Munich Startup: Last time we spoke, you said you were planning 39 locations for Sira childcare by the end of 2020. Did you reach that goal?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: We last spoke in 2019. Back then, neither we nor the rest of the world knew what major challenges the Corona pandemic would bring. Corona and the current shortage of skilled workers, which is becoming increasingly acute, have slowed us down in reaching our goals. We grew more slowly than originally planned. Our goal back then was 39 locations by the end of 2020, but now we’ll have a total of 41 Sira locations by the end of this year.
Munich Startup: What challenges did you encounter along the way?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: One major challenge was clearly Covid-19. Instead of working on new projects and growth plans, we had to deal with temporary location closures, emergency care, and short-time work allowances overnight. The uncertainty was great – and that was especially noticeable among all stakeholders at the beginning. But we managed the crisis quite well. The biggest challenge in our industry remains the persistent shortage of skilled workers, which is particularly acute in Munich compared to perhaps some 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 became apparent that corporate childcare had fallen off the agenda for many medium-sized and larger employers. That was our core target group back then. Now a second core target group has established itself as direct cooperation partners: municipalities, cities, and communities. For example, we were commissioned by the city of Cologne by council resolution as the provider, linked to a model financing program, to implement a total of 17 locations in Cologne by 2026. We are now in negotiations about similar programs in other cities. But the corporate business has also picked up significantly since last year. Companies know how important it is to position themselves as family-friendly employers. Geographically, we are now also more broadly positioned – 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 things financially for you?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: In 2021, we completed a growth financing round with impact investor Bonventure to be able to grow faster again after the pandemic. Accordingly, we also increased personnel in administration last year and hired two business development managers and a project manager. Currently, we don’t have new capital needs; instead, we finance ourselves completely from ongoing revenues. Important for us: we don’t create locations where we ourselves would have to provide significant pre-financing. The investment costs for conversion and equipment are covered either by cooperation partners, landlords, or public investment programs for daycare expansion. We may grow somewhat more slowly, but more financially sustainably and risk-consciously.
Overcoming micromanagement and perfectionism
Munich Startup: What learnings have you been able to take with you in the founding team so far?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: You definitely become aware of your own strengths and weaknesses and can distribute tasks accordingly within the founding team. And we’ve grown to currently 130 employees. Once a company reaches a certain size, it was a challenge for us as founders to not be able to determine everything ourselves, but to delegate tasks and distribute them across multiple shoulders. Micromanagement and excessive perfectionism eventually don’t work when you want to grow. What we’ve also learned: it’s tedious and a lot of work. But if you stick with it after the “proof of concept,” do a good job, and don’t give up at the first setback, it eventually gets easier!
Munich Startup: Christina, you see yourself as a social entrepreneur. What exactly can we imagine by that?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: When we started in 2012, hardly anyone knew the term social startup. Unlike technology-based startups, we had to keep explaining what actually makes us a company. That’s different now – founders are encouraged through various support programs to move in a social and ecological direction. This strengthens existing social enterprises and inspires other companies to strengthen their social and ecological impact. I interpret this to mean that with our business model we are economically successful, but at the same time we want to achieve social added value. In our case, these are newly created childcare places that provide more equal opportunities, educational equality, better career opportunities for women, and better compatibility of work and family life for working parents.
High demand at Munich headquarters
Munich Startup: What role did the Munich ecosystem play in your journey so far?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: Of course, as “rookies” at the beginning, we benefited greatly from the support opportunities and contact with other startups. We participated in support programs at the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship (SCE) of the Hochschule München and at Social Entrepreneurship Akademie, where we also took advantage of training courses for founders. With our business model, we of course benefit greatly from Munich’s economic dynamism and diverse business landscape. Many of our corporate customers here in Munich are successful scaleups that emerged and grew significantly over the past ten years. Of course, established and long-successful companies are also among our customers. An example: In June this year, we opened the mini daycare “Bremsklötzchen” at Oberwiesenfeld for the company Knorr-Bremse. Right next to it, we have had our mini daycare “Westwing-Wichtel” since 2020, which we operate in cooperation with the company Westwing.
Munich Startup: What milestones are you working towards next?
Christina Ramgraber, Sira: We want to reach the 60-location and 600-childcare-places mark in the coming year. Since mid-2022, we have also been driving the digitalization of internal processes through the use of customized software products in daycare administration, financial accounting, and controlling to be able to handle this growth on the process side. We want to have completed this by the end of this year.
