These Mumbai teenagers made Rs 4.5 lakh in a year with their customised gifting startup
Anaya Trivedi, Aveka Jain, and Kyra Pallod, teenage students from Mumbai, started personalised gifting startup Hampology, which offers hampers priced between Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,000 for every occasion.
Three teenagers - Anaya Trivedi and Aveka Jain, 15 years old, and Kyra Pallod, 14 - have one thing in common. A passion for creativity, gifting, and decorating.
The trio met at their Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!) class in Mumbai, and brainstormed over an idea that took off immediately. Anaya and Aveka, Class 10 students of Oberoi International School, and Kyra, a Class 9 student of Jamnabai Narsee School, started Hampology, a startup that provides a wide range of hampers for every occasion.
“Whenever we tried using an online gifting website in the past, we realised there was no option to personalise gifts. We had to select from a fixed number of options. This was a key motivation for us to start Hampology,” Aveka says.
Personalisation according to need
Mumbai-based Hampology offers a range of customised gift hampers
The three teens aim to make gifting as simple as possible with flexible customisation and two-day delivery.
“From birthday hampers to skincare, from beauty to food, we can personalise what our customers need,” Anaya says.
The process is completely digital. Senders can digitally send video/text messages that the recipients are able to view on scanning the QR code in each hamper.
Gifting is a huge industry in India, greater than $30 billion, but the online gifting industry is at a nascent stage and the trio saw a huge opportunity for online gifting to gain traction in India.
They provide a wide array of completely customisable gift hampers for every occasion, from corporate events to Diwali celebrations. The hampers are priced between Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,000.
Mentorship and training
YEA mentors guided the teenagers through every step, helping them with mentorship and training to transform Hampology into a thriving business. The invested Rs 20,000 initially with financial help from their parents.
“During the initial days, we conducted market research, primary interviews, and received feedback from about 100 respondents which helped us with the pricing strategy. We also evaluated pricing of competitors and figured that we could maintain a similar pricing range, but offer a superior experience. Ninety-percent of our orders are prepaid; others involve payment on delivery,” Kyra says.
Customers can place orders on the company website or connect on their social media handles. The pricing of the hampers includes delivery charges; the business is limited to gifting in Mumbai only as of now.
They received a large order for 20 hampers for Diwali in 2019, which paved the way and helped kickstart their business.
In the first three months, Hampology generated significant customer interest and received a total of 60 orders. In the past 12 months, they have sold about 300 hampers, for a variety of occasions and generated revenues in excess of Rs 4.5 lakh.
Their biggest failure, Aveka says, was a miscommunication that led them to make a hamper but no response from the customer.
Anaya says what sets them apart from their competitors is they provide a two-way personalised communication chain using QR codes that are included in the hamper and the fact that each hamper contains a product that supports a social cause. For this, they have partnered with colleagues at YEA! who support entrepreneurs from Dharavi and Baiganwadi .
The young founders aim to generate 40 orders per month for the next year and complete almost 500 orders in the next year, continuing to focus on Mumbai for the present.
Edited by Teja Lele