A race against time. This is how you can describe the life of a local app developer, Dennis Bhayi. He developed an app called Roof Tops (RT) social network and which was released in June.

Bhayi’s company’s name is Snow White Media Lab. His journey started when he fell in love with IT, and he studied this at City College. According to him, he decided to create the app because not everyone can navigate the Internet through browsers.

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“I decided to create apps that people can access on their phones on the go. This makes it easy for them to share and access what they need. I started planning my social network in 2018 and then implemented the idea by coding last February. Around August last year I released a messenger for the app called RT Messenger.

Unfortunately, I had commitments and I only started working on it again in March. I created a complex of the app and also added various things to make it interesting for users.” He said RT messenger is easy to use. “When using it you can send and receive messages, pictures, voice notes, videos, documents and make voice and video calls.

The users can post music directly to a timeline and the other members can also listen to it directly from your post. You can ‘like’ or comment on the posts shared. It has an admin panel in which I can see how many people are using it, registered and who is logged in.

For now, there are 30 people registered and I am hoping that the numbers will soon change,” he explained. On RT users can open online stores. “They can advertise, sell their product and there is also an option for them to pay cash on delivery or credit card,” Bhayi added.

He aims to make life easy for users when surfing the Internet. But the development did not come without its challenges.

“Due to an eye disease that requires a cornea transplant, I might not be able to see my final products. I am unable to raise funds for my procedure, but I am keeping faith in knowing that I am still able to do what I love.”

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Bhayi said not even the chance of him losing his vision will stop him from doing what he is passionate about. He is currently developing a cloud service for his social network.

“The name of the cloud service is Cloud nine, it works like your iCloud and Google drive. I added a lot of features and five people can edit the same document from different places.”

To access this social network, you can visit www.rooftops.net.za. There is also an app store called www.bhayiappstore.co.za where you can download it directly.

“For now this is only available on Android phones. The users can send friend requests and only those who have the app on their phones can access it,” he said.

Apart from his love of IT, Bhayi is also a co-founder of the Thaba Chweu Music Awards and is involved with various local initiatives.