Before packing your bags and leaving for the university you've dreamt of studying in for your entire life, there’s quite a lot you may not be able to take with you. And in this process of moving away from everything you know, how long will it take to make a home in a foreign country? If you’re stressing out about such change and all that comes with it, UniAcco has an answer for you: the cross border student accommodation platform aims to make the transition easy for any student moving abroad.
Co-founder and CEO of UniAcco, Amit Singh says, “Typically, a student makes the decision to go abroad as soon as they wind up their primary school education. Once they have chosen the university they want to attend, they go through the process of finding a counsellor and making their application. There is a long way to go after this, it’s still quite a journey. But there is nobody to hold your hand after a certain point.”
UniAcco was set up in October 2019 by Amit and Sayantan Biswas. After developing it further, they officially opened for bookings in February. Unfortunately, the Coronavirus hit in their first few months. However, the company has managed to help 1,500 students so far and hopes to reach their goal of 2,500 bookings by October. Currently, they are only functional in the UK. By 2021, their goal is to reach out to 15 countries across Europe, United States, Canada and Australia.
The platform offers students over 3,50,000 rooms to choose from. With the tagline ‘compare, consult, choose’, it can be summed up as a thriving marketplace for student accomodation, with all their services being offered free of charge to students. Amit explains, “These are kids who are going out of their country for the first time. There is so much anxiety involved in this process. Our aim is to make it easier and narrow down their process to help them grow comfortable with the new environment.”
With this in mind, the company offers an added feature called compare: Before even going too far ahead in the process, the students can on compare up to 80 parameters on the offered accommodations, including a range of preferences like places offering vegetarian food, pet-friendly places and budget requirements. Once students have made the appropriate choices, they are connected to UniAcco’s consultants who come into the picture and help them make appropriate choices.
UniAcco also aims to answer all the other aspects involved in choosing the perfect university. They have tied with a number of banks including ICICI and Axis Bank to support students in availing student loans by narrowing down the different criteria needed by different institutions. In January, the team hopes to open an entirely different platform that supports students exclusively with student loans. They also hope to answer every question a student may have during this time.
