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Pakistan’s online shoppers can now find the right product at the right price, thanks to the ease of comparing prices at PriceOye.pk
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Pakistan has witnessed a significant rise in online shopping trends and e-commerce businesses over past few years. Currently, more than US$ 30 million is being spent on online purchases, which is expected to reach over US$ 600 million by 2017.
With new online startups and shopping ventures springing up rapidly every year, this is perhaps the best time for any new price comparison startup to enter Pakistan’s e-commerce arena. These websites are also encouraging more people to start shopping online.
Consumers can now find the right product or service at the right price, thanks to the ease of comparing prices.
PriceOye.pk is Pakistan’s leading platform which offers unique online shopping experience by allowing customers to compare prices of thousands of products sold online. The mission of PriceOye.pk is simply to make online shopping easy!
We recently interviewed the team behind PriceOye.pk to find out what makes them tick:
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Where and how did the idea for the startup come from?
After working in the international technology blogging industry for several years, we wanted to work on a product that would solve problems for Pakistanis. After months of research in the local E-commerce industry which is growing incredibly fast, we came to the conclusion that comparison shopping is a big problem that is faced by everyone who shops online. This gave birth to PriceOye.pk as it is known today.
We started the venture back in mid-2015. It took us around six months to build a basic version of the platform, which we launched in beta in early-2016.
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How difficult was it to arrange the resources and bring together the team?
It actually wasn’t difficult at all. I have been working with my friend Adnan Shaffi on several projects before this, so when we talked about working on a Pakistani startup we immediately clicked and began working on it. We pooled resources from previous successful projects, and are still bootstrapping the company, along with our third co-founder Adeel Shaffi who is a brilliant software developer.
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Who exactly is the target audience for your services?
Our grand target audience is every single Pakistani who shops both offline and online, but for now due to limited resources we are specifically focusing on Pakistanis who shop for mobile phones online.
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How PriceOye.pk is benefiting consumers?
As a consumer, you can visit PriceOye.pk to find the latest and lowest prices of mobile phones in Pakistan, which can save you up to Rs. 10,000! We have phones from all the popular brands like Samsung, Huawei and QMobile, among dozen others. Their prices are actual market prices taken from trusted online stores like Daraz, Homeshopping, yayvo.com etc. and are updated automatically.
[dt_quote type=”pullquote” layout=”right” font_size=”normal” animation=”none” size=”2″]You can visit PriceOye.pk to find the latest and lowest prices of mobile phones in Pakistan and save up to Rs. 10,000[/dt_quote]
This is unlike existing price estimation services that give you a price estimate, which usually isn’t reflective of actual market prices. We are just working with mobile phones for now, but will soon be expanding to other categories like home appliances and general electronics.
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How did you initially raise funding for your company?
As shared previously, we began working on PriceOye.pk after successful international technology blogging projects, so the funds raised are our own. We are bootstrapping the company.
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Have you spoken to an incubator or an accelerator or have you received any support?
We have a good deal of experience launching and scaling Internet businesses, and have a network of mentors which help us learn and grow. Two of the co-founders are MBAs, so as team we have sound theoretical and practical background in entrepreneurship. As a result, we did not feel the need to go to incubators or accelerators.
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How does your startup stand out against its competitors?
There are indeed a couple of competitors to PriceOye.pk. While our current Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is not incredibly different from them, we believe our long-term strategy – which we have spent considerable time and effort on – is going to be a winner and it’ll show in a few months’ time.
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How is PriceOye.pk changing the concept of online shopping in Pakistan?
We’re making online shopping simple again. If you wanted to find the best price for a particular item previously, you would need to visit a bunch of stores, note down each store’s offerings, and compare them yourself. This tedious process can take hours, and even then you’re not guaranteed to find the lowest price.
PriceOye.pk takes the chore out of online shopping for doing this comparison for you, so you just need to visit a page to see everything you need.
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What has been your greatest achievement so far?
We have only just gotten started, and honestly don’t think we’ve made any incredible achievement yet. There’s a long way to go for us before I answer this question 🙂
Still, if there is one achievement we could mention it would be getting press coverage from local media such as Dawn, ProPakistani, and Daily Pakistan.
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What has been your biggest challenge so far as a startup owner?
Convincing local stores to work together in partnerships has been a persistent challenge, one that we’re slowly overcoming. We did get a lot of help and mentorship from international price comparison services, though, which is helping us become better.
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What is the best lesson you have gained from starting your business?
To work hard in silence, let success make the noise.
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If you could give one piece of advice to someone thinking about starting a business, what would it be?
One should understand that businesses aren’t a piece of cake. You have to be super patient, especially early on, since you have to put in months sometimes years of effort before results start trickling in.
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What exciting features are we going to see from PriceOye.pk in near future?
What you see today is just 5% of what we envision PriceOye.pk to be. We’re starting with mobile phones, and will soon expand to other categories so we cover everything that is sold online in Pakistan. We will also enhance our comparison services so you can compare other useful parameters like warranty, shipment timings etc. in addition to prices.
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