[1]Hyderabad: Confused over the kind of present you want to gift your friend? You don’t have to hurry to a gift shop anymore! Just log onto a gifts portal and buy it. The social gifting culture is fast catching up in India and changing the way people shop and gift online.
According to a survey, this trend is slowly but surely infiltrating India and other emerging markets. It has also led to the emergence of social gifting start-ups like Giveter.com, 99presents.com, Badhai.in, Giftery, Giftology, etc.
Badhai.in, India’s first social gifting company, offers vouchers that can be used in leading retail chains as well as on e-commerce sites. It also enables social or pooled gifting through Facebook and allows users to track special occasions. Giveter.com takes the details of the user and has a provision to link giveter to user’s Facebook account. This way, it takes into account users' likes and interests on Facebook and recommends gifts accordingly.
Given that social gifting is deeply entrenched culturally (in India), major social gifting firms are entering these markets to tap these cultural affinities. This apart, even ecommerce websites like Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra, Jabong and others have ventured into the gifting space. “There is an option to gift-wrap the order with a message from the sender. This was quite a hit with us,” says Ranjith Boyan-apalli, founder of BuyThePrice that has now become part of Trad-us.com. He adds that post 2010 the domestic demand for social gifting has spiked in India.
Meanwhile, social gifting also benefits social networks like Facebook and Google as they earn a part of retailers’ gifting revenue through ads.
However, this business model might not be sustainable in the long-term, says Murali Bukkapatnam, president, TiE Hyderabad. “In 2-3 years, social gifting might fade out with two or three players lingering around,” he adds.
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