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Funded!

Help a student business during the Covid-19 crisis

Collected amount

$123
8%
Goal $1,500

Remaining days 0 days

This project has finished.

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Hello!

My name is Charles Mbhele, I am a 21-year-old student entrepreneur from the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. I am the sole owner of a bicycle rental business called Quiqstart located in the city of Port Elizabeth.

It was the start of something great!

Three years ago I was accepted to study at a university in Port Elizabeth 900KM away from my city in Durban, so I had to move. On my arrival in Port Elizabeth, I looked for cheap student accommodation and found a place 2KM away from the university. In the mornings I would walk to the university and frequently arrived late for my 7:45 lectures like many off-campus students. One day I decided to buy a bicycle to use as my transport and that was the moment I realized a business opportunity which gave birth to my bicycle rental business – Quiqstart.  

I started off with 2 bicycles three years ago and today I own 13 bicycles and offer rentals to local and international students and tourists in Port Elizabeth. I named the business “Quiqstart” because I provide students with a quicker way to get to campus and to start off their day.

It hasn’t been an easy journey

In the beginning, it was very difficult to get the authority to run a business on campus as a student. Strict university regulations made it near impossible for me to acquire space to run a shop on campus but it was a challenge I was willing to overcome.

After a few months of renting out 2 bicycles to students who needed them, demand grew and I had to find a way to get more bicycles. After exploring many different avenues, a year later was able to secure business funding from the government for 10 bicycles.  I now had a bigger problem as to where I was going to keep these bicycles. Through persistence, I was finally given authority to install bicycle racks in the university to park my bicycles as they could not offer me any commercial space. I took up the offer and called a welding company to build bicycle racks install them on campus. Since then I have been parking the bicycles on the racks and using a combination lock to secure them but every night I fear that they may be vandalized or worse, stolen as they are not monitored at night.  My worries have skyrocketed since the beginning of the University lockdown since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic as the university had shut down and the bikes abandoned - I am not allowed to enter the university. 

Help me raise money to purchase a shipping container

With the money raised, I would be able to purchase a 40ft container that I can use as a bike shop and grow my business offering to retailing bike accessories and repairs. I would also be able to keep my bicycles inside the container and assure the safety of the assets and employ more people. It would help a lot if you could contribute to my dream of becoming a leading bike-sharing business in South Africa as I wish to grow nationally to provide people with an affordable and clean mode of transport.  Thank you.

To find out more about Quiqstart please find us on Facebook as @quiqstart  or visit our website www.quiqstart.co.za (the site will be available from 6 July 2020).

Again thanks for taking the time to read about my business. Bless You!

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This is a crowdfunding platform used by almost 200 countries. Anyone can easily create a project!

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