From accommodation and student communities to buying, selling and creating income opportunities, Vacua Students is designed to bring different parts of the student experience together on one trusted platform.
When Dr Yusuff Awosanya arrived in the United Kingdom more than a decade ago, he had ambition, academic qualifications and a determination to build a future. What he did not have was a UK credit history, a guarantor or an established support network. Finding accommodation became one of the most difficult parts of his journey.
During some of his most challenging periods, he says he slept in train stations, mosques and university libraries while taking whatever work he could find to survive, including cleaning floors, washing toilets and working as a football match steward.
Years later, after completing his PhD in Finance, those experiences would inspire one of his biggest entrepreneurial projects: Vacua Students.
Launched in Manchester in July 2026, Vacua Students is a UK-based platform designed to help international and other students navigate the practical challenges of university life. Its underlying idea is simple: students need more than somewhere to live. They need trusted information, people to connect with, opportunities to earn, affordable ways to buy and sell, and practical support as they adjust to a new environment.
Vacua brings these elements together through three core areas: community, marketplace and accommodation.
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1. Community: Students Helping Students
The platform’s student community allows users to share university updates, opportunities, experiences and advice.
For an international student arriving in the UK for the first time, this could mean finding information about their university, local area, transport, shopping, part-time opportunities or simply learning how to settle into a new environment. Students can learn from others who have already navigated those experiences, share opportunities and build connections.
The aim is not simply to create another social network, but a community centred on the realities of student life.
2. Marketplace: Buy, Sell and Earn
The Vacua marketplace allows students to buy and sell items within the student community. Desks, computers, televisions, kitchen equipment, bicycles, furniture and clothing are among the items students may no longer need when they graduate or move accommodation.
A graduating student could sell a desktop computer to a fresher who needs one, while someone moving out could sell furniture and kitchen equipment rather than leaving them behind. In this way, one student’s unwanted item can become another student’s affordable solution.
The marketplace also creates opportunities for students to earn from their skills. Students could offer services such as hair braiding, cleaning, tutoring, photography, graphic design, cooking, campus tours or moving assistance, depending on their skills and availability.
For students trying to make ends meet, this provides a potential way to turn existing skills, knowledge and spare time into additional income within the limits of their permitted working hours.
Students are therefore not simply users of Vacua; they can also become providers, sellers and entrepreneurs within their own community.
3. Accommodation: Finding and Sharing Space
The third part of Vacua focuses on student accommodation, connecting students with housing opportunities and helping address some of the difficulties involved in finding somewhere to live.
For international students arriving without a UK credit history, guarantor or established network, these challenges can be particularly difficult. Vacua also aims to facilitate shared accommodation and shared-space opportunities that could make living arrangements more accessible and affordable.
Together, the three elements address different but connected parts of student life: the community helps students connect, the marketplace helps them buy, sell and earn, while accommodation helps them find and share living space.
Verification at the Heart of Vacua
Running across the platform is another important principle: verification.
Students increasingly rely on open social media groups to find accommodation, buy and sell belongings, ask questions and meet other students. While these platforms can be useful, they can also leave users asking a basic question: who is actually behind the profile?
Vacua has therefore placed significant emphasis on student verification. The platform is designed to put users through a verification process, giving students greater confidence that the people they interact with are genuine members of the student community.
This is particularly relevant when buying a laptop, selling a desk, offering a service or joining a community and sharing information. The aim is not to suggest that verification eliminates every risk, but to build trust into the platform rather than leaving students entirely dependent on unverified social-media profiles.
The Experience Behind the Idea
For Yusuff, the idea behind Vacua is rooted in years of working with students and his own experience as an international student.
While studying at the University of Bolton, he served as a student ambassador and Vice President of the Postgraduate Society, representing postgraduate students and gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by international students. He also served on the university’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee, where student concerns were brought into institutional discussions.
These experiences helped him recognise that many of the difficulties he had encountered were not unique to him. Other international students were facing similar challenges. That understanding has continued to shape his work with students through the Daytopia Mentoring Network, a mentoring initiative that has supported hundreds of young people across universities in Nigeria and Africa.
His experience has given him a perspective on student life that extends beyond the classroom.
Vacua launched in Manchester in July 2026 and has since extended its reach to students connected with Aston University, the University of Warwick, Birmingham City University, the University of Birmingham and Coventry University. Within its first five days, the platform recorded 6,890 impressions and 700 downloads, with more than 10 student communities created and its first marketplace transaction completed.
The company says its focus is now on developing the wider student ecosystem and expanding the opportunities available to users.
“Vacua is ultimately about making the student journey easier,” Yusuff says. “We want to build an ecosystem where students can find accommodation, connect with other students, access opportunities, buy and sell, earn from their skills and participate in a community that understands what they are going through.”
For someone whose own journey began with uncertainty about where he would sleep, building Vacua represents a full-circle moment. But the ambition is now much bigger than accommodation.
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