From shopping to hiring a cab, from ordering food to addressing your grievances, today, there is an app for almost everything. Similarly, in the gifting space you have apps, but most fail to solve problems around what to gift, how to gift and in short -making gifts more relevant.
“We carried out a survey and found that 78 % of the respondents have at some point of their life received irrelevant gifts. For example, the top gifting option for an anniversary was dinner sets, wall clocks, and bed covers and the people receiving them admitted that in most cases, they never use it and passed it on as a gift to someone else,” says AskMyGift, Co-Founder, Sumeet Aggarwal.
Gifting is around $30 billion industry in India and out of that about $ 20 billion is personal gifting, which is exchanging gifts for a personal event. There are, then, gifting around social events, which takes place around different festivals.
“The team wanted to solve the dilemma for millions of people about what to gift,” says Ashish Mittal, Chief Mentor and Angel Investor. The startup is incubated at TurningIdeas and has received the angel investment of $50,000(around Rs 30 lakh) from Mittal.
“It’s an android app that allows you to create a wish list from both online and offline channels. A user has to merely go to our app, browse through the products and keep adding any product he or she likes to the wish list. This wish list can then be shared across social media so that your friends and family can know about what you really want,” says AskMyGift, Co-Founder, Shagun Nayyar.
On the offline channel, if you like something in a store you have the option to post the picture of the product in your wish list.
“Our app allows you to create this unified wish list for gifts – offline, online, and across merchants. This means it is not restricted to a Flipkart, Amazon or a Snapdeal etc, bit also includes stores like a Lifestyle, Shoppers Stop etc,” says Nayyar.
Beyond that, the app also allows you to gift someone an experience, which can be something like a spa, movie vouchers, dinner and even holidays. There is also a category called “priceless gifting”, which works to satisfy human emotions and is not related to material presents.
While there are gifting apps, what makes the startup stand apart is the fact it s trying to integrate the offline stores in the gifting process.
“For example, you like a product on Flipkart and it is simple now for the online retailer to notify you in case there is a discount on that product in future. However, for an offline store like Shoppers Stop, it is almost impossible to notify customers know about discounts on individual products. This is where we step in and operate like a virtual shopping bag,” says Nayyar.
Retail stores often struggle to make their products discoverable and visible to a wider audience. For offline stores and retailers AskMyGift provides a new medium to reach out to consumers and a new channel to sell.
Source: The Economic Times
Picture Courtsey: entreprenuer.com
