Manan Sharma, Indian Gifts Portal -- Ecommerce platform for Indian ethnic products and gifts

YourStory recently spoke with Entrepreneur Manan Sharma, founder of Indian Gifts Portal, to understand how Indians are gifting online.

Tell us about Indian Gifts Portal.

Indian Gifts Portal(IGP) is the largest platform for Indian ethnic products and gifts. It has the largest collection of products that caters to Indian festivals and events. We are the first company to organize worldwide deliveries for unique Indian handicrafts at a mouse click.

How is Indian Gifts Portal different from other e-commerce portals?

A vast network of Indian handicrafts from the remote villages of India are sourced by us and are accessible to to be delivered worldwide. We are a decade old company that leads us to be focused and trustworthy in gifting profession.

How did the idea for Indian Gifts Portal come about? How much capital was required to implement the idea?

We started off with selling Haldiram's mithai on Diwali. We then realized that Indians across the world want to connect with their loved ones through gifting, so we created a platform for Indians as well as the lovers of Indian ethnic products.

Tell us about your background.

I am a science graduate and a management graduate from Amity Business School and have been in Internet world from its initiation in 1996. I worked with Indiamart.com till 2000 in various projects and sales, before starting IGP.Let us know about the tie-ups that you have(if any).

IGP had powered many sites like HDFCbank, ICICI bank etc. for gifting options. The special offers we provide to the NRI's have gained us recognizable loyalty and trust.

Where do you see e-commerce in India and Indian Gifts Portal five years from now?

E-commerce in India is already a big market of around 20,000 crores and is still growing multi fold, where gifting is a small but an important part. We hope to grow three times in revenue five years from now.

Have you been funded? If yes, can you throw some light on how the funding came about and from whom?

IGP has been a profit making company from initiation and has never been funded.

As an entrepreneur, what are your joys? What are the challenges?

As an Entrepreneur and an Indian, my network of artisans from different part of India selling on one platform and providing accessibility and ease to my customers is more than joyous. The challenges are to continue adding thousands of products from Indian Origin.

How big is the Indian Gifts Portal team?

IGP comprises of a team of 40 people of management graduates, software professionals and customer service.

Let us know about your expansion plans.

Our priority is the festivals of the India and IGP plans to open a platform for shopping for Indian handicrafts to the world with associations and offices in different parts of the world. Last year, we had approximately 2000000 visits and 13000000 views. We have over 3,00,000 fan following on Facebook and customer base of 2,00,000. Most customers however are NRIs and major traffic is from USA. The growing Internet in India and their increasing understanding and trust in online shopping and gifting is going to be a revolution which is still to be explored.

We at YourStory will keep you posted about how India Gifts Portal scales to capture the online gifting market. Please check out http://www.indiangiftsportal.com/ for more details.