 We have forwarded the changes and people have gone through reports of co-leaving in the past, but nowadays, the president has left some of the measures that were put to cover the Covid-19. So we are seeing more people coming in asking for spaces because they are now able to travel into the country all into Nairobi, Mombasa even Kisumu where we have our locations. So we have people basically embracing the new normal. Absolutely. And you mentioned something which is very important. You know the niti griti is small things that are very much important when it comes to cleanliness and you mentioned a couple. You mentioned on how you use the privacy aspect of it but let's look at how my safety, right? Are there rules to be followed just for safety for your clients? Yeah. So basically we have common standard rules for co-living and as a company we've been able to establish that through a contract that we give to all our tenants and if they agree to a bind with the rules then if they follow them very well they will be able to co-exist with others. And the aspect of furnished, are they furnished apartments? Oh yeah. So they are all furnished apartments. I mean when Isaac mentioned and you also stressed something that they are small things. So when we were coming up with the solution we asked ourselves the questions of okay so people ask us why they should share spaces. People don't even want to share spaces and so we went and started doing research on why exactly don't you want to share. So we were just trying to get clients from the clients to actually think and why they think they shouldn't share. So that way we don't address problems that doesn't exist. So furnishing was one of the main issues because if we left the space empty and then we brought people together to furnish then we're going to have a problem. People say are probably brought in a coach more expensive than the dispenser you brought in and then it would be like a huge issue. So it starts from furnishing the entire apartment providing like the quansage services, the cleaning aspect and probably people who might want extra services like if you want food cooked for you well you can just make like the request and you'll get your food prepared. If you just want to make a normal order from a restaurant you can still do that and yeah your food will be delivered. So we're providing more than just a space to live. Giving people the lifestyles that they're actually looking for but at affordable cost. What sort of experience will your clients have when they get to be part of the village world and how many branches are there and where you guys located at? Yeah so you know our slogan when we're starting was redefining modern living but over time we realized that co-living is supposed to be fun. People are supposed to enjoy living in a space and we realized that by building the community aspect that we keep on mentioning since we began this was actually the best way. So you have a couple of friends you're living with and then you're like okay so I've been working since Monday to Friday what am I doing for this weekend? And then you have these friends so like oh so I know there's a show in town we could actually attend. I know the best restaurant we could actually go to. You form kind of a social cycle where you also get to have fun beyond just where you're living and where you're working. So that's basically one of the experiences but also the other experience is life is much easier in a co-living space for the fact that cleaning is done for you, right? Most of the services are actually done for you and then you can make the request that you want. So if you wake up in the morning and you feel like today you don't want to prepare breakfast then yet you can just give us a call and you'll get a request. It's so easy like that. Exactly. So I mean these experiences are just really small we're just doing the very small stuff because we realize life is about those very small things. Those are what actually makes life more fun. You salary might matter, like a lot of things might matter but then what you do beyond something you could actually hold down to at the end of the day is what is really critical and that's the space and the environment you're actually providing. But the other thing that I might want to stress is we have monthly events for these young people so we can say it's a coffee, it's a normal meat and grid people are hanging out. I mean basically we have different things for these events depending on what we did like last month so if we did meat and grid then I mean most of these people then know each other then now we can go into maybe a space where it's a professional networking session so we bring people beyond the community so you're able to interact with people also outside that network that you already have within the village and it's fun for us, we're hosting expatriates we're hosting locals we also host expatriate locals so like if they're people from Kisumu and they're living here in Nairobi and they're like, so I'm in Nairobi and just want people to hang out with I'm here to work for maybe one month I'm attached here for a program or something I'm living in the village community and then you get to just connect with other people in Nairobi from other countries, from outside Kenya so there's just so much to be experienced in the village What I'm getting is that you just have an opportunity to experience different culture, self-development as you just communicate, just making life easier and better when it comes to community living Advantages, currently we are located in Mombasa of course we're here we're in Naivasha where is here? Obvious, Nairobi we're in Nairobi and then we're in Kisumu so if you're from the lakeside like me I would probably want to go to Mombasa for Naivasha, right? so if I'm sharing a space in Kisumu then on our platform you can actually just get an access for one week you can book a one week vacation to Mombasa in those same spaces because those co-living spaces are located in different places so now you don't have to spend a lot of money booking for a different accommodation all you need to do even hotels, ya? Ya, exactly so all you need to do is you just moving from one home to another home different people, different experiences probably much cheaper but you also get to experience the culture and there's usually strict restriction with certain institutions probably like hotels also but here we just give you a home so the way you operate in that other co-living space in Kisumu the same rules since it's the same company they still apply alright, I just want to ask if I'm travelling maybe I want to go to Kisumu so all I have to do is just reach out to you guys and tell you how being in Kisumu for this particular period if it's a week, two weeks a month I just let you know prior and you're going to just make it work for me Ya, so the process is pretty much easy you just give us a call or you send us an email or you actually go through a website where you can be able to book from and the process is very easy you just tell us the dates we confirm the availability of the space and the timings then we're able to book you in and you're able to make a payment okay, going back to the business aspect of this what are the some of the financial lessons that you've learnt since back in 2018 till date right now very great lessons financially and especially now after covid happened there are so many things that had to change like your spending our spending budget had to slow down because we were unsure when covid was starting out and some things that we learnt is during pandemics or crisis customers can react in very different ways so if you had some specific financial metrics you had set forth then it will become very difficult to achieve them but because you want to be a dynamic company then you want to adopt very fast to the new changing norm and so we've been able to find out ways to manuva through the covid-19 with very little funds minimizing our movement as a team and being able to only invest in what we require so those are like our key major lessons specifically after covid-19 and then the thing that we discovered with covid-19 is people need to make money and so we have people who have furnished apartment who are relying on maybe tourists so for the last six months we've not had tourists come into the country so for us we saw that as an opportunity and at the moment we're able to work with people who own furnished apartment we're able to tell them our model and how it operates and if they agree we sign an agreement with them and then we're able to get guests for them so all actually long term members to be able to take up their space because they need to consistently make an income from their house so we are telling people you must not rent your full apartment one single person now you can rent out to a few other people maybe if it's a three bedroom apartment you can give it to three people and then they're able to share cost you have maintained financial income coming in as well as giving an opportunity for young people to be able to experience a specific location and they can pay at an affordable rate and Bumfez, I would like to find out what's the average price for one bedroom apartment in your buildings in any of your buildings I mean before I give average it's really ideal for me to just give a few issues just the housing space was everybody understands that pricing depends on one location so affordability question is also directly attached to the location and of course the services that are being provided so I think we have arranged from about 20,000 on the up market and I mean we go way up to about 80k and per room and for like the 80k is I mean it's modern furnished swimming pool, gym close to the mall you get cleaning seven days a week literally you I mean we call it luxury living right so yeah you get like literally everything but also on the downside is we realize that even though young people are able to afford these but they also get strained at some point because of the salaries that they are actually earning so I think we've been working day and night to try and get as low as 15,000 for these people because then in the up market if we can get that then I mean young people will be able to get value for that money in terms of vacation homes if you're looking at places in Mombasa we get as low as 2,500 and probably it's close to the beach it's probably a beach house in Kisumu areas like Donga beach Milimani again as low as 2,500 but you can rent an entire villa if you're looking at that you're balding like lad so I mean one thing about villa by the way is that we decided that even though we are targeting a market one thing you need to give a people the consumers is options it's options what can I choose from so if this month while you're balding as we're saying you can choose what fits you but if you're also looking at to really extremely cut down on cost but still get the experience then we still have those options for you All right Isaac, how are the investors looking at this situation I don't even mention that one of them were streams of making financial help one of the streams is three investors how are the investors looking at this situation of co-living basically it's been a global trend co-living and if you look at markets like US Europe and even some parts of Asia co-living has been well spread but here in Africa because of our cultural beliefs of not being able to share a space with someone you don't know or even sharing a space with both genders it's something that most people are not very open to but for us we want to tell people if you know you're dignity then you can be able to live with another person and because of that investors are very excited because of co-living spaces they are trying to solve unaffordability issue and like you remember affordable housing in Kenya is something that we might not be able to achieve 100% by constructing building but if we can be able to also look at alternatives to technology then that is something that will be viable for the market because Kenya is a tech driven country and the youths are tech savvy so basically if you are able to give them a service through a platform then it becomes interesting for the investors investors are excited and they are looking at how how fast can you grow how fast can you be able to attract more people to live in your space and if you can be able to achieve that I definitely assure you that money will come along your way and we are looking for more investment opportunities with various organizations out there both locally and externally it's an exciting journey I'll say basically and with COVID-19 people are adopting to the new norm where you actually believe that you can work from home so if you're working from home you're going to look for a location that has everything that you might need not to move so many places so that you're able to settle in one place, work from home and be able to earn your money and also access a community so it's an interesting change of dynamics we have in the country and specifically if we are looking at how does the next 10 years look like for the young people and you know most African countries they have like very young ages of people like an average age of 19 years if you remember that was done a few years ago so we are looking at how do we actually bring trust to these people that they can be able to share spaces as early as today so that within a few years the person who is 19 today when they graduate from campus they are able to work in a location that they feel comfortable but also live in a location where they feel like they are they are part of it it's a home, community, family what are a couple of challenges what are the major challenges that you are facing I would say the major challenge at the moment has been able to break the cultural barrier in the Kenyan society and especially people ask how do you share spaces with other people especially the gender part yes, especially the gender part I believe most men and women you went through high school as a boy school you went through campus and you lived in a domituri that was male gender or maybe female gender and so it becomes very hard for these people to actually think of sharing an apartment as an alternative to affordable housing so that has been the greatest challenge we've been trying to tackle and we believe we will be able to tackle as much as we are able to talk to people because when you have conversations with people you give them another aspect of life and those who are open enough they will adopt it the rest will adopt as they go by ok, boomfix will find out a couple of achievements just as you wind up achievements I think for me and also as a company one of our achievements one thing that we look at the top one is the impact that we are able to create for the few clients that we have been able to sign up because I mean if we are able to help one person cut down on cost get affordable housing and live in a space they feel secure safe and reduce just the constraints that comes with another alternative not so affordable housing then I think that can be like one of the things we can be most proud of but also the other achievement I think it's just being able to build a team around these startups are no easy running businesses is not easy I mean if you're just starting up you're trying to build system you're trying to build structures a lot of you think in a very different way but our team has been able to just build up around that specific system and just believing that this will work despite people feeling like co-living is not something that could happen but we've really been insist insisting on just doing the research we now understand probably more of frequent research getting client and customer perspective around these how they want us to provide more efficient services and I think with that data we're able to just tell the market this is how you need to work this is the path you need to take if you're going to create an impact to these young people and at the same time also make money but the other of course impact is building a village for the last two years I mean I think for me that has been an achievement and I don't know what Isaac will say about that but for me that has been achievement building a company to where it is actually but we still look forward to just working on this we look forward to hosting more young people we look forward to people changing perspective and just having a different eye to like see this but most importantly to co-living changing gender issues around housing aspect like you kept on mentioning sharing an apartment and he is a male gender and a female gender I mean he shouldn't be like these are two different things I mean this is a humanity by the nowhere I thought people were created to be separated to be defined by their genders this is one of the things that I'm looking forward to and if village is able to break this I think it would be kind of a lifetime achievement alright as you wind up Isaac I would like to find out for the sake of my viewers how can guys reach out to you if they want to give this conversation going and just learn more about village so you can find us through our social media platform we have Facebook the village T-H-E V-L-A-G-E and Twitter the same Twitter handle at the village LinkedIn at the village and we also have our website www.thevillage.com alright as simple as that that can reach out to you find out more about the village thank you guys for creating time to be with us this was a very interesting conversation to have concerning co-living so if you have any question what you have to do is reach out to them the village world limited that's their website so at Y2F4 channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles at michelleashira is where you can reach out across all my socials so right now we are taking a quick break and we'll be right back