Moving the common room notice board to the internet, two Oxford University undergraduates have set up the first free online marketplace solely for students.

Set up by Harjeet Taggar, a second-year Law student, and his cousin Kulveer Taggar, a third-year Politics, Philosophy and Economics undergraduate, boso.co.uk is forum for students to register things they want to buy or sell.

The site is just for students at Oxford University, but there are plans for other sites to be created for eight other universities across the UK.

The service is free although registration requires a university e-mail address to ensure that the site is used only by students. The main idea behind the site was for graduating students to sell things they no longer needed, such as gowns and textbooks, to freshers.

“It seemed silly to us that every year hundreds of freshers were buying loads of stuff brand new, while a similar number of graduates had no further use for those same items,” Harjeet Taggar said.

“As well as ensuring a local source for things like textbooks, we also felt that by making the site student-only, students would be more comfortable buying from other students and feel less likely to be ripped off.”

As the site is university specific, students register their contact details and personally arrange a price and meet up in person to conclude the transaction.

As well as gowns, kettles and books, the site has already caputured the imagination of some students, who advertised their services to deliver roses to students’ pigeonholes on Valentines day.

The idea for an online university-specific marketplace came from Kulveer Taggar, who presented it to the Oxford Entrepreneur Society, part of the Young Enterprise scheme.

After receiving some financial support from the Young Enterprise scheme, it took just eight weeks from the initial presentation to a create fully functioning website “which just goes to show how quickly you can get something going if you have a clear idea”, Harjeet said.

The service is run by a team of 11 students, both graduates and undergraduates. “It's about providing a useful service - not making money out of students,” Harjeet Taggar said. “In fact, we hope this will help people manage their money better.”

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