What Do We Know About DigsConnect Founder Alexandria Procter?

With a presence in over 400 cities, Digsconnect is the most prominent student housing marketplace in South Africa. The company’s founder, Alexandria Procter, has created a platform for students that helps them find a global home.

DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter broke the barriers with her ideas and responsibility. Her company has successfully connected over 150,000 landlords and tenants, resulting in millions of pounds in lease value.

Procter has built a service that lists over 1.3 million beds. In this article, let’s explore how a young woman came up with the idea and what we know about her journey.

Early Life

DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter was born in Port Elizabeth, a popular city in the Eastern Cape. Her father, Dr Peter Procter, and mother, Heidi Procter, are proud parents of the talented youngster who finished her schooling at 17.

The founder spent a year traveling solo throughout India, Southeast Asia, the USA, South America, and the UK. While traveling, she gained extensive environmental and development knowledge and later returned to South Africa.

DigsConnect Founder Alexandria Procter. Image Credit: Facebook.

As an undergraduate student leader at the University of Cape Town, she directly assisted many students in finding accommodation. The capability to handle such responsibilities effectively inspired her to be an exception and break the barriers with innovation.

Landlords began to contact her, expressing interest in offering students their spare rooms, vacancies, and beds. They inquired about the best ways to advertise these accommodations. This started the journey of DigsConnect as an online marketplace catering to this specific market.

Education

Alexandria was always good and curious about academics, and there is no doubt how she could make such decisions as an undergraduate.

DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter graduated from DSG Grahamstown High School. In high school, she believed a small, young group could also develop a solution to address a real-life problem.

DigsConnect Founder Alexandria Procter. Image Credit: Facebook.

Alexandria then studied at the University of Cape Town for a Bachelor of Science in 2016. She knew she had something good and believed it would work out in the real world.

Later, she also studied at the Stellenbosch Flying Club. She is genuinely enthusiastic, and DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter’s personality deserves further exploration. Continue reading to find out more.

ALSO READ: Deepgram CEO Scott Stephenson: From Dark Matter To Deep Learning

Professional Career

DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter started her professional journey at COSAT (Centre of Science and Technology) as a Debate Coach in 2013. Since then, she hasn’t stopped succeeding and achieving new levels of success in her career.

Table Source: LinkedIn

Procter has held many more positions and roles and has taken responsibility for them, such as presenting news shows at UCT Radio for ten months from February 2014 to November 2014.

DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter has also worked in multiple companies for a short period of time, such as a judge at Heavy Chef (Pty) Ltd for two months, a Delegate at G20 India for eleven months, a Delegate at COP28 UAE for two months, a speaker at Famous Faces Management for five months, and an Ambassador at Project Y from January 2024 to the present.

Story Behind DigsConnect

DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter has mentioned that one of the most important people that led to founding Digsconect was when she met Greg Ramsay. Greg and Alexandria founded Digsconnect in 2018 when both of them were students.

During this time, Procter was responsible for finding student accommodation, but there was an issue. South Africa was facing major protests across all campuses, forcing students to live in wood and tin shacks on campus. Students in Africa were often living in unsafe conditions and dangerous parts of cities.

This made the idea of Digsconnect a success, and both of them were able to raise nearly R12 million seed funding round in just 13 months. Porter said that Greg mainly convinced the business when she stated,

” None of this would be possible without him. He was the one who spotted the opportunity when my fledgling website’s traffic was exploding; he convinced me that we should turn this into a business.”

Since the business was already able to generate good funding and had a ton of potential, this business made Procter one of the richest and youngest millionaires in South Africa.

DigsConnect, as expected, was a sucess. Currently, they have over 150,000 landlords and over 1.3 million beds. Procter confidently predicts Digsconnect will continue its upward trajectory, aiming to generate a lease value of R1 billion in the current year.

Procter also recently wrote her own book, Upstart, in which she discusses her journey to creating a thriving business during Protests and hard times.

Achievements

Talking about the CEO’s achievements, an incredible journey starts with building the business and utilizing technology to unite people and create communities, ensuring no student feels isolated in South Africa’s fourth industrial revolution.

They firmly believe that the power to bring about change lies not in the hands of the government but in the hands of young, ordinary South Africans who can create the solutions they and their fellow citizens need.

DigsConnect Founder Alexandria Procter. Image Credit: Facebook.

One story that stands out is about Grace, a Zimbabwean student at UCT. Every year, Grace faced challenges obtaining her student visa due to the requirement of a signed lease as proof of accommodation.

Before DigsConnect existed, there was no decentralized platform with a trusted third-party accreditation system. As a result, having to pay a deposit to secure a room from a random “landlord” she had never met before was a stressful and unpleasant experience. This led to fraudsters attempting to con her out of deposits with fake properties and always experiencing delays in obtaining her student visa.

DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter found accommodation on DigsConnect, was vetted by the team, paid her deposit with peace of mind, and secured her visa in time for the academic year. Life improved for Grace and thousands of foreign students studying in South Africa. What could be a bigger achievement than this? Helping lives easier and making a safe environment for students to learn.

Net Worth

In March 2019, Digsconnect, in its initial stage, raised $830,000 in seed funding. DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter secured a grant of US$200,000 from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. They recently partnered with the world’s largest student accommodation site, Student.com, allowing them to expand their operations worldwide.

The company changed its revenue model and started charging a commission based on the lease value. After a landlord finds a tenant and signs a lease, DigsConnect earns a 3.5% commission on the value of that lease.

They successfully increased their valuation to 1 million after 6 rounds of funding by different institutional investors, helping them grow and make it a global motive business; if the growth process goes like this, there won’t be any surprise to get the news of a $1 billion valuation.

Although Procter’s networth is not revealed, it’s obvious that she has the idea and business to succeed financially in the future. With so much support from the community and good funding rounds, it will be fun to see how far Procter will go in the world of business and innovation.

FAQ’s 

Q: Who is the founder of DigsConnect?

A: Alexandria Procter founded DigsConnect, though others joined her later.

Q: Where was DigsConnect founder born?

A: DigsConnect founder Alexandria Procter was born in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape.

Q: What does DigsConnect do?

A: DigsConnect is a platform that helps students find a global home and navigate them through the accommodation process.

ictmirror.com contains affiliate links. Meaning ictmirror.com receives commissions for purchases made through those links, at no cost to you.