Ankommo for Institutions · September 2026
Their First 90 Days in Germany, Off Your Desk
The business case for a personal arrival plan inside every admitted student’s Ankommo account, and one screen for the team behind them.
For universities, language schools and employers
Abdullah Tayyab, founder · hello@ankommo.de
Scroll, or use the arrow keys.
1 / 19
Executive summary
Three findings and one recommendation
1
The intake grew, the team did not. Germany hosts 420,000 international students, up 9% in one year, while international-office staffing was last measured at one person per roughly 2,000 students.
2
The state digitised the visa; nobody serves what comes after it. The blocked account, insurance, housing, Anmeldung and German readiness are answered today by PDFs and inbox replies, one student at a time.
3
The platform those answers belong on already runs. 17,787 accounts, a 109-chapter German course, 42 mock exams, 34 tools and guides, an AI companion, and paying customers with zero refunds.
Ask
Run one intake with Ankommo Welcome as a founding partner, at no cost. Each admitted student gets a personal arrival plan inside Ankommo; your team gets a live cohort view. Decide on renewal against your own numbers.
Sources on the last slide. Platform figures as of 29 September 2026.
2 / 19
The situation
Record intake, same team
420,000
international students in Germany in winter 2025/26, up 9% in one year. Every one of them arrives with the same first-semester paperwork. (DAAD)
79%
of universities name visa and entry procedures the top obstacle to hosting international students. Housing is second, at 71%. (DAAD Schnellabfrage)
28–42 wks
of waiting for a visa appointment reported at the busiest missions. A student in week 19 of that queue has nobody to write to but you. (THE)
The last published staffing figure for German international offices dates from 2015: one member of staff for roughly 2,000 international students. Nobody has printed a better number since.
DAAD press release, December 2025; DAAD Schnellabfrage 2025; Times Higher Education on German visa bottlenecks.
3 / 19
The complication
The gap sits between the admission letter and a settled student
On your side
- The same five questions, answered one inbox reply at a time
- No view of who is moving and who has gone quiet in an embassy queue
- The hardest step, the visa, is the one your office can least control
- Language schools: prepaid bookings waiting in blind pipelines, with refund clauses at the end of them
On the student's side
- A blocked account of €11,904 to open before the appointment, from abroad
- An insurance decision that decides the visa and the enrolment
- Anmeldung within 14 days of moving in (§ 17 BMG), with slots gone at semester start
- German that starts after arrival, when the landlord and the Bürgeramt need it on day one
The cost lands in staff hours and in students who arrive unprepared, late, or not at all.
Sperrkonto figure per the 2026 requirement; § 17 Bundesmeldegesetz.
4 / 19
What already exists
The platform the plan lives in
Built and live at ankommo.de
- A 109-chapter German course, A1 to B2, with recorded audio throughout
- 42 mock exam sets in 7 Goethe and telc formats, one full set free per format
- 3,830-word spaced-repetition vocabulary trainer
- 34 tools and guides: visa checker, blocked account, Anmeldung deadline, first-month budget, German CV
- Ank, an AI companion answering from Ankommo’s own guides, with sources
- Speaking practice and exam simulations with an AI tutor
17,787
accounts, 3,736 of them opened in the last 30 days
141,507
exercises submitted inside the course
950
mock exams sat, 400 in the last 30 days
19,186
subscribed email contacts
€625
monthly recurring revenue, 128 active subscriptions
348
paying customers, zero refunds on 496 charges
Ankommo production database and Stripe, 29 September 2026.
5 / 19
Ankommo Welcome
One code, a personal plan, a live dashboard
01
You forward one code
The code rides in the admission or booking email you already send. Students sign themselves up around it, so no personal data passes through your hands.
02
Students build their own plan
Two answers set the route: their passport, and whether they come for a degree or a language course. The plan knows whether there is an embassy queue, carries the current blocked account amount, and opens each step’s tool in place.
03
Your team sees the whole picture
One screen shows who to write to today, the one email to send, and where the whole intake stands. The answer you keep retyping becomes one message to exactly the students who need it.
Nothing is installed, IT is never involved, and setup is one conversation.
6 / 19
The student side
A personal plan, inside the product they use all year
- 25 steps across five stages: confirm, visa, get ready, first two weeks, German
- Routes for EU, visa-free and embassy passports; degree and language-course variants
- Blocked account, insurance, visa route, budget, Anmeldung deadline and translations open inside their steps
- Your institution’s name on the plan; you see steps open or done, never the answers
- The course, mock exams, vocabulary and Ank sit one click away in the same sidebar
Live demo: app.ankommo.de/welcome/demo (a throwaway student account, resets daily).
7 / 19
Your side
Who to write to today, and what to write
- Write to these students: quiet for 14 days with steps open, or joined and never started, stalest first
- Write it once: the step most of the intake stands at, with a copy-ready email built from the plan’s own text
- Where the intake stands: one bar, the stages as segments
- Arrival steps only. Never grades, never anything else a student does on Ankommo
- A private link your team holds; rotated the moment you ask
Demo dashboard: app.ankommo.de/institutions/dashboard/demo (invented students, labelled as such).
8 / 19
Value · universities and international offices
Fewer emails per admit, and a number to show your Präsidium
Your situation
- Roughly 200 institutions host 80% of internationals; the load concentrates
- Visa and entry are the top obstacle for 79% of universities
- About 40% of international offices run on project financing
What Welcome changes
- The recurring five questions are answered once, inside the plan, with the tool attached
- Your team writes to the students who are stuck, not to the whole list
- Students arrive with German started and the Anmeldung already dated
What you measure after one intake
- Share of admits who open their plan
- Share who reach “arrived” before semester start
- Arrival questions to the office, before and after
- German level at arrival
Founding partners pay nothing for the first intake, so the review is against your own numbers, not ours.
DAAD Schnellabfrage 2025; DAAD Wissenschaft weltoffen.
9 / 19
Value · language schools
Fewer refunds, and students who arrive at level
Your situation
- Intensive-course visas (§ 16f) mean prepaid bookings sitting in embassy queues of 8 to 42 weeks
- Refund-on-rejection terms put the queue’s risk on your books
- Agents take 15 to 25% of the booking; nobody serves the student between deposit and arrival
What Welcome changes
- The plan checks the booking is visa-ready and walks the file to the appointment
- German starts in the queue: course, vocabulary, speaking practice, mock exams
- A check-in step and an honest level test, so placement on day one is right
What you measure
- Bookings lost in the visa wait, per intake
- Students who kept studying before arrival
- Placement moves in week one
- Questions to your office per booking
Schools already buy digital content: Deutschfuchs sells at €399 to €699 a year into roughly 2,000 of them. Welcome sells the months before the course.
§ 16f AufenthG; market interviews and public AGB, August 2026.
10 / 19
Value · employers
The same road, for international hires
An engineer relocating to Munich walks the same weeks as a student: the visa route by passport, the residence permit, the Anmeldung within 14 days, insurance, a bank account, and German for the Bürgeramt and the team.
- One plan per hire, under your company’s name, with the family’s steps beside it
- HR sees each hire’s route and which steps are open, done or quiet; never what they enter in the tools
- German from day one of the offer, not from the first day at the desk
Status: the engine is live for institutions today. The employer edition (permit-first route, family steps, HR view) is next on the roadmap; first conversations decide its shape.
11 / 19
The landscape
Nobody sells the admit-to-settled journey
| Option | Covers | Shows who is stuck | Cost to the institution |
|---|---|---|---|
| PDF guide and email series | Information, once, to everyone | No | Staff time |
| VisaFlow | Visa application only; ends at the visa | Partly, up to the visa | Free to universities; students pay €49 to €999 for packages |
| Student community platforms (e.g. Unibuddy) | Peer chat and ambassadors, before the decision | No arrival plan | Around £29k per year |
| Ankommo Welcome | Admission to settled, plus the German course, mock exams and every tool | Yes: per student, per step, live | €0 for founding partners |
The state digitised the pre-arrival half (Consular Services Portal, January 2025). The post-arrival half, and the German that carries both, is where Ankommo sits.
Competitor claims from their public sites and press, August 2026; prices as published.
12 / 19
Data and compliance
No personal data passes through your hands
Students own their accounts
They sign up themselves with your code. Nothing is uploaded, synced or exported from your systems.
You see steps, never answers
Open, done, quiet, and the route (EU, visa-free, embassy). Never grades, exam results or anything else a student does on Ankommo.
A data processing agreement is part of onboarding
Application served from Frankfurt; analytics on EU-hosted PostHog; institution tables closed to every key but the server’s.
The dashboard link is the credential
Treat it like a password. We rotate it the moment you ask, and every demo runs on invented students that say so on screen.
13 / 19
Commercial model
Founding partners run it free; indicative pricing after
Founding partner · €0
- The first five institutions, one full intake
- The whole product, a direct line to the founder
- A named case study in return
- Founding terms kept when pricing arrives
| Segment and tier | Scope | Indicative price, net |
|---|---|---|
| University · Department | up to 100 students | €990 per year |
| University · Campus | up to 1,000 students | €7,900 per year |
| University · Network | several campuses | from €19,900 per year |
| Language school | up to 50 / 200 active students | €149 / €349 per month |
| Employer | per hire, 12 months | €249 |
Indicative: set with the founding partners. The Department tier sits under the €1,000 line at which DAAD FIT budgets need no three-quote procedure.
Today’s revenue is consumer: course passes and Pro subscriptions, €625 recurring per month and €1,806 collected in the last 30 days. Institutions are the second layer on the same product, not a second product.
Stripe, 29 September 2026. Prices net of VAT.
14 / 19
How institutions fund it
Budgets that already exist for exactly this
DAAD FIT
- Around 114 universities hold up to €250,000 a year through 2028 for international student success
- Software licences and IT services are eligible
- Under €1,000 net there is no three-quote procedure
Digitalbonus Bayern
- Pays commercial Bavarian language schools 50% of a digitalisation purchase, up to €7,500
- Runs until the end of 2027
- The school applies before signing
Founding seat
- At €0 there is nothing for procurement to approve, so the first intake can start this term
- The budget conversation happens after the numbers exist
DAAD FIT programme terms; Bayern Innovativ, Digitalbonus Bayern.
15 / 19
Why Ankommo
Built in public, for exactly this audience
200,000+
followers across platforms watch the founder explain Germany’s paperwork for a living
3,736
new accounts in the last 30 days, about 125 a day, without paid acquisition
0
refunds on 496 paid charges from 348 customers
First commercial partner
- Fintiba, the blocked-account provider, signed in September 2026
Native app
- iOS app submitted to App Review in September 2026; web and app share one account
Verified content
- Every figure in the plan cites its statute or official source and is updated when the law changes
Ankommo production data, 29 September 2026.
16 / 19
The next twelve months
Targets, not a forecast
Q4 2026
Founding intakes
- Five founding institutions running a real intake
- Reminder emails from the plan, per step
- Institution FAQs and links inside the plan
H1 2027
Renewals and employers
- First paid renewals against measured intake outcomes
- Employer edition: permit-first route, family steps, HR view
- Ank for institutions: the week’s questions, answered once
H2 2027
Scale
- Network tier for multi-campus universities
- Voice companion for the arrival plan
- Case studies published with founding partners
Every item above is either built or scoped; dates move with the founding partners’ feedback.
17 / 19
The next step
Run one intake with us
- One email: who you are, and roughly how many international students you take per intake
- You get a reply within two working days, and your codes and dashboard link the same week.
- Paste the code into the admission or booking email you already send
- Review the intake together against your own numbers
See it before you write
ankommo.de/institutions: the offer in full
app.ankommo.de/welcome/demo: the student side, as a demo account
app.ankommo.de/institutions/dashboard/demo: your side, the dashboard
Free means free: at €0 there is nothing for procurement to approve.
18 / 19
Appendix
Sources
- DAAD press release, December 2025: 420,000 international students in winter 2025/26, up 9% (daad.de/de/pressemitteilungen/2025)
- DAAD Schnellabfrage 2025: 79% name visa and entry procedures the top obstacle; housing 71%
- Times Higher Education: German visa bottlenecks, appointment waits of 28 to 42 weeks at the busiest missions
- DAAD Wissenschaft weltoffen and HRK: concentration of international students; international-office staffing ratio (2015)
- Bundesmeldegesetz § 17 (registration within two weeks); Aufenthaltsgesetz § 16f (language-course residence); Aufenthaltsverordnung § 41
- Blocked account amount: the 2026 requirement applied by embassies and immigration offices (€11,904)
- DAAD FIT programme terms; Bayern Innovativ, Digitalbonus Bayern
- Competitors: VisaFlow and Unibuddy public sites and press, August 2026
- Ankommo: production database and Stripe account, read on 29 September 2026; content inventory from the repository
The dropout statistics corrected in December 2025 (16% and 9%) replace the older 49% figure, which is deliberately not used.
19 / 19