Buying your latest food obsession, or your-shoe goals doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. If buying your dream shoes costs you a leg for instance, where do the shoes go when they come? Just saying.
It’s why Jara discount cards may be interesting. The Jara cards (where Jara translates to “extra” in Nigeria’s pidgin) allows users to access bonuses, discounts and special offers from select stores around their area.
See it like a loyalty card without the loyalty; because the cards can be used in numerous stores, so long said store is listed as a partner store on the service.
The company – Jara Discounts Limited – says users can earn up to 63% discounts (cash-back inclusive) when they shop at partner outlets with their Jara cards, and I think that’s an interesting deal. I have not tried using it or see it work, but if it works as advertized, that means a perpetual clearance sale, and who doesn’t like one of those.
However, I suspect, there will be only a small list of products these discounts apply to.
Konga, Bheerhugz, Ember Creek, Melting Moments, Giddimint.com and Soul Lounge are some existing partner outlets on Jara’s catalogue.
The Jara cards don’t come free themselves. The cards come in two variants; the Student Jara card which sells for N3,500 ($18) and the Jara Silver card which sells at N5,000 ($25)- and these are relatively steep pricing when you realize it’s only just a card, not your actual lunch or your shoe goals.
The cards offer different hefts in the amount of bonuses the holder can enjoy within the one year they’ll be active and holders can always renew their subscriptions.
Ekele Abel, Abdul-Azeez Ajibola, Gideon Idachaba are some of the team members working on Jara and they have a little over $5,000 in funding as the time of this writing.
Meanwhile, you might have read on TechCabal earlier about a Jara app that gives users airtime for purchases via their app. It is not the same company with Jara Discount cards and when we reached out to Chinedu Onyeaso, CEO of Jara app (the Jara we wrote about first) with questions on copyright infringements, he said this is likely a coincidence, and that both companies are having a conversation about it.
“We are aware of Jara Discount Cards Ltd, they actually reached out to us after our article on TechCabal a few months ago,” Chinedu tells TechCabal. “We did our investigations through our lawyers and discovered that a good number of companies are duly registered with Jara related names – ours is Jara Mobile Ltd. We do own some trademarks on the name ‘Jara’ and our lawyers will be engaging with them in the coming weeks.”
Chinedu says the company is focused on building for now.
