Digital News South Africa

Found Shopping app goes live at Design Indaba

A new local app, Found Shopping, went live over the weekend at Design Indaba, allowing hundreds of people to share and discover the best buys around them.

The highlight for many was getting to vote, with the app or at its stand, for their best finds at the Expo. Cape Wools SA, a non-profit that promotes the use of wool, invited Merino wool designers to exhibit its products and was well loved. So too was Ikstingkt and its wooden rhinos. The most popular section of the Expo was the Emerging Creatives, with the highest density of popular stands.

Found Shopping was inspired by research done at San Francisco State University around a fascinating segment of the market termed Sport Shoppers. Sport Shoppers compete for deals, experience a high when they find something and even train to improve their performance. "We think of deals as little gems hiding in places like the Design Indaba or at shopping malls," says the app's co-founder and CEO, Faheem Kajee. "The app makes it easy for people to share the exhilaration of finding these gems first."

Beyond just letting users share and discover deals, it keeps track of finds and how much the user is saving, as a result. It is entirely based around the location of the user and will work anywhere. Found Shopping ended the weekend in the Top 10 Lifestyle Apps in the SA App Store. It is funded by Google Umbono and is available free on both iPhone and Android.

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