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AirStudent: Giving peers “wings” to fly
Ndabenhle By Niémah Davids & Karin van Laeren Ntshangase and Lwanda Shabalala AirStudent identifies students that study far away from their and have to travel to and from campus at the start and co-founded the hometown end of each term. It then groups students together based on their student-centred travel similarities to capitalise on certain cost-effective commercial travel business bulk-buying booking principles. AirStudent.
Where did your idea for AirStudent come from? Ndabenhle: I am from Vryheid in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), and
studying at UCT meant that I was always travelling between campus and home at the end of each term. This travelling cost escalates fast and gets very expensive. I realised that I wasn’t the only one going through this process – approximately 60% of students study outside of their hometown.
Ndabenhle Ntshangase and Lwanda Shabalala
www.airstudent.co.za @airstudentSA
I put pen to paper and came up with the idea to start AirStudent – and plug a huge gap. AirStudent’s role is to group travelling students like myself together in order to leverage the bulk-buying principles that exist, and to provide students with more affordable travelling fare options.