A group of young programmers under a local software development company Alixir Technologies have come up with a mobile application dubbed Dunhu that seeks to eradicate the bureaucratic co-ordination in the property industry, in the process saving time and money for property seekers.
Founded by 24 year old Cassava Smartech’s MuzindaHub alumni Tony Togara, a young programmer based in Harare, and Dr Maxwell Manyangani, Alixir Technologies is one of the first companies to develop a mobile application focusing on the property industry connecting property owners and property seekers.
Speaking to 263Chat, Togara who is leading a group of young innovators who developed the Dunhu programme under the organisation, said the application is a solution for the property sector which seeks to minimise risks, costs and time to property seekers who have in the past fallen victim to dubious agents inflating property view costs or selling ghost properties.
“Dunhu will not disappoint whether you want an office, a boarding house, a full house or even just a roommate. We carefully select property owners, validate their authenticity through quality assurance processes, then we registered the owners and list their assets to let. The owners will be incentivised for considering their properties on the mobile application,” said Togara.
“For clients, the application comes with an extensive search tool that filters the properties to best fit the seeker’s precise specifications.
“Dunhu is made to embrace vast data analytics which aid in pleasing the client, more so, the client can be notified on various platforms like email, WhatsApp or actual short messaging service (sms) through another powerful Geographic Information System (GIS) that we have also implemented,” he said.
With the current Zimbabwean economic situation which has left property seekers desperate, with networking having been ill-exploited by people who have connections in the property industry, as Togara says, Zimbabwe still needs about 20 years to clear its 1.3 million housing backlog which has prompted scarcity of accommodation in the country, making the property letting sector a big market.
Togara said through Dunhu, property owners who list their properties on the application get an extra income prior to the rentals they collect after occupation as a commission per click on their properties.
He also said property agents at the moment are in the habit of exploiting desperate accommodation seekers, which the mobile application eliminates.
“The growth of agents has frustrated citizens, apparently their services have been increasing as inflation is increasing having started from only $3 in rates and have now escalated to a median of about $30 for a view, plus a 10% of the first month’s rentals from both the property seeker and the property owner.
“The model for Dunhu is simple, the property seeker pays a very small fee to view a property of their choice and the property owner gets to earn a commission for every click that they get on their property,” Togara said.
With the growth of mobile technologies and smart phones in Zimbabwe and the world over, Alixir Technologies developed Dunhu in October last year before its official launch earlier in April 2019 targeting property owners and accommodation seekers across the country, providing an authentic mobile digital trading platform.
