Gifting is a large opportunity across the world. Almost 5% of the revenue in e-commerce and offline players is contributed through gifting. Giftxoxo is an online gift discovery and recommendation platform helps the gifter with the best option according to various parameters. It was bootstrapped in early 2012 by Manoj Agarwal and Sumit Khandelwal.
Started with an office in Bangalore, they have expanded to Delhi and Mumbai after angel funding in May 2013. The portal started when Manoj and Sumit discussed some ideas which were shaping well in early 2012. "Manoj was handling gifting category as part of his marketing role at Flipkart. I found some good ideas working well in gifting internationally. Two of us iterated on couple of these ideas and finally started with Giftxoxo as a social gifting company. We pivoted and iterated as per market needs," says Sumit. "Later in 3-4 months, Abhishek and Kushal joined along our journey. Today we are a team of 25 people across three locations," adds Manoj.
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Founders of Giftxoxo - (L-R) Manoj Agarwal, Abhishek Kumar, and Sumit Khandelwal[/caption]Giftxoxo is a unique gifting company solving two fundamental problems in gifting industry. One is the problem of gifter who is always grappling with the issue of finding the perfect gift according to a budget, location, interests, occasion and age of the receiver. Second is the problem at the receiver side, who is generally unhappy with the gift received either because he/she already have it or because it’s of no use. These two problems have made the exchange of gifts a very formal and uninteresting exercise, both for the sender and receiver of gifts. Giftxoxo brings novel and effective solutions to these problems through its discovery and choice gifting products.
"It also suggests gift options according to the social graph and buying pattern of the gift receiver. This solves the problem of finding the perfect gift. Giftxoxo experience gift box, xoxo voucher and choice cards solve the problem of receiver. "Each of these products is designed around the concept of choice. The receiver thus gets to choose any one option within the choice he/she gets," says Sumit, a TAPMI, Manipal Alumnus who has 7 years of work experience in sales and marketing.
"Overall no other player is actually solving both sides of the problems in gifting as we do. Having taken the first mover advantage, working with over 250 corporate clients and more than 50% repeat we are placed well in market," adds Manoj who has worked with Yahoo, Manipal Education and Flipkart for 7 years. Apart from that they are getting good traction on their website.
They plan to expand to more cities and focus on B2C aggressively. "We are introducing some breakthrough features on our website which would make gifting much more engaging," says Abhishek, an alumnus of IIT Bombay with a background of providing technology solutions for Supply Chain, E-Commerce, Business Intelligence, and Mobiles. They plan to become the largest experience gifting company in India.
As a message for future entrepreneurs, Kushal says, "Do a good homework before you start. Meet people in the ecosystem and take a quick informed call. Execute, Iterate fast and get your business model right. Customers, revenue, funding and other things will come as long as your business model is right and you have put good efforts in execution." Kushal handles marketing and vendor relations at Giftxox.
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