Pakistani start-up introduces voice search

Firms in the e-commerce sector are introducing new innovations with every passing day in a bid to enhance market share as well as digital penetration in Pakistan. Recently, Shopsy.pk, a Pakistani startup operating in the e-commerce space, integrated voice search on its platform to assist customers to use their voice to navigate its website and application.

The customers can also use voice search option to get the products delivered to their residences.

According to a statement issued on Wednesday, the voice search feature is able to recognise various local accents and pronunciations and return relevant results within seconds.

“At Shopsy, one of the problems we are working on solving is how to enable over 80 million tech savvy Pakistanis to quickly and easily search for products,” said Shopsy CEO Usama Arjumand.

“Our pursuit of a frictionless experience led us to explore something that is very natural to us all, use our voices.”

According to him, a seamless voice search experience would help attract more Pakistanis to online shopping.

According to Google, India witnessed a gigantic 270% year-on-year increase in voice search queries and in 2021, nine out of every 10 new internet users in the country uses Indian accent.

Considering the demographic and regional similarities of the two countries, Pakistan can be expected to follow a similar trend.

“Although our platform can partly understand Urdu language, we hope to introduce a fully native Urdu language support in the future for users,” said Shopsy Head of AI Faraz Khalid.

The feature is currently limited to the Chrome browser on desktop and Android devices. The firm will analyse how customers react to this option and whether other Pakistani websites and applications follow suit.

With 40% of population being unable to read or write their own names, voice search might make a difference in introducing Pakistanis to online shopping.