A 25-year-old entrepreneur from Jamaica set up his own business in Taiwan with the special entrepreneur visa

Because of the pivotal position and growing domestic market, Taiwan seems to be a great base for startups. Moreover, in 2015, Taiwan’s Entrepreneur Visa was back, which facilitates the process of founding a corporation in Taiwan. With the special visa, applicants would get residency for 1 year before setting up a business including the spouse and children under 20. After the expiration, the application can be extend up to 2 years each time, and after being resident for 5 years in Taiwan, applicants are qualified to apply for permanent residency.

Ruchmair, who came to Taiwan from Jamaica to set up his own business in November, said that he had received a call from one of his investors in Jamaica who suggest him to come to Taiwan, not only for the great opportunities here but also for the new program of startups; therefore he did. Ruchmair is only 25-year-old, and used to work on creating software tools which make game development easier in his former company in Jamaica. However, the gaming industry is not popular in Jamaica, so with the ambition and the exclusive visa, Ruchmair came to Taiwan and began to set up the game development company which is just his second company. “This is my first trip in Asia, and I never work for another company here before,” he said. It’s really hard to imagine there are a lot of people willing to start their own business in Taiwan, and even from some countries like Jamaica which is far away from Taiwan.

Ruchmair’s company in Taiwan is also about the game project with focus on the software on mobile devices and named after his own name, Ruchmair. (洛西米爾) He has been working on a game for about 8 months, because it hasn’t released so he laughed and said that he couldn’t talk too much about the game. “We are still working on it,” he said, “we’re trying to bring the games usually fund on the PC or TV to the mobile devices, which is what people expect to find. Although there is only one person in Jamaica that Ruchmair works with, “we’re looking for the other persons to join. It’s just the beginning,” he said with confidence.

When mentioning that he chose Taiwan to start a business, Ruchmair said that he really likes the culture of the East, and working in Taiwan helps him to push his products to China, to Japan, and even to the whole market in Asia. “The Taiwan’s Entrepreneur Visa makes doing business much easier,” he said. “It only took about 5 minutes to get the visa done. You just have to hand in the passport, take some photos and then you get the visa which pretty impressed me,” he said. Furthermore, Ruchmair mentioned that building startups in Japan for a foreigner is much harder than in Taiwan, so he chose Taiwan as a base and hoped to extent his business to Japan.

Speaking to recommending a friend what to do to start a business in Taiwan, Ruchmair said the very first thing is to check the visa which makes the process easier, because “with the visa there is a company; without the visa there is no company.” Ruchmair also think the industries of software and hardware in Taiwan are really strong and both of the occupations and markets are universal, so for those who wants to enter the Asia market, Taiwan is a perfect step one. He talked about that the game studio is really growing in Taiwan, where there are many impressive studios. “There is also the gaming industry in Jamaica, but it’s not as big as one in Taiwan,” he said.

About the expectation of the entrepreneurial environment in Taiwan in the future, being in Taipei for only 2 months, Ruchmair said that he is still learning the attitudes and behaviors that people have a business here as well as figuring out what businesses are like here to run a company efficiently with the help from the entrepreneurial program of iiiNNO. “I recently meet Taipei, and a lot of things are really impressive and quite different from ones in Jamaica. Actually, I like it,” he ended up saying.