mitsubishi group spin-off Kaiteki Fresh Australia generated some excitement with its rapid development of a fresh vegetable export business out of Melbourne into Singapore and Hong Kong so far.
The company is using Japanese hydroponic technology with some assistance from the Victorian government on water management with the intention of creating an all year round production cycle using the alternate northern and southern seasons.
"Japan is trying to emulate Australia in making an export business of farming products. We can collaborate together to do more," says Kaiteki Fresh director Shoji Yamaguchi.
ANZ Bank Japan chief executive Grant Knuckey said the growing focus on offshore investment by large Japanese companies due to slow growth at home was creating immediate opportunities for joint ventures. But he said Australian businesses need a better presence in Japan to understand the strategies of these Japanese companies.
A senior executive of Mitsui, Masayuki Kinoshita, said his company's new focus on building food businesses in Australia in sectors such as wheat, beef and salt was driven by a strategy of exporting to ASEAN countries and other parts of Asia.
"We want to expand investment in food and to expand Australian exports to Asia," he said.
Toll's global logistics chief Chris Pearce, who is based in Singapore, says that under its new Japanese parent the company is seeking new business opportunities across the region with Japanese companies which already have operations.
And Bluescope Steel's decision to sell half its south-east Asian business to Nippon Steel Sumitomo Metals Corporation has also opened doors to new opportunities.
NS Bluescope vice-president Simon Linge says the company is now producing two varieties of a specialist Nippon Steel product used in home appliance manufacturing at its Thai factory.
He says: "It (the joint venture) helps us get access to the Japanese customers which manufacture home appliances and also in the building and construction market."

Ref:http://www.afr.com/news/special-reports/asia-business-outlook/australia-and-japan-jointly-targeting-asean-20161017-gs3uza
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese engineering company will start verification tests on a partially automated fish cultivation system off the coast of Japan in December.
Under the plan, Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineering Co. will install large pipes at a coho salmon farming facility run by Yumigahama Suisan Kaisha Ltd., based in Tottori Prefecture (in Japan), so that the fish can be fed by remote control from land.
After examining the conditions of cultivated salmon for six months, Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineering will market the system to fisheries companies and trading firms in fiscal 2017 at the earliest.
Most conventional fish farming facilities have been set up in coastal regions that are sheltered somewhat from strong winds and high waves. There are now few places where fish can be raised, and the small culturing companies face a shortage of workers.
Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineering says its offshore engineering techniques can build large cultivation facilities 3 to 5 kilometers off the coastline. It believes the introduction of larger facilities and automating feeding based on its communications technology will help address the worker shortage in the industry.

Ref: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201610170002.html
 
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