Written by: Shanice Pillay

Some would say graduating in Public Relations and owning an Information Technology company does not correspond. But for 23-year-old Terry Mavundla, it was all in an act of faith.

“(I was) born in Gauteng, moved to Newcastle to live with my grandmother, I then moved to Empangeni, outside of Richards Bay, where I finished. I come from a family of four, where I am the oldest,” said Mavundla.

After matriculating from Empangeni High School, he started a business venture in 2013 after which he realised that he needed to add tertiary education to his resume.

“It was actually a funny story. One of my friends heard that some IT guys were saying ‘Did you hear of a guy named Terry studying Public Relations but has an IT company? But he didn’t study IT and it’s actually doing well’. I think my story is one of which whereby the world is full of opportunities,” he said.

The movie ‘American Pie’ gave him an idea of what tertiary institution would be like, the choice of Public Relations was his only option to experience the life of university, which is not what he expected to be grateful for.

‘Wisolve’ was created at the Durban University of Technology’s (DUT) Campbell Hall residence. Mavundla and his friends were frustrated with always missing out on important programmes that happened around campus due to lack of advertisement.

“We approached Housing Department at DUT and asked them why we don’t have a system that could send SMS’s directly, because the buzz of smart phones and the use of apps wasn’t as important as it is now.”

We also considered students who cannot afford smart phones, so thought of an SMS gateway whereby if anything should happen at DUT would send an SMS, and from that idea it started,” said Mavundla.

Wisolve is a company that solves organisations problems through IT solutions, as well as design company logos, profiles and even letterheads. The name of the company is something different but has a lot of meaning. ‘I’ in Wisolve, is a silent ‘E’, but it is pronounced as ‘We’ but it represents the ‘I’ in IT.

From there, Mavundla and his friends moved to DUT executive management whereby they were approved to make a DUT application which is under the education application department called ‘Istudent’, which allows all universities to connect with their students.

The soccer fanatic believes that patience and perseverance is the key to life’s opportunities.

Caption: Terry Mavundla, one of the founders of the DUT Wisolve app.