US-based Swych acquires Blume Ventures-backed Gift Cards India Network
Swych Inc., the pioneer of the revolutionary Swych™ digital gifting platform, today announced the acquisition of Mumbai-based Gift Cards India (GCI Network). With this acquisition, Swych is expanding on its position as the only connected digital global network and making gifting truly borderless between consumers who might be thousands of miles apart.
Swych’s mobile gifting platform enables users to send 'swychable' gifts from their mobile device that can be instantly redeemed for electronic gift cards from more than 120 popular brands. Swych users can instantly buy, send, re-gift, upload, switch and redeem gift cards conveniently from their mobile device.
It is a private company funded by seasoned angel investors from the banking, financial services, payments, gifting, telecom and enterprise computing space. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, and with offices in San Francisco, California, Toronto, Swych also has an office in Vadodara.
GCI Network has a patent status pending at the moment. It was founded in 2011 by Firoz Khan and Cory York. It has operated a robust aggregation and distribution network for gift cards and has been serving millions of consumers, enterprises, loyalty platforms and wallet operators in the Indian market. It has become a known name in the market for providing consumers and businesses with a reliable, efficient and high-quality source of the widest selection of gift products from over 250 of the top brands in India.
The potential of the Swych's digital gifting technology combined with GCI’s expertise in South Asia is expected to bring borderless digital gifting to businesses, digital wallets, loyalty platforms, financial institutions and others, where the recipient of a gift can 'Swych' it to spend it at their favourite brand across a global catalogue.
In a press statement, Deepak Jain, Founder and CEO of Swych, said,
"Digital gifting is an increasingly powerful engagement tool, for retailers to attract consumers via offers, for consumers to gift their loved one on a special moment, for businesses to reward employees and as a redemption method for loyalty points and miles. GCI’s track record for all these use cases and innovation in the Indian market has been impressive. By integrating GCI presence and expertise with the powerful Swych platform, we aim to greatly accelerate our mission of becoming a truly global digital gifting powerhouse."
Firoz Khan, Founder and CEO, GCI Network said,
"The synergy between GCI Network and Swych further supports the mission of bringing borderless gifting services to consumers across multiple markets. We now provide even greater options, brands and flexibility of delivery to our customer base."
Swych claims to be having an ever-expanding global coverage and technology advancements in fraud management, artificial intelligence, bots and data analytics The network now features retailers in the US, India, the UK and Australia, with planned expansion to include popular retailers in Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Japan, Colombia and the Philippines.
Gift Cards India, on the other hand, has propelled itself to become a prominent name in the gift card industry. Firoz and Cory have worked with Future Group and Shoppers Stop respectively before they went ahead to build their online stores, and subsequently launched GCI as an online business. After eight years of operations, GCI claims to have built a multi-million dollar gift card consumer business with a small team and a limited marketing budget.
