New to Germany? This app transforms civil servants’ German into understandable language
People with a migration background often find it even more difficult to decipher official German. The ABC Doc app wants to help
Quelle: Getty Images/Tetra images RF/JGI/Tom Grill
Received incomprehensible mail from the tax office? ABC Doc wants to untangle bureaucratic letters with an artificial intelligence and help with applications. Above all, immigrants and employers should benefit from the start-up’s app.
Dhe mail from the tax office or health insurance company can be difficult to decipher, even for native German speakers. Because bureaucratic and legal formulations are not necessarily catchy. People with a migration background and skilled workers from abroad often find it even more difficult to decipher official German.
Wladislav Pinskij knows the problem. He holds a degree in law, has dealt with migration law for years and most recently co-founded the sleep AI start-up Endel. This year he built ABC Doc.
This is an app that, according to its own information, should use artificial intelligence to help make bureaucratic applications understandable. “We want to be a platform that takes these stress factors away from people and takes over reading and answering letters,” says Pinskij. The respective document from the office is scanned by the app, which then briefly summarizes the content in English or Russian and explains what needs to be done.
Wladislav Pinskij is a law graduate and multiple founder: With ABC Doc he now wants to simplify the bureaucracy
Those: ABC Doc
The iOS and Android app, which was launched in September, already has 2,500 users, according to the founder. At the moment, the service is still free of charge and is mainly used by Russian-Germans, says Pinskij.
“We want citizens, employers and the state to understand each other and to speak a common language. It’s not about the German per se, but about the comprehensibility of the content. “
Legal advice planned with ABC Doc
The app is in the final test phase before the service will cost 2.99 euros per month. He and his team of 15 are currently working on other languages such as Turkish, Arabic and Polish. According to Pinsky, he and his co-founders Marina Guseva, Dmitry Tkachenok and Anton Swirski are currently holding talks with a state government.
The aim here is to provide the app with the usual official letters in a pilot project so that possible answers can be pre-formulated by the AI. So 1000 typical forms should be covered.
In the coming year, the creators of the app want to add the function that the AI also provides suggestions for the formulation of the applications. In addition, additional legal advice is to be offered. Quasi a mediation to lawyers in order to earn money here via a commission model.
The start-up recently received around 500,000 euros in its pre-seed from the Russian VC fund Impulse and a number of business angels. For the next development step, Pinskij is aiming for a further five million euros for a round in spring 2022.
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