Denis Opudo
The Touchabl is a Nigeria based startup which allows users to view images they like such as cars, watch or shoes irrespective of it being on their timeline in the app or their phone photo gallery, to just touch it and receive more information about it. The startup was launched on Android in October 2017.
Research has it that almost 675 billion photos are shared online every year. The app wants to use the chance to revolutionize how the photos are viewed. As much as the idea was specifically made for fashion and lifestyle, the technology can as well be used for other fields like, medical science and diagnostics, education, and to assist visually impaired people to study various pictures just by touching them.
According to the founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Gabriel Eze in his statement to Disrupt Africa, by 2025, the online shopping for fashion and lifestyle goods will have gone digital and young people globally are expected to be half on the total people who spend their money on luxury goods. In 2017 alone the youths managed to buy above 30% of their luxury goods through online markets, a bit different from how traditional luxury goods consumers used to make purchases. Social media has been vital in discovering purchases.
Allowing the consumers to search and shop for fashion and lifestyle stuff in a picture online by touching the item, the touches seemed to the better indicator to user interests than compared to the traditional comment and likes. The fact that a good number of people are discovering fashion and style by using Touchal. The company can assist brands and businesses target user interests more accurately and after that improving their product offering respectively hence increasing their number of online sales.
The startup is self-reliant in that it funds its activities by itself. The company has already received almost 200% growth in downloads and has a 60% rate. The idea has been received well by USA, Nigeria, and India totaling to 95% of their users currently. Other countries like Kenya, Ghana, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and Italy have also shown interest in the app by making good use of it. The company aims at strengthening their command in Nigeria first and after that is when they will move to various markets.
