About
Roomiverse is a rental matching platform that believes the people matter as much as the property.
Long before Roomiverse, we were the kind of people who brought unlikely people together. Different backgrounds, different worlds, somehow the right fit.
Watching the housing crisis unfold, we noticed everyday South Africans were already solving it for themselves through informal co-living. But informal is where the friction lives. Sharing a home is deeply intimate. So we asked: what if we brought that same matchmaking instinct to rental housing?
Renting has never been just about property. It is about the people who will live in it, around it, and make it a home. So we built Roomiverse: a direct response to South Africa's housing crisis that turns co-living and house shares into a structured, premium alternative to living alone. Whether we are matching roommates into a shared house or the right independent tenant to a single unit, living together works by design, not by chance.
Some of the best connections are the ones you never would have expected. Different ages, different worlds, and somehow the way you live fits. That is what we are curious about.
Everyone is interesting. We look where others refuse to look, matching the people and places everyone else misses.
People first, property second. When the landlord, tenant and co-tenant relationship is cared for, the property thrives on its own.
Great matches are not always obvious on paper. We find the hidden compatibility that turns unexpected pairings into stable, multi-year relationships.
Between us we have spent years building things. Somewhere between Ashia's obsession with fixing things herself and Mpho's eye for the fine print, Roomiverse was born. Both of us were chosen for two of South Africa's most selective scholarship programmes: Mpho as an Allan Gray Fellow, Ashia as an SBF alumna.
Ashia is a strategist and social architect. She designs how people, systems and spaces fit together, and leads the product and platform that bring Roomiverse to life.
BSocSci in Organisational Psychology and Sociology, University of Cape Town. Years in strategy and organisational psychology. Jasiri Fellow.
Mpho makes sure the whole thing stands up. He runs the business side of Roomiverse: the economics behind every fee, the agreements landlords and tenants sign, and the compliance that keeps everyone's data and rights protected.
Bachelor's in Finance and Law. Master's in Socio Economic Rights. Studied at Wits and the University of Pretoria. Jasiri Fellow.
Our matching model is built by both of us. We ask what you need, how you live and who you want around you, and only then what you can afford. Ashia brings psychology and sociology, Mpho brings finance, law and socio economic rights. Two very different lives and lenses, which is exactly why it works for so many different people.
Roomiverse is backed by funders and partners who believe housing in South Africa can work better for the people in it.
We work alongside a number of commercial landlords in Cape Town. Their portfolios are doing really well: fewer vacancies, steadier households and tenants who stay. If you own property, we would love to show you why.
Maybe you become friends. Maybe you become the people who share Sunday dinners. Maybe you barely speak beyond a good morning in the kitchen. Maybe, years from now, you realise that moving into that house introduced you to someone you would never have met otherwise.
We cannot predict what happens after people meet. That is the curious part. The right match can be the beginning of something much bigger than a lease.
