- The following is content from the press release -
(headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Hirotaka Ohtake, CEO; hereinafter referred to as "the Company") expects the number of paid installations of its "KatagrMa" service to exceed 500 facilities three years and eight months after its official launch, including contracts scheduled to begin in February 2026. With this steady expansion, we are entering a new growth phase for our business.
Our vision is "to make the work of supporting children's development a source of pride for society, rather than a source of longing for children. With this vision, we started our business in 2021 as a vertical SaaS company that provides solutions to issues related to facility management, organization, and human resources in the childcare, education, and rehabilitation industries.
On June 25, 2021, we launched the beta version of "KatagrMa" (https://katagrma.jp/), and in November 2021, we began full-scale marketing and sales of the product. In February 2026, three years and eight months after the official launch of "Human Resource Development" and two years and eight months after the official launch of "Personnel Evaluation," the number of paid installations will exceed 500 facilities.
Background of the Childcare and Rehabilitation Industry
Over the past decade, the need for childcare and rehabilitation services has increased rapidly against the backdrop of factors such as the rising employment rate of women, and the number of facilities has expanded accordingly. On the other hand, as a result
- Chronic shortage of human resources
- Variation in service quality
- Serious industry issues such as child accidents and abuse by caregivers
The number of children born in Japan has been declining. Furthermore, the balance of supply and demand has reversed in some areas due to the decline in the number of births, making "creating facilities of choice" and "staff retention and development" the most important management themes.
Childcare and rehabilitation facilities have a labor-intensive industrial structure, with labor cost ratio exceeding 70% of sales in many cases. However, there are a number of issues at the frontline, such as "managers' impersonal and analog management" and "lack of evaluation and training systems," and the black box nature of the organization makes it difficult to reform management in order to improve service quality.
KatagrMa Human Resource Development
Each staff member's
- Personal Interview History
- Staff self-evaluation
- Personal Goals and Action Plans
- Training History and Career Development Training History
etc., are centrally managed in the cloud and automatically interoperate with each other,
- Reduction of management workload for administrators
- Support for staff turnover prevention and retention
- Information sharing and management visualization between headquarters and each park
It is a vertical SaaS that realizes
KatagrMa Personnel Assessment
Specializing in personnel evaluation operations, we provide comprehensive support for the entire process from evaluation preparation and interviews to assessment and compensation determination.
- Job evaluation / ability evaluation / goal evaluation / 360-degree evaluation (evaluation of colleagues), etc. can be freely combined.
- Complete a series of processes from evaluation implementation, tabulation, and assessment on the system.
- Supports ID and data linkage with KatagrMa Human Resource Development
This will support the creation of a fair and highly convincing evaluation system, moving away from paper- and Excel-centered evaluation operations.
Background of the expected 500 facilities: Main evaluation points from the field
We receive a great deal of feedback on a daily basis from the facilities where we have introduced the system. The following is a sampling of some of the most representative feedback that has helped us reach the 500 facility milestone.
Personal interviews and 1-on-1s became a weapon for "prevention of turnover" and "training.
I often ended up hearing only complaints in the once or twice a year interviews," he said,
Using KatagrMa's preliminary sheets has allowed us to have a constructive dialogue based on the goals and strengths of the staff. As a result of our continued monthly 1-on-1s, we have had no resignations in the past year, except for unavoidable reasons such as moving."
The personal interview form allows me to write down things that I have had a hard time saying in my mouth,
We were able to recognize the signs of a staff member who was 'on the fence' about quitting at an early stage.
In some cases, we were able to follow up before it was too late, and in other cases, we were able to prevent severance."
Improved operational efficiency through "paperless & centralized management" of meetings, training, evaluations, and business plans
We used to file minutes of staff meetings and training reports on paper, and we had to search for documents and prepare them before the audit, but now we just show them the Kataguruma screen and they are ready for the audit, which greatly reduces our preparation time."
"Now that we can share the agenda in advance of staff meetings on KatagrMa and enter the minutes directly during the meeting, a meeting that used to take an hour can now be over in 30 minutes. That allows us to spend more time on topics that really need to be discussed."
We used to manually tabulate parent surveys every year, but since moving to KatagrMa, we can now complete the entire process of distribution, collection, tabulation, and report output with a single click, and we've received more candid feedback from parents."
Management has changed through "visualization" of headquarters ⇔ director ⇔ staff.
The staff information, interviews, self-evaluations, and training histories have been consolidated in Kataguruma, so there is virtually no time spent searching for "Where did I find this staff member's information? "The time spent searching for information on staff members, interviews, self-evaluations, and training has been reduced to almost zero. It has also made it easier for the headquarters to see the status of each kindergarten and potential leaders for the next term."
In the past, the director tended to be the only one who had to deal with staff problems, but now that the head office can see the output of individual interviews and self-evaluations, the head office can call on the director more quickly, which helps to prevent turnover."
Staff Engagement and Organizational Culture Change
Through self-evaluations and personal goals, we have more opportunities to confront our own challenges and growth, and I feel that conversations among staff members, which used to be filled with complaints and grievances, have turned into constructive dialogues about 'how to solve the problem.'"
Since we started using the personal goal function, some of the part-time employees have expressed a desire to improve their careers, and this has given us the opportunity to offer them new positions and training opportunities. I feel that this is a tool that allows us to work together to create reasons for employees to continue working at this preschool.
Future Outlook
In addition to further expanding the number of users of "KatagrMa Human Resource Development" and "KatagrMa Personnel Evaluation," which are currently being developed, we will accelerate product and solution development to solve problems in untapped areas of the HR value chain, such as recruitment, human resource management, turnover prevention and retention, health management, staffing and workforce planning, and work engagement in the target industries. We will accelerate the development of products and solutions to resolve issues in untapped areas of the HR value chain, such as recruitment, HR, turnover prevention and retention, health management, staffing and workforce planning, and work engagement.
As part of this effort, we plan to release a new product (beta version) on December 15 to support "staffing studies" at childcare, education, and rehabilitation facilities.
This product takes into account complex variables such as staff intentions, qualification requirements, and the number of children, and allows for "optimal, not ad hoc, placement considerations" even in the event of mid-year resignations, maternity leaves, etc.
*Further details will be provided in a dedicated press release to be distributed on December 15.
In addition to existing nursery schools, certified kindergartens, kindergartens, childcare centers, after-school day care services, and child development support facilities, we will expand our business into the child welfare field, including child care facilities, infant homes, and maternal and child living support facilities; the welfare field, including group homes for persons with disabilities and support facilities for continuous employment; and the school field, including elementary, middle, and high schools,
By expanding our services to all of these areas related to the "upbringing of children, who bear the future", we aim to build a cross-industry "comprehensive HR platform". We will contribute to improving the quality of services and the environment for children by supporting the growth of workers and environmental innovation.
About Us
Company name: Kataguruma Corporation
Business: Saas planning, development and sales for childcare and education related industries
Location: 4F Tulum Kanda, 4-9 Kanda-Iwamotocho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
*Relocated from January 2025.
Representative: Hironobu Otake
Number of employees: 29 (including outsourced and part-time workers)
Capital: 35 million yen (including capital reserve)
URL: https://katagrma.jp/
