Nov 22, 2021
How Solacely Came About
Changes between the past years
Over the years we have seen how technology has changed rapidly and how humans quickly adapt to these changes.
A lot of companies these days have moved their businesses online either remotely or through sales/market – all of these to reach a larger audience and capture more market share.
2020 taught us the power of collaboration through the internet and how we can swiftly connect to millions through virtual calls and messaging platforms.
This year, Facebook announced the new era of the metaverse, and it’s official name change to Metaverse.
According to Wikipedia “Metaverse is a hypothesized iteration of the internet, supporting persistent online 3-D virtual environments through conventional personal computing, as well as virtual and augmented reality headsets.” In a nutshell Metaverse is a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore ideas from the internet, augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and other technologies.
Why not Solacely
Globally house hunting can be an unmanageable and unbearable task. However, in Nigeria looking for an apartment entails moving from one apartment to another which can be very challenging and can consume a lot of your resources, to say the least house hunters spend an average $15 per each house visited for as many houses as possible (depending on how desperate the house hunter is) just for seeing the apartment. This process has been ongoing over the years and still old-fashioned. Sometimes, you might end up not finding what you are looking for and just give up.
You can read more here. Many experiences result in kidnapping and a lot of other problems.
Why Solacely
Before Akinrodolu and Ibraheem built what’s called Solacely today, we were just two (2) individuals in the product management group called PIP (people in the product). Our first encounter was via call. He said, “chief, how can I get an apartment in Abuja, what is the budget like, I had to explain everything on how housing options work here in Abuja and the stress that may come with it”.
Few weeks down the line, we got together to build a solution for the use case, we realized that a lot of people especially cooperate workers faces this challenge (difficulty in changing or moving from location to another or even changing apartments within Lagos is an apologetic experience) we did some research to validate our idea, reached out to Khadijah and Maryam to join the team based on previous conversations to leverage their experience and perspective on the problem statement.
This was the birth of our friendship and Solacely.
There are many products out there solving similar user challenges, however, we decided to put users at the center of our problem solving approach “Letting users see first hand what they want to rent, buy leveraging VR and AR technology” scroll through different options from anywhere in the world and any device of choice, we think that images are not enough to influence decision making as a lot of filter and editing would have been done to alter its originality
How:
While this is a new journey for us and implementing could be complex, The VR/AR technology will be embedded into the solution to give users the exact view of what’s in the apartment to avoid what I ordered vs what I got scenarios. This implementation would help users see their preferred house option, make payment and meet with the agents/property owner for the keys to the apartment.
Why:
Even after Facebook announced the new era of metaverse a lot of things have been added into a prospect to the world of Virtual reality and it would change and enhance how we view technology hence, now is the best time to use it in solving a pain problem in Africa.
This is a challenge we have all experienced in one way or the other looking for an apartment, moving to a different state or country, in search of a roommate, and even co-working space.
What:
As the saying goes in Africa, seeing is believing, we are building a web application and mobile app that allows users to search for apartments, co-working space near and far-away view all corners of the apartment using our VR & AR application.
This product will change the way we look for an apartment based on our budget, location, and country in the nicest arrangement and proportion to a new era of VR and AR space.
We are very much excited about this journey and we can’t wait to have you onboard on this journey.
