University may be the best school of life when it comes to coordinating schedules. Which classes do I have to attend, where is the building Ineed to go to? These questions may be solved for the University of Vienna’s 91.000 students with a slide of their fingers: The free mobile app uniVerso was developed by three students of business administration, Michael Lipinski-Harenberg (see inventures.eu’s profile on the co-founder here), Gerhard Nimmervoll and Richard Scheuerlein. They founded Linis GmbH (Inc.) in June 2012 to get uniVerso out on the market by the winter semester. The app has launched on 23 October 2012.
A personalised calendar helps students keep track of lectures and other events. Source: Linis
uniVerso is the first app of its kind in Austria. It promises to guide students through the struggles of university life by providing geographical directions, personalised schedules and event recommendations. Other features include an ECTS-calculator as well as a contact search function of the university’s entire staff.
Since its launch, the ad-financed app has attracted 5.000 users. Linis hope to double this number by the end of the year, as Lipinski-Harenberg told inventures.eu. The long-term goal is to establish uniVerso, which is connected the official student server base, as a staple service for students of the University of Vienna. They also hope to expand their service to other universities in the course of the next year. Considering the number of students enrolled at the University of Vienna – one of the biggest academic institutions in Europe – there is definitely more growth potential in store for uniVerso.
So far, uniVerso has received overwhelmingly positive feedback. “Students keep thanking us and telling us that the app is really useful to them. Of course, there have been slight teething troubles, in particular among android users, but we’re working on it”, says Lipinski-Harenberg. A first update will be available by the start of next week.
