As Australians have become much more accustomed to home cooking, tech company Frugl (ASX: FGL) has responded to demand from its 4,000 active users to offer filtering functionality for gluten free products in its grocery comparison app.

With last year’s pandemic lockdowns forcing households to cook at home more, the Frugl app which is free to download, enables users to compare prices of supermarket products. There are then tools to create individual shopping lists to ensure the most amount of money can be saved by shopping around.

Since being launched in February 2020, version 2.1 has now been released following user feedback that requested filter functionality to easily identify products that are vegan or gluten free – trends in the health-conscious Australian population.

Following the release of this latest version of the app, Frugl has flagged plans to invest in marketing activities to expand beyond its 28,000 user accounts, of which 4,000 are active. Such investment will be spent on public relations, branded advertising and influencer marketing to drive app downloads and awareness.

While the app is free to download, it catalogues user data to track and predict consumer behaviour and buying patterns for marketing purposes. This analytical data then has commercial value to food manufacturers and supermarkets.

In March, Frugl confirmed a deal with Metcash (ASX: MTS), owners of the IGA brand of supermarkets, to supply Frugl’s data and analytics for 2 years in a deal deemed “not financially material” by the tech company.

For the 9 months ended 31 March 2021, Frugl reported customer receipts totaling $2,000 with net cash outflows of $1.1 million over the period with $636k cash in the bank.

Despite their addition of gluten free product filtering, FGL shares responded poorly to the tech update to trade as low as $0.042 in the first hour of morning trade having previously closed at $0.048.