UnItrade is a mobile application that allows university students to buy, sell and swap their unwanted items with each other on campus. Students can also list services and wanted posts known as ‘requests’. We are SEIS approved and have received our Advanced Assurance certificate.
Check out what the Huff Post has to say about us: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/shaniqua-benjamin/6-useful-apps-for-univers_b_16372910.html
Check out what the Huff Post has to say about us: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/shaniqua-benjamin/6-useful-apps-for-univers_b_16372910.html
Throughout the year, every month students spend over 20% of their income on clothes, shoes, phones, nightclubs and eating out with friends (Student Money Survey, 2015). At the end of the year, most 1st and 3rd years tend to throw away their unwanted items like books, clothes and small home accessories either because they no longer need/want them or cannot carry them back home. If there was a way to help all students save money in at least one of these areas or make some money from their unwanted items all year round, then we feel that such a product has the potential to become a household name in universities all around the world.
Our vision is to become a startup that positively impacts the lives of students globally by encouraging them to purchase cheaper goods, act greener by selling their unwanted items instead of throwing them away and dare more entrepreneurial endeavours whilst being at university. The way we see it, students could be posting odd jobs like logo designing today and tomorrow running successful graphic design companies. For this to happen though, there needs to be a platform that embodies this and we truly believe that that platform is UnItrade. Not only do we encourage our users to buy, sell and swap their unwanted items, we also encourage them to combine their creative skills with entrepreneurship on campus. We also endeavour to maintain a focused mind set in creating the best marketplace for students and do not display any ads for now as our mission now is to create something awesome that works. There may be many marketplace apps like Sphock, Gumtree and Mercari but we feel that our USP is that we are a student based marketplace that understands the needs of students; this will be reflected in the way we will make revenue.
UnItrade will be free to use for the first year as we want to ensure that we create a product that works well and students love to use. So whenever a student has an item they no longer want or are looking to buy something, UnItrade will be the first thing that comes to their mind. We take pride in our monetisation plan as it’s not your traditional ‘let’s grow our user base to spoil our app with banner ads’. Our financial plan for UnItrade will benefit both the user and our company, if not serve our users in a greater way.
Emmanuel Akinkuolie (Co founder)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuel-akinkuolie-a48b44120/
Hari Vasarala (Co founder/CTO)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hari-vasarala-75032b102/
George Clarke (CGO)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-clarke-8637a1aa/
Ramy Hallak (CFO)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramy-hallak-2332425a/
The money we raise will be spent in the following way:
Marketing side:
Start of 2017/18 academic year – 3 months (September – last week, October, November, December – 1st 3 weeks)
Email to students (x6 emails as the newsletter comes out fortnightly) = £900
Stalls on campus (x6 visits, 2 times a month for 3 months) – = £3,750
Advertising on digital screens around campus (x6 weeks) = £1,050
Exclusivity for a year (email us to find out more info)
We have successfully negotiated with MDX SU to reduce this cost so instead if this costing £8700, it will only cost us £4350 (exc VAT)
Total = £5220 (inc VAT)
Hoodies (x10) = £200
Banners x3 = £200
Freebies = £300
Travel to MDX (via cab to carry load to and from university campus)
= £838
Total Cost = £6,058 (including VAT)
Development side:
Roughly 2-4 months will be required to develop an Android version. We have sought advice from our contacts within the industry and they have informed us that we should expect to pay around £28,800:
Implementation of UnItrade app Android version – £14,400
Enhancement of backend (server side) – £14,400
*These figures are based on industry contractors working a total of 96 days (4 months) at a rate of £300 per day.
*Please note that the amount that we are raising via crowdfunding is £39,000. About £3,666.20, will go towards fees (Crowdfunder and PayPal). The remaining will cover our marketing and development costs.
Total amont post fees – £35,333.80 (excess amount will be used to cover potential rise in ‘marketing on campus’ fees)
To find out more or just to say “hello” feel free to send anyone of us an email. For business plan enquiries, please email us with a link to your LinkedIn page.