Start-ups launched by immigrants
More and more company founders have foreign roots.
A pile of books under her right foot, a bedpan in one hand and a pill dispenser in the other: in this pose Zeynep Babadagi-Hardt graced billboards all over the Duisburg region. The city used this poster to encourage more people to have the courage to start a business of their own. After all, this young woman had some striking achievements to her name. She had launched a nursing service with up to 25 employees looking after more than 185 people in need of care. At the same time the Turkish-born businesswoman had gone to university and founded a further-training academy for nurses. Careers like that of Zeynep Babadagi-Hardt – who had moved with her family to the Federal Republic from Turkey at the age of seven – are not uncommon in Germany, according to a study conducted on behalf of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and published in 2014: 750,000 self-employed people in Germany have foreign roots. Most of these people come from Poland or Turkey. Many of them are not only creatively invigorating the German start-up scene, they are also an important economic factor – they have created 2.2 million jobs in Germany.
Sophisticated business ideas
The days when these businesses were limited to snack bars and grocery stores are long past. The founders are better educated these days – and their ideas are correspondingly innovative. Take Roman Engel, for example – whose family moved to Germany in 1996 as ethnic German repatriates from Kazakhstan – has built up an app-development company called Daubit together with his Chinese flatmate. Or the Frenchman Noé Furon, who offers experimentation courses for children aged between four and twelve in his Science Lab and in this way passes on his enthusiasm for science to children. The company Selec'tifs, established by Aida N'Diaye from Mali, buys fairly traded real hair in China, India and South America for direct marketing in Europe. The European sales partners are African-born women who sell both hair products and specialist skin-care products. Furon and N'Diaye are supported by ChancenNutzer, a project that accompanies young people with immigrant backgrounds on their road to becoming self-employed. In addition to this form of support there are also other offers for young entrepreneurs in Germany in which the person's nationality is irrelevant – for example the state EXIST programme or the High-Tech Start-Up Fund.
Startup Week Germany from 17 to 23 November 2014
