A million in six months

When he was a child, tech entrepreneur Hlumelo Nyaluza wanted to save the world, by the time he grew up he had settled for merely connecting it. 

“Growing up, before my teens, I always had an obsession of being a superhero to save the world and its people. I was obsessed with magic”, says Nyaluza.

In many ways, Nyaluza rose above a tough childhood in a small township called Phakamisa, near King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape. By the age of 13 he had lost his mother to cancer and was brought up by his father. 

It got tougher. Nyaluza dropped out of school twice, but never gave up his dream of building an app to make waves. 

Nyaluza says he saw individuals like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey and Patrice Motsepe making magic and touching people’s lives and that is when he knew his dream to change lives and the world could be possible. He worked in tech and came up with an idea that an investor in Bangladesh backed.

It was called HN Citipages. Nyaluza says HN stands for Human Navigation and it’s an app that automatically connects a user to all the people from a user’s area in a section called ‘Visit section’. 

“A user gets to see posts by everyone from his/her account without having to follow anyone or being followed by everyone. We successfully achieved this through geotechnology that picks up the city/town or area each user is from and the country in the registration page,” says Nyaluza. 

The app is beyond a social media platform, it emphasizes the promotion of positivity, talent, hustle, culture and news. 

Officially launched in 2020, Nyaluza says it wasn’t easy bringing the app to life.

“The idea of me having an app came in 2012 and I tried to create a social media app with a graphic designer when I was still in Port Elizabeth studying at the Nelson Mandela University but the guy had limited skills so I just created a basic website with him. It wasn’t a success,” adds Nyaluza.

Nyaluza tried again in 2013 with the help of his older brother, but that too failed.

The 28-year-old then ventured into other things such as radio and wrote a book titled ‘Navigate Humans: Be Against Normality’. 

“When I was busy with the book project I got contacted by a company based in Bangladesh called TechCom and they said they have been looking at all my Avant Garde,  HN ventures and would love to work with me in creating a social media app idea,” says Nyaluza. 

Nyaluza says that is when he took the app idea he had, polished it and they worked on it from 2018-2020.

“Through the HN believers and the media, I was able to spread the word where the app got more than 3k users and went straight to number one on Google Play Store’s trending lists under social media apps,” he says.

From not having any funds for the app, Nyaluza managed to raise R560 000 to create the new version of the app which will be released this year.

“The investments grew the value to be worth at least R4 million in less than nine months as the last investor invested R400 000 for 10%,” he says.

All he aimed for was to raise R25 000 and he exceeded his own expectations. 

“We haven’t generated any revenue as I focused on getting the app at 4 000 users to start luring companies that want to put premium ads in the special digital billboard of the app,” he says. 

Nyaluza says he wants to have approximately 1 million users on the app and that is why he has decided to create a new version of it. 

“With the new version I am confident that we will reach 1 million users in less than 6 months,” added Nyaluza. 

This month the world will experience a second version of the app, which Nyaluza says will be one of a kind. 

“We have been working on it since last year and we are releasing it this month. It will have a feature that all leading social media platforms in the world don’t have and it will have two security features that will guarantee the safety of users. It’s going to be a world exclusive,” he says.

We asked Nyazula what he would tell young people with big goals and the hope of funding:

“You are your greatest resource, do all you can with what you have to try and make your idea come to life,” he says. 

“When the idea is unique enough or liberating enough potential investors will come towards you. All they want to see is something tangible, extremely unique and impactful one way or the other.” 

“They want to see effort. Don’t focus on big funding, focus on making the product or service a reality using what you have. No matter how small you start. Investors want to see effort as well,” added Nyaluza. 

Investors are likely to be looking to young African entrepreneurs like Nyazula a lot more closely and seriously in the future.