KITnDO

Our Mission

The mission of KITnDO is to empower people with foreign roots by giving them access to authentic cultural experiences & products, anytime they need a taste of home or want to discover the culture of their ancestors.

What is the problem?

Whether you or your family arrived 100 days or 100 years ago to a new country, maintaining connection with your roots is meaningful. Maybe you want to prepare recipes from your home country and therefore you are looking for some unique ingredients. Or you want to maintain your mother tongue fluency for your kids and you are looking for a language teacher, bookstore or cultural center. As a person, locally born to a family that moved from abroad, maybe you are already keeping some foreign traditions but you're interested in discovering more about your roots. 

Many businesses (restaurants, stores, etc.), cultural associations and service providers have culturally oriented offerings but there is no defined place for them to reach their audience efficiently.

KITnDO is proposing to all these stakeholders to save their time and money,  by connecting them on a dedicated platform.

What is the market size?

• According the UN, 232 million people reside outside their country of origin, which is equivalent to the third largest economy in the World.
• Every 4 seconds a new expat is moving abroad.
• People are increasingly looking to discover their heritage: the global DNA testing market is anticipated to reach 10 billion USD by 2022 and cultural heritage tourism was listed as one of the fastest growing specialty markets in this industry.
• With an increase of international travel, immigration and globalized trade worldwide, the interest and attention of ethnic/cultural products and services has risen. The Global Ethnic Foods Market was valued at 36,5 billion USD in 2018, and it is projected to register an annual growth of 11.80% (2019-2024).

What is KITnDO about?

KITnDO is a web app, accessible directly in your browser.

To start, pick a country of origin and indicate your geolocation to display curated content corresponding to this criteria.

Our first feature "Places" offers an interactive map featuring restaurants, shops, cultural institutions, schools, service providers, and more.

Unlike Facebook groups, where the information is unorganized, clustered by one country of origin  and shared in native languages, KITnDO pulls everything into an easily digestible directory. Plus, you can simply change the country of origin anytime.

Because it is a community based platform, anyone can be a contributor by adding new places or sharing own pictures and reviews. You can also earn rewards for being an active member of the community.

KITnDO offers more visibility to professionals directly in front of their target audience. They can edit their business page and access basic data via the business owners' interface.

As a free tool, KITnDO will be able to sustain thanks to different streams of revenue that we will implement down in order as platform grows and develops. We have already launched an online store with products sourced from different countries, chosen to be authentic for specific cultures. They may be produced from traditional materials or follow traditional methods ; highlighting folk motives or other typical symbols of the country, like landmarks or personalities. 

Why crowdfunding?

I have taken KITnDO as far as I can with my own personal funds. In order to reach a stage where the platform will be self-sufficient, I am asking for your generosity and trust. Any donation that you decide to make will have an immediate impact.

Since the platform was launched, we focused on developing content related to Slovak, Czech and French culture. We are ready and we want to scale geographically and culturally. Funding will be used for:

Growing our community and content:

• Hire community ambassadors for different nationalities to facilitate online and offline gatherings to create the best experience for our users
• Grow our listings for current and new cultures
• Support businesses and not-for-profit organizations by publishing their stories about what they are offering to different cultural communities locally

Developing new features:

• Add new functionalities to help you get all the best of KITnDO in one place, and foster more connection and communication amongst our users
• Develop the business owners interface

Securing resources:

• Secure the sustainability of the platform by shifting our online store to the market place, allowing to integrate the inventories of many interesting businesses and service providers

What our community says?

About founder

I started this project as a solo-founder but I could not achieve this without the contributions of the different subcontractors and freelancers with which I had been working. So special thanks to Jakub, Michal, Ondrej and Yamuna, and to my mentors and advisors - Hyun, Kamel and Nilesh.

KITnDO was inspired by my personal experience and frustration of spending time looking for useful resources related to our family cultures. I was born in Slovakia and have lived abroad for over twenty years - in France and in the USA. I know the struggle of being separated from home, geographically and culturally, and especially when it comes to passing my heritage down to the next generation. 

My observations of different communities (Slovak, Czech and French) in the United-States, motivated me to bring this tool to life! Filling this gap and creating a culturally oriented tool, became my everyday motivation and my passion. I truly believe that "cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature"* (*Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, 2001).

Your participation and support are priceless and mean a lot to me! Thank you for taking the time to visit this page, to invest in my vision, or to give me encouraging support along the way.

I'd like to give a "shout out" to you in KITnDO's weekly social media update. Please, provide your social media handle when you're backing KITnDO through any of the rewards.

And if you would like to follow KITnDO's journey, you can connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and our blog.