MySideKick is a new app for South Africa’s shoppers. The free app claims to give easy access to specials, promotions, sales, products and coupons of some of the country’s major retailers based on your location.
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Recently launched by entrepreneurs Leonard Brewer, Mark Pratt, Charles Guise-Brown, Ian Banneman and Corinne Lategan, the startup wanted to develop an app that saves South African’s time and money.
So far, a number of leading retailers have already linked onto the network and form part of the MySidekick App ecosystem, including BT Games, Edgars Club, Incredible Connection, Midas, Spar KZN, Tiger Wheel & Tyre and Verimark.
Apart from being your virtual shopping assistant, the app also gives you detail about local emergency services, petrol stations and ATMs. It also has a couple of other features available like the Top 10 deals and the ability to share information on your social networks.
The app was developed using Appcelerator Mobile’s Titanium Studio, a cross-platform development framework to create native mobile applications for multiple mobile operating systems, including iOS and Android.
John Jardin, Lead Developer of MySidekick, says that he hopes MySidekick would mature the South African retail sector:
“This is a truly innovative offering that will make a practical difference to people’s lives. It is easy to use and adds substantial value, based on straightforward but reliable and robust technology, to the end user. This is certainly one of the more interesting developments to impact the consumer market.”
Although slowing down in the last few years, SA’s retail sector is showing over 2% year-on-year growth. At the same time the country’s smartphone’s usage has increased to 20 million in 2013 with a massive 32% annual growth.
The startup will have to take on big shot competitors like Groupon SA which has proved to be a very popular website over the years as well as Vodacom’s Vouchercloud launched earlier this year in South Africa.
The iOS version is currently available with the Android app in the pipeline.
