Love searching for lobangs online but often find the deals-centric websites cluttered, full of spam and difficult to navigate? Well, this was a problem that Gabriel Sze, 24, faced when he was bargain-hunting.

Undeterred, he created his own website called Divedeals to consolidate Singapore-based promotions floating around on the internet. “The web tends to be the easiest platform to search for deals, and I personally don’t really like downloading apps, which I believe strongly resounds among young people today,” he tells 8days.sg of his decision to start a website from scratch.

Gabriel is currently a third-year undergrad at Nanyang Technological University pursuing Renaissance Engineering (a programme which combines engineering and entrepreneurship knowledge).

Passionate about software development, he picked up coding in university. He created Divedeals as a passion project , though he may one day consider going further with this platform if the response to it is good, and has since called on a few friends to help manage the site.

Despite Gabriel's young age, he has created a professional-looking website on his maiden attempt. One of the major bugbears with other deal sites, he points out, is the numerous irrelevant advertisements.

As Gabriel is currently not working with any advertisers, his website is devoid of distracting ads. Instead, the site looks neat, with the deals categorised into five sections: Food, Apparel, Grocery, Shopping and Activities. At a glance, you can browse the deals, plus its main terms and conditions, just by scrolling. When you click on a deal that catches your eye, details such as the promotional duration and shop locations are listed on a single page.

As it's a student-run initiative, don't expect a commercial-level consolidation of lobangs at this point. For now, the site features a limited list of deals from popular brands and shops like Krispy Kreme, NTUC FairPrice and Marks & Spencer, though we hope to see more collated lobangs in the future.

The process of searching for deals, Gabriel shares, is a a combination of algorithms and AI, and manual intervention to search and filter the best deals to post on our site.

There's also a function on the website to locate deals near you, and another function to share the deal with your friends. “One of the features on our website is a map view which allows users to immediately know where certain deals are active. This also means that our users can do a nearby search to locate deals around them, which would be highly relevant to spontaneous deal hunters,” explains Gabriel.

Food deals, which almost everyone loves, make up a sizeable selection on Divedeals' site. Depending on which deals are still active (expired ones are purged from the website), you can browse bubble tea promos from BBT brands like Milksha, Bober Tea and local celeb Vivian Lai's Teabrary.

There are savoury food options too, like Crave Nasi Lemak, Din Tai Fung and Menbaka Fire Ramen.

The promotions are also posted on Divedeals' social media platforms to keep people up-to-date on the latest deals.

www.divedeals.sg. Facebook. Instagram. Telegram.

Photo: Gabriel Sze