LocaLì

A platform for international students navigating an unfamiliar city, built after killing the first version where the model didn't hold.

The Insight

Every year, 50,000 international students arrive in Italy alone, full of expectations, and completely blind to the city they're about to live in for six months. Their only references are the few people they met in the first days and chaotic WhatsApp groups where thousands of messages pile up without answering the one question that matters: what should I do tonight, and where?

The problem compounds in two directions. Time: 180 days feel like an eternity until you realize every hour spent figuring out where to go is a piece of the experience gone. Resources: every tourist trap, every missed discount, every wrong neighborhood at the wrong hour is money and freedom you don't get back.

The result is a number that shouldn't exist: only 34% of international students manage to actually integrate into the city they live in. Not because they lack motivation, but because no tool was built for them.

The Product

LocaLì works through three pillars.

Explore maps the places that actually matter to international students, from quiet study rooms to the best spots to go out, so you stop navigating blind and start experiencing the city like someone who actually lives there.

Student Deals solves a specific invisibility problem: every city is full of discounts and benefits reserved for students, but they're scattered across fragmented websites, window signs and last minute word of mouth. Nobody finds them until it's too late. LocaLì aggregates them in one place: you walk in, show the code on the app linked to your student card, and pay less. Immediately.

Safe & Chill closes the loop: real time crowdsourced reports from other students in the community show you the safest route home, based on what's actually happening in the city at that moment.