How Ekaya.com Aims To Make The Business Of Renting Better For Everyone
How Ekaya.com Aims To Make The Business Of Renting Better For Everyone. Founded in 2013 and based in Cape Town, South Africa, Ekaya is a young and ambitious technology startup out to make the world of renting better by building products that create trust and delight in the property rental space.
Ekaya.com set out to make the business of renting less like a knife fight and more like chicken mayonnaise sandwich – simple and satisfying. The company consists of designers, engineers, dreamers and doers who believe that technology is the application of art and science to solve a practical problem. The company doesn’t see real estate, it sees people – people with needs, wants and dreams. Each day, it strives to connect people who rent with one another, their homes and the world around them.
Ekaya graduated from the Summer 2014 88mph Accelerator Plutonium Program and broke boundaries at SparkUp Live. It cleaned-up in the Dragon’s Den and has attracted more than R8 million in investment from a premier line-up of investors and industry players. The company expanded nationally across South Africa and successfully helped its customers process more than R1.2 Billion in rent since 2015. Ekaya established an enviable network of partnerships with top-tier commercial and technical partners with whom, together with its customers, are building the next generation rental ecosystem.
Ekaya created VIP as a tool to enable tenants to securely and quickly collect their private data from credit bureaux and banks, from the convenience of their smartphones or computers, in order to apply for rental properties that they’re interested in renting.
“We’ve packed a lot into this launch including a fresh new look for Ekaya.com but the thing we’re perhaps most excited about is the launch of our brand-new tenant verification system – called Ekaya VIP – which makes life a lot easier for tenants who are applying for properties and will give property owners new-found confidence in their selection process.” said Justin R. Melville, Ekaya CEO.
Ekaya only makes things that it would use itself, every day. That’s why it built its VIP system to be the best identity verification, credit reporting and affordability calculator on the market. The company designed VIP to help tenants and landlords connect and exchange information simply and securely during the rental application process but, given the scale of the recent Masterleaks disaster, it is extending an invite to all South Africans to make use of the service in order to safeguard themselves against identity fraud.
