ChopeAndSave is a directory of small businesses around Singapore that offer online gift cards for purchase. Better.sg had the opportunity to interview Tammie and Agrim, two of the members from the team to find out more of the juicy details behind developing and managing the app.
In the podcast episode above, we talk about what inspired this web app, what it’s like building a tech solution during the COVID-19 crisis, and how the community has rallied around this movement.
You can also read more about ChopeandSave in this article written by Adriel Yong.
Read on!
The ChopeAndSave team consists of
- Agrim Singh, 27, Hacker-in-residence, Citi Ventures (D10X),
- Aravind Kandiah, 27, CTO of Bifrost,
- Joshia Seam, 25, Co-founder, Hypervalence,
- Nicolette Tan, 27, civil servant and
- Tammie Siew, 28, Associate, Sequoia Capital.
The crew assembled over Zoom over the early weeks of the COVID-19 Circuit Breaker to build a platform where individuals can purchase gift cards to help generate cash flow for their favorite local businesses.
Having friends who run bars and F&B businesses, Agrim, Tammie and Nicolette had a chat about possible initiatives they could organize to generate cash flow for these businesses. Some of the successful ones they had seen included examples like SaveOneSeat in Italy but it was SaveourFaves that was particularly significant in getting the project started.
SaveourFaves was started in San Francisco by Kaitlyn & Mike Krieger, a husband and wife duo who wanted to support local businesses as SF went under a “shelter-in-place” ordinance. The team credits the couple for making their code open-sourced, leading to their eventual decision to build a site to aggregate all their favourite small brands/businesses that already had online gift cards.
Why gift cards?
On why they decided on the novel idea of purchasing gift cards, the team shared their considerations for the choice.
The first and most important of which is that they are able to help businesses generate some cash flow during the circuit breaker period. Donations on the other hand tend to be one-off and concentrated on a few organizations.
Furthermore, they believed that it would be hard for anyone to donate to multiple merchants, given they now have more than 100 on the platform. With gift cards, individuals are able to spend more on different merchants as they can always use them after the circuit breaker period ends..
To support merchants who do not have gift cards, the team also included food delivery links as well to still enable cash flow. In the process of using the platform, they hope that Singaporeans will discover the small brands that exist in their neighbourhoods, or support that small brand that they love.
With gift cards, the brand also maintains customer engagement. When the circuit breaker period ends, these businesses will also see customers return and physically engage with them in order to use their gift cards.
Building the website and engaging partners
When asked how long they took to build the site, the team responded humbly that they focused on iterating very quickly and therefore had their website go live in a short span of two days. Besides building the website, the team was also crowdsourcing for businesses and their giftcard links on a Google Sheet, which was circulated widely.
Within the first 24 hours, the site had more than 3000 visitors. Work continues even after the site went live. The team has been actively seeking feedback on how to improve the site and is continuing the outreach to onboard new partners and encourage more individuals to purchase gift cards.
To date, they have received interest from more than 90 businesses, including brands like Awfully Chocolate, BooksActually and Yakun. Several do not sell gift vouchers yet, but many small businesses have reached out to ask how they could create a digital presence. The team has been happy to provide personal support and reassure these business owners that they are not alone.
The future of ChopeandSave
Admittedly, the team worries how long COVID-19 is going to last and how long small businesses will be impacted. Ideally, they hope that businesses can get back to normal operations soon, even if that means having to shut down ChopeAndSave.
In the meantime, the team hopes that more people realise that these stores and brands contribute greatly to the fabric of Singapore, and that we should put our money where our mouth is, supporting them before it’s too late.
The ChopeandSave team hopes to be there for every small business that could use their assistance and are currently in discussions with partners such as business associations and marketing platforms to see how they can better support the small businesses that have reached out to them. That being said, their priority is to increase options for these small businesses rather than enforce a particular tool or platform on them.
No matter what, the ChopeandSave team have made an impact in their communities and have inspired many other TechforGood initiatives out there. For that, they have much to be proud about.
