IGP or International Gifts Platform was founded in 2017 to cater to a large subset of people that live away from their families. During special occasions, everyone wants to celebrate and feel connected with their loved ones. Through the platform, IGP curates personalised gift articles, cakes, bouquets, fashion accessories and home decor. In an interview, their Founder and CEO, Tarun Joshi, tells us about the celebration-tech ecosystem and where it is headed.
Edited excerpts…
Tell us about the key products that IGP sells on the platform and what are some categories that you wish to grow?
India celebrates about 14 festivals every year. So, all festival-related merchandise, whether it is for Lohri-Pongal, Diwali, Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, is available on the platform.
Cakes and indulgent foods, including desserts, sweets, chocolates and dry fruits, are one of our top-selling categories. We also specialise in hampers because they are a well-curated gift that combine various categories.
What we are now building out in a big way are utility products like home decor and accessories. These include desk items for your office, fashion accessories like jewellery and perfumes.
What are some trends observed on the platform?
Increasingly, we are celebrating a lot of occasions and special moments—you get a promotion, or your better half gets a promotion, and you want to celebrate that.
Close to 68% of the consumers are below the age of 34. This younger audience seeks both intimacy and value. So, for example, if it’s a milestone celebration, like a 10th anniversary or a 30th birthday, they’re looking at more premium offerings. Otherwise, they’re seeking a lot more value.
There is a fair trend towards utility-driven products, which have a much longer life and serve as a memory of that moment or occasion.
Kids and pets are also two categories that have been picking up. They are very integral members of the family and people want to celebrate along with them.
There is a growth in premiumisation in both products and packaging. There is a very evolved and educated audience that sees things from around the world and wants the latest designs in cakes and assortments of flowers.
Newness, fast commerce and fast delivery combined with utility are the major trends.
Are there any particular festivals or occasions that have become important in recent years?
Rakhi is quite important for us because it caters to a very curated assortment. It is very compulsive and is usually always sent–so you’re a sister, sending rakhis to your brothers living in various parts of the world. We are among the largest sellers of rakhis in the world. Diwali is also picking up in a very big way for us because of corporations. It’s an effective way of showing partners and clients that you remember and care for them.
What have been the most effective advertising and marketing strategies to reach out to potential customers?
We are a digital-first brand so a lot of marketing rotates around the digital ecosystem. We also do a lot of influencer activities and brand campaigns. The current brand campaign we are doing is called ‘Amazing Gifts, Samay Par!’. We had a series of six films which started with Rakhi, then Diwali, birthdays, anniversaries, Secret Santa and will now end with Valentine’s Day.
IGP often collaborates with other brands. Do the partnerships significantly boosts sales or consumer interest?
On our platform, we have our own brands across categories that have a strong standing like Interflora for luxury flowers and Masqa for chocolate. But there are categories, like beauty and personal care, where we like to partner with established brands to co-create newer packaging that is gift worthy. Our audience is looking at not only the product, but also how it is delivered. And those are the nuances we take care of. Brand and creator driven collaborations definitely help because they have the ability to generate content that is very relatable.
What are some key challenges of operating in this space?
Demand was never a problem in the gifting and celebrations space. Everybody has about five to eight occasions a year that they celebrate. The biggest challenge was supply and bringing new and high quality products into it. Finding the right kind of manufacturers and building our own delivery ecosystem were the bigger challenges.
Ours is not an off-the-shelf solution. If you go to a third delivery company, they will not be able to cater to what our customers need, given the amount of value addition that we do. Certain categories are hard work, like flowers. You have to tell the growers which flowers to grow, when to cut them so that they’re fresh when they reach a consumer, and then build a cold chain where flowers and confectionery can be transported in the best way.
IGP has recently expanded offline. Why was that necessary and what are the growth prospects in the offline space?
Even before we opened our first few retail stores, we were already offline due to our dark store network. A lot of consumers started walking into dark stores, requesting to buy products from there. They would also come up with requests like wanting to add in a handwritten note or another product, which pushed us to start our first set of retail stores—one each in Bandra, Breach Candy and Vashi.
When you have physical interactions with a consumer, the conversion rates are fantastic as their confidence level on a product increases substantially. From a growth perspective, we are looking at expanding our offline presence from the current 60-65 touch points including retail stores to about 200 touch points in the next two years. This would be through a combination of about 30 retail stores and 170 dark stores.
Which are the top performing cities on the platform and where do you see the most growth coming from?
The top eight cities constitute about 50 percent of the business and the next 20 cities constitute another 30 percent. The next 50 cities is a long tale but we’re seeing a lot of growth coming from tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Cities like Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Zirakpur, Mohali and Dehradun are fantastic cities. The aspiration levels are very high and people are looking to basically feel good about any occasion.
