She sold the shipping company for billions. Now he pours money into companies “for good” – Seznam Zpravy

You can also listen to the interview in the audio version.

she is Shipping offices he built a multinational colossus that delivered parcels to Europe, America, Asia, and the United Arab Emirates. But then she turned to the point: I want to leave.

“It was in Mexico in the year 2022, where we spent the summer at the beach with friends and children. Today they are 16, 13 and 11 years old. And when I look at my family, I think, I don’t have a majority, I have about 49% and there are three children. How will the portions be divided? How will they be shared with fans of other partners?” he recalls Simona Kijonkova to the point when she decided to sell “her fourth child”.

“When I decided to go to the exit, I was very sad. I could not even imagine that I would leave the child I raised for 13 years, that I would leave the 2000 workers. Like when you have a child who goes to college abroad, you wave to him and you know he already has his own life. That’s how I felt,” describes the founder of Zasilkovna.

It will be a year now since she made the biggest move of her life. Among those interested was the owner of the British post office, Royal Mail Daniel Krétinskyin the end the multinational group CVC and Czech investment company Jiří Šmejc chose Emma Capital.

When choosing a future lawyer for Zásilkovna, money was not the only factor, even if the amount for the sale of the company, according to unofficial information, was going to ‘ attack higher units of billions of kroner. “We talked about strategies. On the other hand, when you leave the company 100%, it is already with another company. I expect him to go to a different place than I would be there,” said Kijonková in Agenda SZ Byznys.

Because Simona Kijonková did not raise a unicorn from Zásilkovna – i.e. a company worth billions of dollars – she says she has no regrets: “I’m 47 years old, I think I still have a lot of time for unicorns to raise I look forward to building much bigger companies.”

Billions from the sale of the logistics colossus were transferred by husband and wife Simona and Jaromír Kijonk to the account of their investment company JSK Investment. “I don’t feel rich, I see myself as a property manager. The money did not go to my private account, it is in the company’s accounts, where it must be taken care of,” said the businessman.

Suddenly several people surrounded the Kijonks who wanted to help them manage their property. “That was a series of people. They all came to advise me how to invest money properly and where. While being an entrepreneur you have to make a series of quick decisions every day, in investing, the more you take your time with decisions, the better better,” said the investor.

How have the Kijonks handled the money so far? They multiplied. “We have it in bond and stock funds, more abroad than in the Czech Republic. However, we have already invested in four projects over the past six months. The next one will likely be done before the end of the year. I looked at projects worth a billion and 200 million crowns. That’s not a small number at all,” summarizes Kijonková in the interview.

It wants to focus on new start-ups as well as small to medium-sized companies up to 20 million euros with social impact. So far, the latest “catch” is the Czech startup Kodu, which wants to centralize small houses that have a floor area of ​​about 25 m2, so-called tiny houses. What made the couple get involved in the small project of Romana Voříšková and Jitka Plevová?

“The vision is to make housing more affordable for single people, both young and old people who live alone. A family with five children and three dogs or someone who likes the center of Prague will not live there. But someone who loves privacy and doesn’t want to live in a shared apartment, who loves nature, who loves beautiful design… He will find a target group.”

To date, there are only ten Kodu microhouses in the world, but Kijonková feels that the potential is strong. “The growth will now be in the thousands of percent, we are at the very beginning. I assume that we will reach very interesting numbers,” said the investor, who took 20% in Kodu. She did not specify the amount invested.

Another money won by Zásilkovna went to the In Touch project, which is behind Vassili le Moigne.

“It is a platform based on artificial intelligence, which regularly communicates with an elderly citizen through a traditional phone or a mobile phone and talks to him about any topic, even about the garden. He will evaluate the interview, and if there is any sign that the senior is not feeling well, mentally or health-wise, he will send alerts to the client, for example to a grandchild or daughter, or to a doctor with care.” explains Kijonková. The application is already ready and will be officially launched in a few months.

JSK’s next investment is likely to be an application that addresses children’s mental health. “I was surprised by the information about the percentage of children suffering from mental disorders and how many wanted to commit suicide,” Kijonková told SZ Byznys.

“Children at this age need hugs, love and communication the most. Many times they don’t want to talk to us about some things, but when they have a safe internet environment, the app can communicate with them as a friend. The application can read everything that happens on the mobile phone and it can save lives,” the investor describes the project that will attract more money to JSK.

But at the same time, he is adding to his own negative experience recently with artificial intelligence. “I recently had an experience where artificial intelligence can be negative and very bad. I was speaking at a conference and an anonymous company asked me to make an innocuous video for them as an invitation to the conference. Someone was misusing my identity and that company’s identity through AI and wanted to extract links and money from people.”

Simona Kijonková also founded a foundation that wants to help disadvantaged children to overcome life’s obstacles. “I myself am a child from a socially excluded area. Stigma is the problem with socially excluded places. You don’t have clothes and mobile phones that other people have. When you’re born there, you grow up in a bubble that it’s okay not to work, it’s okay to steal, it’s okay to take drugs , it’s okay not to go to school. This must be broken,” says the native of Karlovy Vary.

“Our goal is to build recreational centers for children in all 606 socially excluded areas. We already have a name, Smiley. He will help those children write their work, they will have computers, a library there so that they are financially and IT literate. We want to build an environment that will be safe for them, no matter what happens to them at home, so that they have a place to run,” Kijonková wishes in the interview.