New Jersey high school students create price comparison site for PPE

WEST WINDSOR, New Jersey (WPVI) -- Three New Jersey teenagers are providing potentially life-saving information and trying to make it affordable at the same time.

It's the perfect pandemic budget lifesaver known as "Price Merge." The website tracks price points for PPE, items such as masks, hand sanitizer and hand soap across thousands of e-commerce websites.

"Through Price Merge and through and software I was able to achieve a very big impact. I always thought it was wrong when I see other people suffer. Building this site I felt a lot of pride and a lot of happiness," said Archit Mehta, a rising senior at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North. He created the tool with the help of her friends, Darshan and Parth.

When the COVID-19 outbreak started, these young minds took matters into their own hands.

"It really hurts to see people suffer more because they can't afford the things they need to survive or just stay safe. So we all realized we had the abilities and resources to help out those people and we decided it was our responsibility," said Darshan Lakshminarayanan, a rising senior at Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics & Engineering Technologies.

"We started comparing each single product, and say ok this product is sold for $130 here, but it's sold for $10 here, and so we wanted to give the best offer," said Parth Harish, a junior at Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics & Engineering Technologies.

The three talented New Jersey teens all have a background in programming and spent close to a month working on the algorithm and site. They want everyone to enjoy using it. The group says it's free and safe.

"It's never going to be a paid service and on top of that, it protects your privacy above all things. We know many other product trackers are likely to sell your data to the bigger companies. Our data doesn't go anywhere," Lakshminarayanan said.

"It's been a hard journey, I'm not going to lie but the end product, and being able to help so many people during this pandemic, is all worth it," Mehta said.

In just a matter of days, Price Merge has helped over 1,500 users and these teens hope more people use their service: pricemerge.000webhostapp.com.