Hartford, Connecticut (PRWEB) March 09, 2016
At the end of his first semester at Trinity College in Connecticut, Micah Onditi was in the same quandary college students around the country often find themselves in. The required textbooks he spent a small fortune buying throughout the semester were suddenly of no use to him. Onditi then spent the summer creating a smartphone application which would fix this problem. Before the summer began, Micah Onditi had no experience in programming, but the result of his efforts is Mivy, an app designed to help college students sell used textbooks directly to each other.
Onditi came up with the app’s name “Mivy” based on the first day he stepped foot onto Trinity College’s campus, where he heard “Mini Ivy”, a term his college has affectionately been referred to as. The app – which uses the catchy motto, “Sell Last Semester. Buy The Next.” – already has hundreds of users at colleges throughout the Northeast.
“I made a direct line between us college students in order to get some retribution for all the money that we keep on losing” Onditi Said. With Mivy, students now have a supportive network to obtain course supplies such as textbooks from each other and save a fair amount doing so. For this reason, he has limited Mivy’s users to those with an .edu attached to their email. Students can post textbooks for sale and browse books for sale by other users. The sellers set the prices, but buyers can uniquely make offers lower than the listing price, leading to negotiations and affordable deals.
By creating a direct connection between college students, Onditi asserts that Mivy has advantages over other companies from which students often purchase or rent textbooks, such as Amazon, eBay, and Chegg. “You might make more on Mivy than selling it somewhere else,” Onditi said. “It’s a better alternative to other selling platforms.” Mivy receives 7 percent of each sale price, unless a user is a campus rep who receive 100% of their earnings said Onditi, “This is very competitive compared to other platforms, which charge around 10 to 11 percent.”
Onditi has also been learning a great deal from reSET, a Connecticut non-profit organization whose mission is to advance the social enterprise sector. He was recently accepted into reSET’s Impact Accelerator program, which provides entrepreneurs with access to the knowledge, networks, and resources they need to grow their businesses. Onditi recognizes that he has taken on a heavy workload, but he maintains that he has no regrets. “I knew that this experience would not be ‘fun’ but I’m grateful to have the opportunity to help people with Mivy, and that is all that really matters to me”
To help spread the word about Mivy, Onditi has recruited “campus reps” at many colleges along the northeast, and is looking to leverage this app to become a “National dorm room name”.
