If you are a student at Emory University, you have seen countless messages sent via GroupMe from peers asking for anything — from cooking supplies to extra stationery to textbooks. While resourceful, this disorganized method of obtaining supplies more often leads to confusion than successful and careful transfers.
Dharshini Kannan (26Ox) and Samuel Santana (26Ox), two friends who met during first-year pre-orientation, have witnessed this chaotic exchange firsthand at Oxford College. Taking matters into their own hands, the duo created Poxkit, a gamified marketplace app for college students, currently only available to Oxford students. The app, which debuted on the App Store on March 18, emerged from Santana’s desire for a more streamlined process for requesting items.
The app’s feed tab allows users to request and trade for any item they need. To proceed with a trade, users must pay with in-app coins earned by playing minigames, sharing content or logging in daily. The app tracks successful trades via photo submissions, and the parties involved in the trade can exchange coins only after the app has received a clear photo. If someone forgets to return a borrowed item, the app charges the person coins.
While the feed enables temporary trading, students can purchase items in the marketplace section. This way, Poxkit allows students to exchange real money for non-returnable commodities. Confidential third-party app Stripe processes these transactions so financial data is not collected or stored, according to Kannan. The app also includes a messaging platform, a profile page and a leaderboard where users with the most coins can earn prizes such as gift cards.
Santana first conceived Poxkit when he noticed Kannan constantly asking her friends for various supplies. While poking fun at Kannan’s incessant borrowing, the duo stumbled upon their idea: to create an app through which students could find necessary items without having to search door to door.
At its inception, Poxkit was just a few scribbles on a whiteboard. However, Kannan and Santana decided to design the app around a map of Oxford — a choice that became Poxkit’s foundation, informing everything from the user interface to the design. Throughout the development process, the whiteboard was home to ideas and anxieties — such as how they would verify the trades — but after making the map, the app came to fruition and Kannan submitted it to iOS.
“I know Dharshini had a lot of fun making the map,” Santana said. “It's just really cool seeing our campus into the game.”
The map is not the only thing inspired by Oxford’s campus: The entire app features Oxford-specific imagery. For example, the app logo includes Sox, a black-and-white cat that frequents the campus. To Santana, ensuring Oxford remained central to the app’s design was one of the most enjoyable parts of the development process.
“Those little things that just make it Oxford-specific are the most fun to watch,” Santana said.
Kannan, who had little prior experience with app development, learned to code JavaScript and other coding languages to supplement Santana’s creative direction.
“I like coding it. So it was convenient, because he came up with the idea,” Kannan said.
Initially, Kannan and Santana went around campus to market the app's release and inform friends and acquaintances about their creation. After allowing people to “play around” in the app’s development build, they began advertising Poxkit on a larger scale.
While the duo hopes to bring the app to the Atlanta campus by the beginning 0f 2026. But, no matter how big the app gets, they want to retain Poxkit’s current community-like feeling above all else.
“Oxford is known for having its close-knit community, and we just essentially want to bring that exact same feeling to other schools,” Santana said.
