The Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK) Institute startup has developed Pakistan's first real-time online shopping search engine that is expected to prove very helpful for the people during the lockdown, officials of the Institute said here on Friday.

The Catalyst GIK Incubator has been established with the generous support of the Directorate of Science and Technology (DoST), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Abdullah Soomro, director of the incubation centre, said that a Start-up Shoppingum from the Catalyst, GIK Incubator, has created Pakistan's first real-time online shopping search engine, with live tracking and filters that allow users to shop from the stores that are delivering during the lockdown.

Shoppingum.com is an online shopping search engine which has more than 3.2 million products from 210 online stores in Pakistan. The website is the biggest single platform that uses advanced data mining and machine learning algorithms to track millions of products live that are available on almost all the authentic online stores of Pakistan, he said.

Officials said that as the world faces a major crisis due to the coronavirus, and billions of people are restricted to their homes, health services are trying to cope with the current situation.

On the other hand, people are struggling to fulfill their necessities while being in isolation and developing countries like Pakistan have been severely hit by the uncertain situation of lockdown. Almost all the marts and malls are closed. The ones that are still open are selling their products at exorbitant prices to the customers already facing the problems of livelihood.