Shopsy.pk, a Pakistani e-commerce start-up, has successfully introduced voice features on its website, allowing consumers to use verbal commands to search for and order goods online.
Shopsy.pk is an e-commerce start-up that enables consumers to compare and order delivery rates of items from more than 250 online stores.
The technology built into the website is close to how Google deals with voice search. On the website, customers can click the ‘mic’ icon and activate the feature. The role is capable of picking up different local accents and pronunciations, returning results in seconds.
One of the issues we are working on solving at Shopsy is allowing 80 million+ online Pakistanis to search for goods quickly and easily. Our search of a frictionless experience has led us, using our voice, to explore something that is very normal for us all. We believe that a seamless voice search experience is (part of) the key to bringing online shopping to more Pakistanis,” said Usama Arjumand, CEO.
India has seen a 270pc year-on-year rise in voice search requests, according to Google, with 9 out of 10 voice search customers being of Indian origin.
It can be predicted that Pakistan will follow a similar pattern, having demographic and regional similarities.
“Although Shopsy can partially understand the Urdu language, we hope to provide full support to users of the native Urdu language in the future,” said Faraz Khalid, Head of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Shopsy.
The website feature is currently restricted to the Chrome browser and Android devices. However, it will be important to see what kind of voice quest for adoption gets on the start-up of e-commerce and if other websites and applications in Pakistan will follow suit.
Voice quest could be the secret to getting online shopping to the masses in a country like Pakistan, where almost 40 percent of the population is unable to read or write.
