Student accommodation marketplace DigsConnect has received investment from international venture builder The Delta as part of its current funding round.
Launched by Alexandria Procter and Greg Ramsay-Keal in 2018, the DigsConnect platform allows landlords, estate agents and property managers to post their property listings, with students then searching and filtering through these listings to find accommodation that suits their needs, and also find other students to live with.
The startup, which raised ZAR12 million (then US$830,000) in March 2019 and last year secured a ZAR3 million (US$200,000) grant from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, recently entered into an agreement with the world’s largest student accommodation site, Student.com, enabling it to expand its presence to approximately 30 new countries and 400 new cities. It now has over 1.3 million beds listed on its platform, and is expanding its operations into the UK, US, Singapore, and Europe.
“Hundreds of thousands of African students are electing to study abroad, and housing remains one of the primary obstacles for them,” said Procter. “We will be focusing on providing safe avenues to affordable student accommodation for students from Singapore to Berlin to New York City. The Delta’s global operations and networks provide a springboard into many of these locations.”
The Delta has offices in South Africa, Switzerland, the UK, and Germany, with portfolio ventures including employee wellness platform Strove and fintech startup Revio. The company said the investment in DigsConnect reflected its plans to support later-stage African startups who are looking to become scale-ups and break into other parts of Africa, or expand globally.
“DigsConnect is a great company, we are excited to have them in our portfolio. I feel that Alex and Greg’s passion for the venture, mixed with the global possibility will make for a great ride,” said Louis Buys, CEO and founder of The Delta.
