KIRAMIGA helps new families to feel perfectly welcome in Germany
Please introduce yourself and your startup KIRAMIGA to our readers!
Relocating to the area of Stuttgart and starting life in a new culture can be stressful, time consuming and very emotional – especially if children are involved.
We want to help Expats and their families to settle into the German daily life in a practical and emotional supportive way by giving advice, information and reaching out to them.
Just to give you some examples – can you relate?
Families coming to Stuttgart have to adapt to a new culture – starting with basic things like shopping, unknown products and detergents, waste separation, the famous Swabian ‘Kehrwoche’, usage of household appliances up to management of kindergarten and school affairs, pregnancy and the medical system.
And this is just a small part of what our service is all about. Our aim is to support in a practical but also emotional way to help new families to feel ‘perfectly welcome’.
This can be the crucial for a successful relocation – more so for a quick familiarization with the new job in order to use the full potential of international specialist right from the beginning.
To see us life an in action you can click on the following link.
This is a 3 Minute pitch of the Female Founders Cup of Baden-Württemberg, albeit in German. We are very proud we came in second.
How did you get the idea of KIRAMIGA?
Since several years, I am teaching Yoga / Pilates classes in English & Japanese. I was surprised as to how many questions my students encountered in daily life even having lived here for years. They had nobody to turn to.
I was able to relate as I am coming from an Asian background myself and my mom had the same issues. Further living abroad in England and Japan plus travelling the world, has made me very conscious for the challenges of daily life.
This gave me the inspiration to start up my company KIRAMIGA.
Why did you decide to start with KIRAMIGA?
While I could not find any kind of service that would help my students to master daily challenges, I started to help them myself. Finally I decided to found my own company KIRAMIGA.
On the one hand, we want to support the companies to use the knowledge of the Expat right from the beginning and on the other hand, we want to help the Expats and their families. The emotional and practical support is of utmost importance to us.
What is the vision behind Kiramiga?
Our vision is to change the welcome culture of Stuttgart / Germany so that every employee and their family feels perfectly welcome.
Last but not least we also want to support the economy in the ‘Schwabenländle’ by helping the companies to recruit international specialists. Offering them our service might help the potential candidate to make the decision in the favor of Stuttgart.
How difficult was the start and which challenges you had to overcome?
The most difficult challenge was the structure and to put the idea into words.
Luckily, I had great support from the RKW BW and my start-up consultant Bettina Sauter.
Our next challenge is to convince the personal departments of companies about the importance of our service. We also need to generate publicity in order to reach everybody our service could be of useful for.
Who is your target audience?
Our focus is on international specialists and their families as individual customers and also companies of any size.
Companies invest a lot of money in relocating employees (e.g. the move, apartment, flights, school fees). It is only consequent to invest a little more money into our service to make the Expats feel “perfectly welcome”. Casually speaking “happy partner – happy life” to ensure a successful relocation in private and business terms.
What is the USP of your startup?
There is no other service provider with a similar concept and service.
We want to complement the offer of the classical relocation agencies. They usually take care of the apartment, the language course and the paperwork.
We offer practical & active counseling regarding the daily life in Germany.
And we are there for the Expats and their families at any time during their stay.
We offer hands-on modules for groups or individuals, covering a variety of subjects (quick & easy, grocery shopping, drugstore, pharmacy, household matters, public transport, travel, medical & emergency, pregnancy & babies, German lifestyle, kids in Germany)
Moreover our portfolio includes custom made modules and private sessions for more individual support, questions and issues (emotional support, doctors’ appointments, pregnancy, school and kindergarten meetings etc.)
Our webpage is loaded with tips and tricks for surviving in and around Stuttgart with links, recommendations.
Can you describe your typical workday?
Apart from answering emails and requests, we prepare our modules & workshops and search for interesting topics to incorporate into our blog.
We coordinate our team and make sure to allocate tasks according to ones strengths & language skills.
Finally social networking (Facebook, Instagram) and face-to-face meetings to built up our network are a large part of our daily work.
Where do you see yourself and your startup KIRAMIGA in five years?
At the moment we concentrate on Stuttgart and the greater area.
In 5 years it would be great to have Franchise partners in several German cities as we see the need for such a service – not only in Germany but worldwide. If you want to start up in another city, please let us know.
What 3 tips would you give other Start-up founders on the way?
Have courage and stay true to yourself. You need to believe in your idea and be patient. It needs a lot of time to start up something new.
Stay open minded for new impulses as they might help to develop during to the process.
Photo credit Start-up BW / Photo edit www.atelierdittmar.com
More information you will find here
Thank you Kira for the Interview
Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.
