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DRIVING A RETURN TO THE H


ave you ever spent endless hours trawling your local high street in the hope to find that one specific item that you were sure your favourite store had in stock? What if there was a way to bypass empty stock rooms just by using your


mobile, allowing you to find what you’re looking for on the high street fast?


Udozi is an exciting new tech start up that helps you to search specific items in your local high street shops quickly and easily via their app. I spoke to founder Alan Gabbay to find out more about the company and his plans for future growth...


Tell us a little about yourself...


I’m a self-confessed 29-year-old geek. Born and raised in London, I’ve always had a passion for technology, which led me to study Computing at Leeds University. After this, I took a Master’s Degree in Real Estate which allowed me to explore my other passion – retail. That’s when I became really interested in looking at the impact that technology has on retail and how it can help make the shopping experience easier and more enjoyable for consumers, which is when I started work on Udozi.


How did the concept for Udozi come about?


The ‘eureka’ moment for Udozi came to me when I was at university. I had a lot of work to do and was desperate to find a specific book to help with my revision. It was out of stock in the library and all of my local high street book stores. After frantically calling every store in the North of England I finally managed to get my hands on it – but it left me thinking. Why wasn’t there a simple way for consumers to be able to quickly search stock availability across high street stores? That’s when the idea for Udozi was born: to provide a quick and easy way for consumers to track stock and reserve items they want to buy, in shops near them. Udozi was initially a web concept, but when the iPhone launched we realised the power that a mobile device can have during a physical shopping experience as people search for things they want to buy on the go. As a result, Udozi is now available online and as a mobile app.


What have been your biggest challenges and successes with Udozi?


14 entrepreneurcountry


We’ve had a really great couple of years. The Udozi iOS app has recently come out of beta and we are already attracting around 13,000 searches per week.


We faced one of our biggest challenges when we were first setting up and had to decide whether to focus our efforts on getting retailers on board the platform, or getting consumers to download Udozi. It was a bit of a chicken and egg scenario – the retailers wanted to see consumers on board Udozi, and of course the consumers needed to see that retailers were listed in order to find the items they wanted. We made the decision to focus on retailers in the beginning and I’m pleased to say that we now have over 160 signed up – from independent stores to national retailers like Toys ‘R’ Us. I remember feeling a great sense of satisfaction the first time a retailer said that they loved the idea of Udozi as it gave justification to what we were trying to do.


I’m extremely proud to have built a system that is able to connect these retailers in a scalable manner, ensuring that


Alan Gabbay


Entrepreneur Country speaks to Alan Gabbay, foun


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