Shas­tri Boodan

Ch­agua­nas busi­ness­es have en­gaged an on­line mar­ket­ing app in or­der to get more busi­ness.

Yes­ter­day, the Greater Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce launched the Near­by Stores app at the Cham­ber’s of­fices on Cum­ber­batch Street.

App de­vel­op­er Jovi Choonie of Ha­lo Tech­nolo­gies said the app was de­vel­oped to push busi­ness based on geo-lo­ca­tion and geo-tar­get­ing.

He said the app of­fers a bud­get friend­ly for busi­ness­es to tar­get cus­tomers.

He said the sys­tem op­er­ates on the an­droid plat­form un­til next month when it would al­so be launched on the IOS plat­form.

He said fu­ture ver­sions of the app would al­low for the track­ing of goods, in-app pur­chas­es and re­wards. He said it would cost busi­ness­es $150 a month to have their prod­ucts and ser­vices mar­ket­ed on the app.

He said per­sons with the app in­stalled on their mo­bile de­vice would be able to get no­ti­fi­ca­tions on of­fers and pro­mo­tions based on their lo­ca­tion.

Choonie said the app al­so of­fered in var­i­ous lan­guages al­low­ing busi­ness­es to take ad­van­tage of Span­ish speak­ing mi­grants from Venezuela.

He said man­u­fac­tur­ers can al­so use the app to pro­mote their prod­ucts and lo­ca­tions where it is avail­able.

Cham­ber pres­i­dent Vish­nu Char­ran said when Covid-19 hit in mid- March, busi­ness­es were put in a po­si­tion where they had no choice to be in­no­v­a­tive in or­der to sur­vive.

Char­ran said the cham­ber has been of­fer­ing it mem­bers ser­vices in the line of e-com­merce, mar­ket­ing, ac­count­ing in­sur­ance and hu­man re­source man­age­ment.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, who joined the ses­sion vir­tu­al­ly on zoom, con­grat­u­lat­ed the cham­ber for tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to launch the app that she said was time­ly as Ch­agua­nas seeks to ex­pand its e-com­merce plat­form,.

Gopee-Scoon said Covid has shown the im­por­tance of dig­i­ti­za­tion for the con­tin­u­ance of busi­ness in dai­ly life. She said the pan­dem­ic has al­so ex­posed the need for ICT ser­vices by vul­ner­a­ble groups. Gopee- Scoon said pri­or to Covid, E-com­merce was seen and an un­nec­es­sary ex­pense, she said now even the small­est busi­ness­es need to have an on­line pres­ence.

The Cham­ber pre­sent­ed awards to Con­nect the Kids and Vi­neet Ram­sar­ran who topped the SEA in Ch­agua­nas.