Munich Startup: When we last spoke, you said that you were planning 39 locations with Sira Childcare by the end of 2020. Were you able to achieve this goal?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: Thelast time we spoke was in 2019. At that time, we and the whole world did not yet know what major challenges we would face with the Covid pandemic. Covid and also the current shortage of skilled workers, which is getting worse, have slowed us down a bit in our goals. We have grown more slowly than originally planned. At the time, our target was 39 sites by the end of 2020, but we will now be at a total of 41 Sira sites by the end of this year.
Munich Startup: What challenges did you face along the way?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: COVID19 was clearly a major challenge. Instead of new projects and growth plans, we had to deal with temporary site closures, emergency support, and short-time working from one day to the next. There was a great deal of uncertainty – and this was felt by all stakeholders, especially at the beginning. But we managed the crisis quite well. The biggest challenge in our industry continues to be the ongoing shortage of skilled workers, which is being felt much more acutely in Munich than perhaps in many other cities and regions.
Second target group for Sira childcare
Munich Startup: How has your business model evolved?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: In addition to the general pandemic restrictions in recent years, it was also noticeable that the topic of company childcare had fallen off the agenda somewhat for many medium-sized and larger employers. That was our core target group at the time. Now a second core target group has established itself as direct cooperation partners: Municipalities, cities and communities. For example, we have been commissioned by the city of Cologne by council resolution, combined with a model financing program, to realize a total of 17 sites in Cologne by 2026. We are now negotiating similar programs in other cities. But corporate business has also picked up significantly since last year. This is because companies know how important it is to position themselves as family-friendly employers. We now also have a broader geographical footprint – we are no longer “only” represented in Bavaria, but also in North Rhine-Westphalia with locations in Cologne and Aachen, and in Baden-Württemberg with locations in Stuttgart and Mannheim.
Munich Startup: And how are you doing financially?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: In 2021, we concluded a growth financing round with the impact investor Bonventure in order to be able to grow faster again after the pandemic. Accordingly, we also increased our administrative staff last year and hired two business development managers and a project manager. At present, we have no new capital requirements, but are financed entirely from current sales. What is important for us is that we do not make any locations where we ourselves have to provide a large amount of up-front financing. The investment costs for conversion and equipment are covered either by cooperation partners, landlords or public investment programs for daycare expansion. We may be growing somewhat more slowly, but in a more financially sustainable and risk-conscious manner.
Overcoming micro-management and perfectionism
Munich Startup: What lessons have you learned so far as a founding team?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: You definitely become aware of your own strengths and weaknesses and can distribute the tasks accordingly in the founding team. And we have grown to currently 130 employees. Once the company reached a certain size, it was a challenge for us as founders to no longer be able to decide everything ourselves, but to delegate tasks. Mirco management and excessive perfectionism no longer work at some point if you want to grow. What we have also learned: it is tedious and a lot of work. But if you stick with it after the “proof of concept”, do a good job and don’t throw everything away at the first headwind, it will eventually get easier!
Munich Startup: Christina, you see yourself as a social entrepreneur. What exactly do you mean by that?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: When we started in 2012, almost no one knew the term social startup. Unlike technological startups, we always had to explain what makes us a company in the first place. That’s different now – founders are encouraged to go in the social and environmental direction with various funding programs. This strengthens existing social enterprises and also inspires other companies to strengthen their social and environmental impact. I interpret this to mean that we are economically successful with our business model, but at the same time we want to achieve added social value. In our case, this is newly created childcare places that provide more equal opportunities, educational equity, better career opportunities for women and a better work-life balance for working parents.
Great demand at the company’s Munich location
Munich Startup: What role has the Munich ecosystem played in your journey so far?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: At the beginning, as “rookies”, we naturally benefited greatly from the support opportunities and contact with other startups. We were in support programs at the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship (SCE) at Munich University of Applied Sciences and at the Social Entrepreneurship Academy, where we also took advantage of training opportunities for founders, for example. With our business model, we naturally also benefit greatly from the economic dynamism and diverse corporate landscape of Munich. Many of our corporate clients here in Munich are successful scaleups that have emerged and grown strongly in the last ten years. But of course, our clients also include established companies that have been successful for a long time. One example: In June of this year, we opened the “Bremsklötzchen” mini-daycare center on Oberwiesenfeld, for the Knorr-Bremse company. Right next door, our “Westwing-Wichtel” mini-daycare center, which we operate in cooperation with the company Westwing, has been open since 2020.
Munich Startup: What milestones are you working towards next?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: We want to break the mark of 60 locations and 600 childcare places in the coming year. Since mid-2022, we have also been pushing ahead with the digitization of internal processes using customized software products in daycare management, financial accounting and controlling in order to be able to handle this growth. We want to have completed this by the end of this year.