Shawn Cheah Wants Your Space

Every university student is familiar with the painful process of spring term ending. What once was a room filled with your most cherished possessions has now become a logistical nightmare. You take stock of your dorm room and all the free random company swag you have accumulated throughout the year – and start packing up. Your move is temporary. You’ll be back on campus next semester, but for now the dorms are closing and you need to be out of there.

Racking your brain for options, you decide you must either appeal to the kindness of your parents, or the hard costs of short-term professional storage between £50 to £60 per month for a small locker. Pressed for time, you sign the storage contract only to receive some unfortunate news from your short-term rental space provider.

The extra set of pens and hoodie you picked at the last recruiting event has put you over the space limit. Your locker now costs £150 per month. The situation is far from ideal, but by now you are out of the country. Are the bags under your eyes from finals or from move out? You’ll never be certain.

Shawn Cheah thinks there could be an easier way. His startup, Unilocker, helps match London-based university students with other students who advertise their extra space. The platform serves as an all-in-one system, offering features such as messaging and payment processing for hosts and storers.

Unilocker verifies all users by requiring educational email addresses to sign up and manually reviews each listing to prevent spam. Additionally, they handle the processing of all financial transactions between host and seller. Like Airbnb, storers must pay upfront to send a booking request, with the funds only charged if the host accepts. Unilocker then holds the payment and only releases it to the host after the storage has been provided. This is designed to protect hosts against non-payments and storers from scams.

Shawn is not an unlikely founder for short-term storage solutions – it’s deeply personal for him. As a service designer major, he decided to create Unilocker to help out the student community. Born in Malaysia, he moved around frequently as a child, first to Australia and then later to Singapore before coming to the UK. The experiences left a deep sense of frustration.

“When you have a break in terms of accommodation contracts, it becomes incredibly challenging.”

He continued, “What I’ve noticed is that it’s very hard to find storage companies that are flexible in their terms. Sometimes you don’t need a whole storage unit; sometimes you just need a bit of extra space. But then you have to pay extra for the next tier.”

He’s hoping Unilocker can make this process easier for students. At the moment, the platform is maintained by Imperial students who want to volunteer their time on the project. Shawn notes they are always seeking more students who want to get involved and work on the platform.

In the long term, assuming the platform continues to grow, he’d like to start looking for VC funding via a pre-seed round and eventually scale out across the UK. Currently, Unilocker is pre-revenue as it takes no fees from the deals it brokers. Neither Shawn nor anyone affiliated with the team have taken any money from the project.

In the short term, however, the Unilocker team is focusing on further validating their core business model and gauging continued student interest over the summer. Currently, they have accumulated numerous 5-star reviews on Google from Imperial students. Their previous pilot program last summer had over 180 students participate with hosts making £500 on average. The program will run again this summer.

If you are looking for some extra income during the semester, or you are seeking a personal touch and flexibility with your storage needs, Unilocker could be the perfect platform for you! As for students who want to be involved with the project, Shawn Cheah can be contacted here: shawn@unilocker.co.uk.