Dial a gift with Giftingnation; Another startup betting on the growing gifting space

Srinivas had always dreamt of being an entrepreneur, but was waiting for the right idea and the right time and decided to take the plunge enticed by the opportunity provided by the estimated 30 billion gifting market of India. The need for gifting on every joyous occasion makes it a lucrative space for a startup to venture into. However, according to Srinivas, Giftingnation will be different from the other options in the market. Sample this, you can choose from a variety of 55 cupcakes to send your special someone if you to do it through Giftingnation, but try looking for so much variety at any of your local bakeries and Srinivas is sure you will come away disappointed. “We also personalize gifts, wrapper colours and messages for customers shopping with us,” says Srinivas. There is a vast range of enticing collectibles like scaled down model of cars and bikes, miniature guitars, posters you can shop from and also on the offer is honey, tea, bonsai plants and flowers.

Another innovation done by Giftingnation is the launch of the only gifting hotline in India. So if you stay in Bangalore and can’t make up your mind on whether to gift a decor artefact or a lovely and tasty cake, just call Dial-a-Gift on 6800 0068, a free service to get some help on choosing your gift, also customers can also avail COD payment option for the gifts purchased. Srinivas is targeting 100 orders a day as an interim objective for his venture in one quarter, before he can scale it up to Tier 2 cities like Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad and other cities of the country.

Before launching Giftingnation, Srinivas had toyed with the idea of creating a business for a multi lingual greeting cards company, but decided against that option. Today after being in operations for six months, this self funded enterprise has generated revenue of 1 Lakh. And guess what their best-seller has been in the last six month? Bonsai plants. “I never thought bonsai plants will be our most selling product,” laughs Srinivas. Giftingnation is today up against, old players like Ferns N Petals and indiangiftportal.com who have been in the business of gifting for a longer time and have over time acquired a larger consumer base and visibility. There are also other more online focusing models for gifting like Giveter and Giftology and it'll be interesting to see who bag the bigger chunk of the pie.