Changing Family Communication Through Childcare × Technology

A series of interviews visiting innovative Japanese startups to explore their passion for their ventures and their vision for the future society. This time, Dentsu Inc. planner Mihoko Nishii visits Mr. Yasuyuki Toki, President and CEO of Unifa, a company founded to tackle challenges in the childcare industry, which gained significant social attention following the "Japan, you suck" blog post about failing to secure a nursery school spot.

Career change, relocation, entrepreneurship. All themes revolve around "family."

Nishii: Unifa develops services centered on "family × technology," such as "Rukumi," a communication platform connecting families, and "MEEBO," a multifunctional robot active in nurseries. I've had the opportunity to collaborate with President Toki and the Unifa team on various exciting projects. Could you share the original motivation behind founding the company?

Toki: The biggest turning point was moving from Tokyo to Nagoya. I used to work for a major trading company and consulting firm in Tokyo, but at some point, I decided to prioritize time with my family over work. However, after living that way for several years, I felt compelled by the thought that I couldn't just let my life end like this, and I began to develop plans for starting my own business.

Nishii: Why did you jump into the childcare business?

Toki: After spending weekends thinking it through and consulting friends, I realized that a business true to myself had to be about "family." While considering various family-related business plans, I noticed the lack of communication between myself and my child, as well as the challenges faced by the nursery school my child attended. It was also a time when specialized social networks were beginning to emerge, which ultimately led to the concept of a family-focused social network centered around children as its core content.

Underlying this was my conviction that photos and videos capturing children's daily lives at daycare represent unique, highly valuable content. "Rukumi" materialized this vision: a family media platform where previously inaccessible content automatically updates daily. For a company with no capital or track record, the only way to compete was through the "What" – the core offering – and I take pride in having consistently focused on that. Our mission is to enrich family communication using technology, involving the childcare support industry like nurseries and kindergartens. This is our fundamental mission, our core "What."

The company name (UniFa) comes from "Unify" + "Family". Toki, who also wears the hat of a father, believes that "For children, feeling they are watched over with love is the very beginning of everything – of believing in themselves and wanting to contribute to society in the future." This is why he is developing a media platform that turns children's daily lives into content.

Nishii: From an advertising industry perspective, companies with a well-defined What find it much easier to determine what message to convey to society and how to present it. I also feel that for startups, especially, a sense of ownership—whether the motivation for the business is personal—is crucial. Perhaps "Rukumi" resonates because your own convictions and the needs surrounding childcare are reflected in the service. Comparing it to competitors, what do you see as Rukumi's strengths, Mr. Toki?

Toki: Most companies often cited as competitors—those selling nursery photos online—primarily follow a pattern of e-commerce sales for photos taken by professional photographers at sports days or events. Our fundamental philosophy is different. "Rukumi" is a daily photo media platform where nursery teachers publish photos of the children they take every day.

Furthermore, we've developed the system to minimize on-site effort as much as possible. For example, instead of nursery staff taking photos with digital cameras and then uploading or printing the data after the children go home, photos taken with smartphones are automatically uploaded. From the perspective of who the system is being built for, it's a completely different service. In that sense, I believe we have no competitors.

Nishii: With the proliferation of smartphones, the mainstream of communication itself is shifting from text to photos and videos. Considering the trend toward "nonverbal communication," I believe services that use photos as communication tools represent a market with significant future growth potential. Successfully capturing this trend is key, especially since children's photos serve as family records and become family memories – that is the crucial point.

From a marketing perspective, I believe the need for family communication exists precisely because we live in an era of increasing nuclear families and dual-income households.

Solving childcare challenges through private sector initiatives

Nishii: Looking at my own situation, I don't have children yet, but as a working woman considering my future, I feel strong anxiety about the current childcare situation. Toki-san, how do you perceive the state of childcare today?

Toki: I believe it's an unusually severe situation: childcare workers are overwhelmingly insufficient, salaries are low, and the work is demanding both in terms of hours and physical strain. Yet, no one has been able to devise solutions. Similar problems exist in the nursing care industry, and resolving both will likely take considerable time. However, I believe one fundamental cause lies in economic factors, and we want to contribute towards solving this.

Nishii: Why is a private company choosing to enter the front lines of childcare, especially when the relatively larger volume of the elderly care problem, as seen in the population pyramid, is attracting more attention, alongside issues of working conditions and wages?

Toki: We're tackling two key areas where relying solely on tax funding proves insufficient. First, the disparity between severe staff shortages and overwhelming paperwork. This requires fundamentally changing how tasks are handled. To address this, we're developing a digital communication notebook service using smartphones.

Fundamentally, the core of a childcare worker's job isn't paperwork, but watching over children to ensure their safety and security, and observing what skills they've acquired. Furthermore, based on the realities of the field, paper communication books have been used—ones that could be filled out even while holding a child—and childcare workers have come to appreciate the warmth and value of handwritten notes.

However, while paper might be perfect for making necklaces with children, is there truly a necessity for handwritten communication books? As a parent myself, I often thought that conveying a child's day to family might be better done with three photos than ten lines of text. By minimizing paperwork to near zero through such innovations, we aim to increase the time childcare workers spend interacting with children, allowing them to fully embrace the core purpose of childcare.

Unifa's child-monitoring robot "MEEBO" features a friendly appearance with photo-taking capabilities, alongside functions like temperature checks and earthquake alerts. It has already been introduced in over 20 facilities nationwide, including kindergartens and nurseries.

Another goal is to turn this digitalized communication notebook into a platform where parents can view photos and videos of their children taken at the nursery. We aim to create a media platform accessible not only to parents but to the entire family, including grandparents. This includes monetization through paid content, advertising targeting the child-rearing generation, and sponsorships. Furthermore, we've identified an insight: parents who send their children to daycare are often dual-income earners with the financial means to enroll their children in extracurricular activities, but lack the time to accompany them. There is currently no business effectively bridging this gap. We envision solidly monetizing these opportunities and reinvesting the proceeds into childcare worker salaries. In the sense that there are things government cannot do, I believe the childcare world holds many business opportunities.

What constitutes innovation accepted by society?

Nishii: Personally, I've always had a strong sense of purpose regarding challenges in education. From the very first time I met Toki-san and we discussed these ideas, I felt a personal mission: "This is a life's work that will be a step toward changing society!"

Toki: When Nishii-san previously proposed how to chart Unifa's growth story, your use of the term "North Star" really stuck with me. Your vision for how our family media platform would chart that North Star and the steps to realize that ideal aligned very closely with my own thinking. It felt like a kind of intellectual affinity – as we built our vision together, I felt this was someone I could fight alongside.

Nishii: I also want to embody Unifa's purpose. Starting with developing the digital communication notebook, I hope we can build sustainable businesses together that go beyond just being "good" for society. I approach childcare issues with the conviction that if we don't change things here, they won't change in the future. While there are various challenges in education, I believe the childcare industry is most closely tied to the declining birthrate issue and is particularly in need of solutions.

Toki: For this project, I believe the approach we take to spark innovation that permeates society is crucial. To drive innovation, the timeframe and people's capacity to accept something entirely new are vital. We must design the service from multiple angles, considering these factors. Replacing the decades-old culture of paper communication books with digital alternatives won't spark innovation unless the new solution is five or ten times better than the current state.

This challenge is about transforming the childcare and parenting support industry itself, much like how IT and digital power have evolved industries like gaming, news media, and automobiles. We aim to provide innovative, high-value services to childcare providers (to B) while respecting social contexts and customs, and then engage with children and their families (to C).

Nishii: At Dentsu Inc., we will support Toki and his team by leveraging our expertise in UI design, drawing from our experience in various application development, and through marketing perspectives that motivate childcare workers and mothers from a female viewpoint. We look forward to keeping our eyes fixed on the "North Star" and enjoying the process of creating innovation together.