Price comparison platform Pricelookers has launched in Nigeria, leveraging artificial intelligence to provide a comprehensive price checking service for all e-commerce sales in the country.
Pricelookers launched in September with the goal of being the easiest-to-use, uncluttered and intuitive user interface for everyday Nigerian web users shopping online.
The platform currently allows users to compare prices of products available on Jumia, Konga, Payporte, Kara, Slot and Kilimall; with further e-commerce sites to be continuously added with the aim of listing all products available to buy online in Nigeria.
The startup uses intelligent crawling technology to gather information on products available on e-commerce stores in Nigeria, and relies on artificial intelligence to ensure the highest precision in product matching – so users can locate prices for the exact same products without having to try various different searches.
“Price comparison websites are convenient and time-efficient platforms for users to save money by comparing prices across multiple stores, as well as for users to explore all the available shopping options offered by these stores. Whereas countries such as USA, UK and India have mature price comparison websites, there is a dearth of such sites in Nigeria,” says Mark Melton, founder of Pricelookers.
The existing price comparison sites in Nigeria have a number of major drawbacks, Melton says. They list from only a handful of the e-commerce stores available, only show a subset of the products offered by these stores, and prices are often out of date.
Products are also often not correctly matched, so it becomes a laborious process for users attempt to compare prices of a specific product.
Melton believes Pricelookers can address all these issues through its reliance on intelligence technologies; with the startup currently focusing all its efforts on indexing all products available to buy online in Nigeria – with monetisation and marketing not priorities for the moment.
“Our priority is to develop a near perfect, highly reliable price comparison machine which users can trust and rely on for their daily price comparison and window shopping needs,” he says.
“Our end goal is to become Africa’s e-commerce gateway, to become the doorway to shopping for all Africans.”
