Today in India only the online gifting market is more than $400Mn and yet unorganized. Many entrepreneurs have plunged themselves into this huge open market which is still untapped in the country. With the concept of making gifts a lifelong memory for your loved ones LivingGifts was started as a gifting portal in 2012 based out of New Delhi and today it is one of the leading portals for plant gifting with a network of nurseries through which it delivers gifted plants to your doorstep.
Back in 2012 the founders realized that plant gifting was considered inconvenient for the customers due to various reasons like – difficulty to carry, unavailability of doorstep delivery, lesser online options, etc. These issues actually encouraged them to work on this concept by addressing the pain areas of handling, last mile delivery and product appearance. After tremendous research and work they launched the website which enabled customers to find plant gifting appropriate for any occasion, be it birthday, wedding anniversary, corporate gifting or general gifting. LivingGifts has more than 500+ options to choose ranging from Rs.100 to Rs.5000 and it delivers in 14 cities across India.
I had a chance to meet Prabhjyot Singh, the co-founder of LivingGifts last week in an event and we had interacted about the start-up.
What was the initial idea behind launching LivingGifts?
I (Prabhjyot Singh) and my co-founders, Talvinder Kaur and Jagjyot Singh were passionate about the gifting industry from our early days. After meeting each other we found that we shared the same passion and idea and hence though to start something. We wanted to build a startup which will also give something back to the society along with being a gift. Thus we opened an online gift store primarily focusing on Gift A Plant. Also, we wanted to address the pain area of the plant lovers.
What is an opportunity in Online Plant Nurseries?
In India, plant lovers have very limited options to purchase plants and garden accessories online. They have to either to go to the Nursery or wait for the street vendors carrying plants. There are various issues faced by the customers like limited options, expensive, unhealthy plants while buying from nursery or street vendor.
If you look at the unorganized sector in home plantation then there is a huge potential in the market. Almost every urban household is having plants in their home and the most common ones are either Basil or Money Plant. Also, every corporate house is having plants in the offices.
Thus, it makes this sector multi-million dollar market which is currently unorganized. We want to make this sector organized.
What is the opportunity in Online Gifting?
Today, Gifting market in India is estimated at $30-40 billion of which only around $400 million is online. Annual growth in the range of 20-40% which can be split into 3 broad categories –
- Festival Gifting ($7.5billion),
- Personal Gifting ($20billion) and
- Corporate Gifting ($2.5billion) – expected to grow between 8 to 12 percent annually
Can you share your corporate expansion plans?
We are adding more talent in our team. With our plans to scale our business we have plans for horizontally as well as vertical expansion. We are adding more and more nurseries to our network and increasing the product range in our website as well.
Can we expect LivingGifts to shift in future to traditional retail model?
Our core belief is that we want to promote Plants Gifts and Online purchase of plants & Garden accessories. This is a large enough niche for us to focus on, but we are open for ideas for creating a niche through offline stores also, may be in the future.
