Smartprix Shows How Product Comparison Is Done The Right Way
Tuesday April 23, 2013 , 3 min Read
It was during the summer of 2011 when a common friend of Abhinav Choudhary and Hitesh Khandelwal came to them because he wanted some advice on which new phone to buy, as his old phone had broken. After looking at many existing portals, online stores and blogs they realized that there is no perfect platform to decide which is the best product to buy. Online stores have different product pricing and the various offers available online all the time, makes the process more confusing. To solve this problem and make lives simpler Smartprix was conceived.
Smartprix is platform where shoppers can compare different products to choose the best one according to their needs and finally buy them at the lowest price. Launched in December 2011 for comparing mobiles, they have now extended it to tablets and books. Abhinav shares with us that they are currently working on categories like tablets and other electronic goods to be included in near future.
After a customer narrows down the product not only on the basis of price tag which are taken from the affiliated websites, Smartprix lists out which mobile phone is best by listing out a spec score. Their main source of income is via affiliate commissions which they plan to raise by advertisements from other vendors.
In little over a year of starting, the venture has more than a million users per month – quite a feat we say. Publicity and marketing has been through word-of-mouth, social media and organic searches to reach its customers.
Abhinav is quite thankful to his advisors and professors at college, Dr. Parag Singla and Dr. Amitabha Bagchi, who helped them whenever they were stuck on a problem and gave them the best advice to tackle it. Abhinav states that they have automated the working of Smarptrix using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques such that it requires minimum human interference. Currently Abhinav and Hitesh are doing their major thesis in college which is very closely related to what they do in Smartprix.
A fan of Smartprix sent them a funny video which in a way summarizes what Smartprix does and how it is better and useful for users above other portals.
Abhinav urges aspiring student entrepreneurs to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. “This is the best time for any experiments you want to do. Being a student you are in touch with so many experienced and knowledgeable people who can act as potential mentors and mould our vision to perfection plus student life comes with little or no constraints. So whatever you want to build start when you can,” advises this student entrepreneur.