The Company With Conscience

author:
Martin Damerow

published in:
Nürnberger Nachrichten

date:
17.04.2020

Hemmersbach is a global IT service provider. We ensure smooth IT in more than 190 countries. But that’s not the reason why we go to work every morning. It’s important to us to make a positive contribution to our society. That’s what makes Hemmersbach “The Social Purpose IT Company”. Find out what this means and how our work makes the world a better place in the following article, which was originally published in the German newspaper “Nürnberger Nachrichten” on 17th April 2020.

Nuremberg - It all began with a coincidence and a Commodore 64. In the early 90s, Ralph Koczwara was a student at Hans-Sachs-Gymnasium in Nuremberg. One afternoon, a small boy asked him if he knew how to repair his computer, the legendary C64. Koczwara did know, and when the boy came to pick up his PC, he was accompanied by his father.

This man, as it turned out, was the branch manager of the company Digital Equipment in Thon, "an old hand in the early IT industry," says Koczwara. And he was looking for employees. In a way, this was the moment Koczwara’s company was born, which today has 4,000 employees and is headed by him as CEO. "In the end," says the now 43-year-old, "luck plays a huge role. Blood, sweat, tears and hard work too, no doubt. But also luck."

Together with his best friend Dariusz Stanczyk, Koczwara started to do field work for big IT companies while he was still in school. First in Franconia, then throughout Bavaria, a little later in the whole of South Germany. During this time, he learned what made these companies tick, what they needed to operate smoothly and what made them successful. In 1996, he finished school and decided not to go to university. He and his friend, who he calls “my general partner”, already had too much success in the business world, which they did not want to risk. "In 2000, we bought the brand Hemmersbach from the Metro group. This allowed us to become an IT service provider in the whole of Germany. We then worked our way up, ticket by ticket and call by call".

Ralph Koczwara in one of the project areas in Zimbabwe.

"Is this the Meaning of Life?"

Progressing digitalization had given Hemmersbach a significant boost. Today, the company has branches in 40 countries and plans to increase this number to 50 in the near future. The secret of its success? “We make sure that users in international companies can work around the clock. This means we supply IT systems and maintain them. And if there are technical issues, we solve them in 24h, all around the world,” says Koczwara. As a result of this business model, Hemmersbach has an international staff and uses English as its business language. “In Nuremberg alone, there are people from 36 different nations working in our headquarters”.

That is one side of this hidden champion. One day however, Koczwara, who had been rushing from success to success for several years, sat at his desk and asked himself:

The answer came when he visited South Africa, where he met a ranger who told him about the “rhino wars”. Crime syndicates offer horrendous sums of money for rhino horn, which as a powder is regarded as a potency remedy in Asia. That is why heavily armed poachers roam the steppe and shoot rhinos – which are listed as endangered species and about to go extinct. The entrepreneur from Nuremberg knew that this was his moment. “Okay, tell me what you need, and we will deliver it,” he told the bewildered rangers. Some time later, Koczwara, who had refused military service, went to the biggest arms fair in the world, stocked up, and founded Rhino Force. Since 2016, it is considered the most distinguished anti-poaching unit in Africa.

“In the past, a handful of badly paid rangers patrolled the bush with analog radios and were in all aspects hopelessly inferior to the rhino hunters,” explains Koczwara. Today, it is poachers who must be on their guard: In 2019, Rhino Force announced 90 arrests in South Africa. In the meantime, the Hemmersbach rangers now also conduct operations in Zimbabwe. Apart from that, the company is also building a rhino sperm bank to support breeding programs.

Sometimes, Koczwara’s engagement was reduced to “German IT guru buys private army in Africa”. This is not even remotely true. Rhino Force was only the first link in a chain that Hemmersbach calls “Direct Action”. Today, Koczwara re-invests 20% of his company’s profits into aid projects.

A woman carries a container with drinking water in the Ramamurthy Nagar slum in Bangalore, India: Hemmersbach helps people there with its humanitarian project Kids’ Family and distributes clean water.

Focus on Poland's Orphanages

In Zimbabwe, for example, there is a social empowerment project for underprivileged women, the Marara Ladies (basically meaning “garbage women”). Koczwara and his team ensured that these women developed structures to improve their social standing: Today, they not only collect garbage, but also sort and sell it to recycling companies – thanks to the newly acquired know-how from Germany. After Rhino Force's success, Hemmersbach started its second project Kids' Family. Under this umbrella, the company is currently building a village for 500 orphans and street children in Bangalore, India, where it also has a branch. Apart from that, Hemmersbach helps the local slums by regularly supplying them with drinking water.

However, you don’t have to fly that far to see Kids’ Family in action: Koczwara’s ambitious plan is to take over all of Poland's orphanages, "where there are, to some extent, disastrous conditions, and this in a EU state.” So far, the company has taken 2,500 children there under its wing already.

Koczwara says that by doing projects like these, he has had more positive experiences in the last three years than in all his life. He does not accept donations for the projects, 100% of the required money is provided by the Hemmersbach family.

He does not really understand why other businesses do not follow this example: "Their employees only work for shareholders. Our colleagues know that what they do makes the world a little bit better."