Giftxoxo aims to make online gifting take off in India
It all started when co-founder Manoj Agarwal was working at Flipkart and Sumit Khandelwal the other co-founder was with Metro Cash & Carry. He had then found social gifting one of the potential verticals in an e-commerce company. Sumit read about some upcoming trends in gifting market globally such as companies like Wrapp, Giftiki and etc.
Two of them discussed various ideas and found the gifting industry to be abound with potential. Finally they met Abhishek Kumar, the third co-founder launching in April 2012.
The startup is all about bringing smiles and joy to various people involved in gifting. Gifting is an age old concept but if you see there has not been much innovation in this industry except for some new product offerings.
There is lot of scope in terms of leveraging technology to make gifting a great experience both for the sender and receiver. They are trying to solve some of the problems around corporate and personal gifting. Of course there are plenty of players who are doing something or the other in gifting. However most of them are very regional and focus on offline models said Manoj.
"We are developing some new solutions both in terms of technology as well as business which makes it stand out. Some of these models are very proven in lot of countries outside India," he added.
Their target audience is 25 to 50 years old in the major cities of India. They are focussing on working professionals for now. However in next few months they would also target students according to Manoj. As far as their marketing goes they focus a lot on their Web site and are also doing a bit of social media and digital marketing. They also have some strategic tie-ups for co-branding and current traction is mainly business to business.
Experience gifting
Their core product is "XoXo Experiences" which are a set of handpicked experiences for gifting, something different from giving physical presents. This is a big trend in a lot of developed countries and they are building the same in India. They are funded by Kshtriya Ventures which comprises of ex-CEOs of some major companies. According to Manoj, the funding will be used to expand their reach across India and also to add on new products. The majority would be used to for talent acquisition to get great people onboard.
They are a young team of around 25 people handling various roles. The founders have worked in companies like Yahoo, Flipkart, Wipro Consumer, Metro Cash & Carry, Nettpositive, and etc, with a diverse professional expertise in technology, products, marketing, sales and distribution. Abhishek is an IIT Mumbai alumni, Manoj is from IIM Kozhikode and Sumit is from Tapmi Manipal.
Certainly looks like some bright minds are at it to come up with a venture that will be attractive enough in the very popular sections of the audience in India, considering the rise of the Web and social culture. How much traction will it get is yet to be seen. What do you think about this concept and its implementation in Indian ecosystem of e-commerce?