How one entrepreneur has made thousands of international students' time in Nottingham 'unforgettable'!

With a simple mission to ‘Make your time in Nottingham unforgettable!’, Citylife Nottingham is a company dedicated to enhancing the city’s growing international student community through the organisation and delivery of exciting events and activities.

Founded by internationals for internationals, Citylife plans and organises free activities for international students such as language exchanges, dancing events or other social meetings. The company also runs trips to other interesting cities and places in the UK such as Bath, Stonehenge, Cambridge, Oxford, the Lake District and Edinburgh and even internationally to Morocco and Spain. Additional services include helping international students to find suitable accommodation during their time abroad a loyalty card providing discounts with a wide range of restaurants, nightclubs, and bars in Nottingham was recently launched.

We caught up with Citylife Nottingham founder and Business School alumnus Sebastian Kummle (MSc Business and Management, 2016) to find out about his time at Nottingham and how it helped him develop his career.

“I studied Business Information Systems for my undergraduate degree at the Franke Group in Switzerland in cooperation with the Cooperative State University in Lörrach, Germany. At Franke I was responsible for big data analytics, reporting and business analysis. However, during my studies I discovered that I wanted to focus more on business, customer relationship management and marketing than being mainly behind the computer.

“I chose Nottingham University Business School due to its great internationalisation, outstanding accreditation, excellent facilities and care and support of university and teaching staff. They offered me a huge choice of different modules in my Master’s degree and enabled me to discover a passion for entrepreneurship which eventually led to starting my own company. I don’t think this would have happened without the support of the Business School. They have excellent contacts with internationally operating companies and the Ingenuity Lab is an excellent resource for students who want to start their own business.

“I am the Founder and Director of Citylife Nottingham Ltd, but we have already expanded to Leeds and are planning to launch many more cities soon. I like having an insight into all areas of business activity and being responsible for many different things like customer relationship management, IT, sales, marketing, event management, finance, and data analysis. Most of all I enjoy contact with our customers (students) and it is especially satisfying to see how decisions made have a direct influence on how our customers react. For example, if a new marketing campaign is launched I can immediately see the effects positive or negative.

“I stay closely connected with the University, the Business School and other alumni as this is important to me personally but also due to the nature of our business. Also, our office is based in the on Ingenuity Lab at Jubilee Campus.

“Networking is very important for running a successful business but it’s not about collecting contacts, it’s about planting relations.”

Visit the Citylife Nottingham website