Meet the customised gifting startup that wants you to take a trip down memory lane
Delhi-based gifting startup Pine & Lime aims to help people share memories through personalised memory and milestone maps, and innovative Lub Dub lamps.
A milestone birthday. A special road trip. A family celebration. Or just a moment that you want to remember forever. Who hasn’t looked for a way to keep their memories alive long after the event has passed?
Delhi-based gifting startup Pine & Lime aims to help you do just that with its many lifestyle products – memory maps, memento candles, and specialised artwork.
Bootstrapped with an investment of Rs 50,000 in 2018 by Aishwarya Choudhary and Ishaan Shrivastava, Pine & Lime started as a way for the founders to “stay creative” by showcasing handcrafted home décor products.
The two founders are professionals — Aishwarya, 28, is a lawyer who has worked extensively in the Intellectual Property Rights domain with several international brands, and Ishaan, 28, is a computer engineer who has worked at Sapient Nitro — and were clear that they wanted to do more.
But three years after the founders started up, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This was like a reset button for the lifestyle startup.
“Amid COVID-19, like a lot of other businesses, we had to take a call whether to kill or cure. That’s when we really decided to pivot and build Pine & Lime as a brand,” says Aishwarya, who now works full time on the startup.
Pine & Lime Founders Ishaan Shrivastava and Aishwarya Choudhary
What it offers
Pine & Lime aims to help people share memories, and is targeting people looking for the ultimate, all-purpose gift – birthdays, engagements, anniversaries, graduation, housewarming, and more
The founders saw a couple of international brands selling maps as decor in 2018. “They did large posters of maps and we really liked the idea of stylised cartography. In February 2020, when we were coming up with product ideas for Valentine’s Day, we thought that it would be great for people to have a way to hold on to the memory of where it all began for them,” Ishaan says.
The idea was to capture memories of when they were when they met and what they felt. The first memory map was made with two locations, in a 4X4 frame and was meant to be a form of expression.
“The more we thought about it, the more we realised we could save different kinds of memories through a medium like the one we had created,” Aishwarya says.
The maps then evolved to a new version, the milestone maps — a way to “celebrate life’s most important moments”.
“This could be the place that you decided to get married, the first home that you bought, or even the city that helped define who you’ve become. These maps are designed differently as compared to memory maps and are much larger in size. These were based on feedback from buyers who wanted a larger version to put up in their homes,” Aishwarya says.
Pine & Lime’s milestone maps are a way to celebrate ‘life’s most important moments’.
Scented memories and more
Aishwarya and Ishaan strongly believe in the words of perfumer Holladay Saltz: “Memories that are big and sad, {that} are beautiful and joyful, that mean something to us…can be brought back in an instant with one single breath.”
To this end, they decided to launch a range of candles – but not the usual ones that have flooded the market.
“We help people share memories and wanted to associate another sense with it. Scents have a way of digging up memories and experiences in a way that can trigger a range of emotions, like nostalgia and longing.
"With our candles, we’re trying to captivate different senses to evoke memories, especially at a time when we are holed up in our homes and might be feeling reminiscent,” Ishaan says.
“The idea is to be able to gift an ambience and the intent is to help people express their feelings through meaningful mementoes,” Aishwarya adds.
The Lub Dub Lamps are personalised to capture memories, and work as a medium to “express emotions without speaking much”. These candles carry a map of the place that’s special to you, a message that describes those million thoughts one has to express, and a QR code.
“This QR code works as a time capsule, containing songs, playlists, video notes, letters, etc. One simply doesn’t light a Lub Dub Lamp, but takes a trip down the memory lane after scanning the custom QR code. After all, lights will guide you home. Our biggest USP is that it’s not just another home decor product; it’s a memento to remember all the good times,” Aishwarya says.
The product range also includes the Arte Aŭdaca collection, a curation of posters inspired by Parisian art from the Art Nouveau era.
The market and future
The online gifting industry is one of the contributors to the growth of the ecommerce space in India and is poised to take a larger bite of the overall market in the coming future.
The global gifting market is estimated to be $475 billion, and India is likely to emerge as one of the most influential contributors by 2024. A research report by Qwikcilver has revealed that the country's gifting market is set to touch $84 billion by 2024 from the present $65 million.
Pine & Line competes with other startups such as Messy Corner, Chumbak, DailyObjects, Ferns N Petals, Vista Print, and Presto, but believes its unusual customisation options stand it in good stead.
“Since July 2020, we’ve been growing every month. We’ve helped our customers share over 10,000 memories across the world, and we’ve sold over 150 Lub Dub Lamps since we launched last month,” Ishaan says.
Aishwarya adds that February “was our best month so far and we now average at 1,800 orders a month”. “We’ve already grown more than double this year and are now gearing up to do more.”
The four-member team is currently working on more ways to store a memory. “We want to take our homegrown brand international and are working on a couple of new products,” Aishwarya says.
“At a time, when there are curfews and restrictions and homes work as offices, feelings are often expressed digitally. We want to make meaningful products that help share and express feelings,” Ishaan says.
Edited by Teja Lele