Immigrants face a huge number of challenges and difficulties. New immigrants often lack reliable information about essential services such as housing, health care, and banking, especially because they have no family or friends to turn to locally.
After experiencing fraud and exploitation, one immigrant founder decided to help other immigrants deal with such issues, leveraging AI trained on data specific to these needs. I've built a service. Imii is an AI assistant aimed at helping immigrants settle. Assimilate into your new home country.
The startup's co-founder and CEO Jane Fisher was born and raised in Japan in a family of Soviet immigrants. “My father was a well-known figure in Japanese studies, and by the time he moved to Japan he was a published author,” she told TechCrunch. “But he has been discriminated against and looked down upon by his colleagues for many years simply because he is an immigrant, so he was inherently unwanted,” she said.
It's no surprise that Fisher is passionate about this subject. “I started imii because I know firsthand the struggles of immigrants.I have had a variety of experiences with migrating to other countries. Despite the fact that the latter moved to England, I studied there and spoke English fluently, which was huge for my mental health and adjustment period. I did some damage. I was also cheated along the way,” she added.
Imii provides migrants with personalized advice and, if necessary, connects them with trusted local providers and businesses that speak the language. On the app, users sign up, answer a few questions, and receive personalized guidance. The chatbot will temporarily leverage ChatGPT 4o to provide advice on housing, banking, and healthcare until the startup closes funding. Users can also contact the Imii team directly for assistance if they are unable to assist with their queries.
“Trained on our content database, it provides user-friendly answers to specific questions. Our goal is to make imii sound like an empathetic human assistant, rather than a soulless database. That's what we want to do,” Fisher said. Her co-founder and chief operating officer, Alexandra Miltsin (also a British immigrant), previously worked at Zoopla and Yelp, where she led the development of multiple AI-powered products. Ta.
Imii founders Jane Fisher and Alexandra Miltzin
Fisher said that in addition to its potential social benefits, the app has the potential to reduce the costs of managing relocations, improve employee welfare and productivity, and reduce turnover rates, making it an attractive option for international They argue that this could also bring benefits to companies that employ talented people.
The startup also offers an enterprise version where you can list your services and specify your target audience. Employers can integrate Imii into their HR processes and provide international employees with access to the app to prepare for relocation.
“We have been approached by several service provider companies about partnership opportunities and are currently finalizing the partnership,” Fisher said.
There are already several startups and established companies in the immigration and migration technology space. Some of these focus on the actual immigration process, while others focus on 'on the spot' settlement.
Matutto (primarily B2C) focuses on providing direct-to-consumer transfer services and was born out of TechStars. Meanwhile, Benivo (B2B), which specializes in providing relocation solutions for businesses, has raised a total of $30 million.
Welcome Tech (B2C, not yet launched) claims to offer a digital platform designed to assist immigrants with various aspects of migration. The company raised $30 million in April 2022, bringing its total to $73 million, but it has not come out of stealth since 2022.
There are a few others, including Perchpeek (B2B), Settly (B2B), Relocity (B2B), and Localyze (B2B).
But Fisher says few of his competitors are thinking deeply about the immigrant experience. We value the immigrant experience more than creating new relocation technology software for businesses. That's why we started with a very lean B2C concept to make a perhaps simpler but truly impact-driven product available to everyone, and to be able to offer an upgraded version to our commercial beneficiaries. That's what I did. ”
“We don't think large businesses need new relocation services. We think the same goes for start-ups, small businesses, NGOs and organizations like the UK's NHS,” she added.
He also said the app will evolve from using OpenAI to offering more specific services. “It's not just information, it's also helpful if you need immigration credit or legal assistance.” That's not something you can just get through a GPT wrapper. ”
Currently, the startup offers the app on a freemium basis to individual users and as a paid service with relocation/settlement assistance to B2B customers. We also charge affiliate marketing fees to our marketplace service providers.
Imii seems very “on-trend”.
According to a United Nations report, approximately 281 million people worldwide are counted as international migrants, representing 3.6% of the world's population. Furthermore, the World Bank predicts that up to 216 million people could be displaced by climate change by 2050. UNHCR also estimates that the number of climate refugees will increase significantly in the coming years, with some projections suggesting that up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to climate-related events. It is suggested that there is.