Denis Opudo
Many African universities or higher learning institutions have a shortage of hostels. This forces students to look for accommodations out of campus. But this is one of the demanding processes in the life of many students. Students do spend three or so weeks just locating for accommodation. To make the matters worse at times students do fall into the trap of fraudulent in the name of agents. In case they get genuine agents they have to dig deeper into their pockets to get accommodation. But thanks to the myPadi which came in to solve the whole mess.
myPadi is a real estate company that offers off-campus accommodation students. It caters to both college and university students. The startup gives students a platform to get off-campus accommodation. This takes place via its listing from reliable landlords. It also gives virtual tours, photographs, reviews, pricing and amenities of the houses. The startup was founded in 2016 by Joel Amawhe. It was initially known as Studacom.ng & HostelsVilla.com. During the #StartupSouth 2016 edition the startup reached a milestone by emerging the winner. Moreover, they got $20,000 initial funding at the Ventures Platform’s second acceleration program.
myPadi was the outstanding e-housing startup in 2017. Therefore it won the 2017 outstanding e-housing award. This was curtsey of NITDA. Furthermore, Nigeria was represented by myPadi at the GITEX 2017 in Dubai. It got grant funding worth $5,000 at the GITEX. it was also awarded business advisory services for 3 months at the National Economic Summit 2017. This came from Accenture Nigeria. The startup’s platform has 5,000 researched rooms for Nigerian students. The number of rooms is in more than 60 higher learning institutions in Nigeria.
The startup got seed funding that came from EchoVC. The funding will be used in a further expansion of the startup into more cities within the country. Moreover, it will use it to serve more schools and increase its workforce. It will also use it to improve its service delivery.
