Education finance specialist Eduloan is gearing to redefine the greater education-solutions space in the country starting with its rebrand as “Fundi”.
Revamped to reposition the brand in the market, Fundi’s launch is the culmination of almost a year of in-depth customer research, focus group sessions, brainstorms, late nights, hard work and exceptional effort according to Keitumetse Molebatsi, marketing manager at Fundi.
A change in South African educational landscape late last year, and subsequent change in strategy necessitated the rebrand – in order to take on a new, differentiated and compelling value proposition to market. This approach is part of the company’s new vision of a complete education solution to South Africa’s “missing middle”.
“Our starting point was finding a name that would resonate with our new essence, and capture our brand promise. It also needed to appeal to our very diverse target audience. This includes everyone from first time university students all the way through to corporates looking for a partner to enable their bursary fund administration,” says Molebatsi.
The company’s TTL agency, the Riverbed was brought on board at the start of the process – ensuring the right foundation was laid from the outset. “Critical for us was understanding the diversity of Fundi’s target market, and what was driving them to invest further in education either for themselves or on behalf of others,” explains Monalisa Zwambila, managing director of the Riverbed. “We then needed to find a creative way to capture the brand’s new story and take it to market in a compelling way.”
The choice of “Fundi” as the name has set the scene for the brand’s next chapter. “‘Fundi’ captures various elements of the brand’s forward-facing journey,” notes Zwambila. “Not only does its meaning speak directly to a passion for learning and striving for excellence, but the name itself includes both ‘fun’ and ‘fund’, as well as ‘u’ and ‘I’ – which speaks to how the brand will be partnering with its clients to enable their learning.”
With the name chosen and the payoff of “Know more. Be more” selected, Riverbed then went on to develop corresponding creative – including all collateral, and advertising, as well as a TV commercial. “Rethinking our website and focusing it around our customers to be user-friendly and easy to navigate was also critical,” says Molebatsi. “It has additionally been developed so that we add new features easily and scale it to be fully interactive going forward.
“We’re here and ready to help learners embarking on or continuing their education journeys in their quest to ‘Know more. Be more’, as well as the parents and sponsors supporting them. Our fund administration offering – which we pioneered locally – is also set to attract significant interest, as employees start considering their growth paths for next year,” she concludes.
