The Wheel Magazine edition 2

The Wheel 12
I was a victim of a bogus
accommodation agent. The
struggle I went through to
get a house is what led me
to think of ways to make life
easier, not only for me but
for every other student.
I have a team of seven permanently employed
members, distributed between Marketing, IT, Projects,
People Management and Finance. We also have a network
of 20 student agents across the 3 universities that we are
now serving: MSU, National University of Science and
Technology (NUST) and Chinhoyi University. We
started as a pilot project at MSU but now we are on the
roll out to other universities. We already have options
on offer in Chinhoyi, Bulawayo, Masvingo and Harare.
Harare has just started, the numbers are not significant
yet. The most challenges we have encountered so far are
changing people’s mindsets. Our product is a new
means of securing accommodation and it requires
both the student and the landlord to shun traditional
means of securing accommodation and make use of
technology. Such a rapid change in an environment that’s
used to the old way of doing things has met its fair share
of challenges on both ends. Raising capital is also an
issue. During the startup phase, we required a lot of
capital to conduct market research, hiring new talent,
marketing and to design world class applications. It’s public
knowledge that good software developers don’t come
cheap. Getting into partnerships with institutions as well
is difficult. Being young in a society that places respect