Consumers group says e-kalathi app falling short after six months

Six months after its launch, the e-kalathi app has delivered disappointing results, the consumers association said on Monday.

Designed as a practical tool to help consumers find cheaper supermarkets and lower prices while spurring competition to drive costs down, the app has so far fallen short of those aims.

Referring to its e-kalathi observatory, the consumers association said that “the very small number of products contained in e-kalathi significantly limits consumer choice”.

It added that even large hypermarkets with nationwide coverage include an extremely low number of products in e-kalathi, falling short of consumer expectations.

Although the total number of products rose slightly in December 2025 compared to November, it remained below levels seen in the app’s first months of operation.

Lidl, for example, listed a maximum of about 137 products that month, while Pop Life averaged just 66, with none available from December 17 to month-end.

The statement also highlighted that price differences for the same products across branches of the same hypermarket persisted in some cases during December, a phenomenon that did not exist before August 2025 and may stem from intensified local competition.

Furthermore, the gap in total costs for common products between the most expensive and cheapest supermarkets continued to narrow noticeably.

Specifically, this percentage difference fell from 13 per cent in July 2025 to 11.7 per cent in August, 9.3 per cent in September, 6 per cent in October, 5.8 per cent in November, and 4.6 per cent in December.