App created by NJ man to help save on textbooks

If you have a kid in college, or one headed there soon, there's an app for that.

A smartphone application known as Mivy, launched by a Jersey City native, serves as an online marketplace for students to sell their course materials, such as textbooks, to one another at a reasonable price.

Anyone with a '.edu' email account can gain access to the free app, designed to shave a few dollars off the high cost of learning.

Nineteen-year-old Micah Onditi said he created Mivy after spending so much money on material he sometimes never used, and he became even more frustrated when he attempted to sell his books back at the end of the semester, only to receive a fraction of the price.

"In order to stop that, I just made a direct line between us college students in order to get some retribution for all this money that we keep on losing," Onditi said.

Onditi, now a sophomore at Trinity College in Connecticut, knew nothing about creating an app just a year ago, but that quickly changed and in August, Mivy was released.

The app has users at schools in Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey, including Kean University, Montclair State University, Rutgers University, New Jersey Institute of Technology and New Jersey City University.

Onditi said he's currently looking for "Mivy student reps" to spread the word on local campuses. Interested students can contact Onditi at supprt@mivyapp.com.