We are about to start with the Valentines week and that means exchanging a lot of gifts from the 7th Feb to 14th Feb. Well its not an easy time for either girls or boys, it surely is easy to buy something online as a gift, but that’s only if you know what to buy.
But gone are the days when choosing and deciding a gift was the biggest dilemma. We present to you the Wishpicker. ‘Your wish my command’ is now a reality.
Wishpicker an exciting new start-up by two IIT graduates, helps you figure out WHAT to gift!
We believe that this is an extremely useful product, that provides great gift ideas to anyone unable to figure out what to gift when an occasion is around the corner. You can search for a ‘Romantic-Birthday-gift-for-Girlfriend’, or ‘Creative-Anniversary-gift for Religious-Middle Aged-parents’
The gift recommendations system is powered by some very complex algorithms, developed by a team of engineers from the IITs. ‘Human touch’ is added by a team of curators, who ensure that each gift on wishpicker is unique in its own right.
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- How it works:
- Gifts are curated from the best online stores, and this helps the user get access to the best that is available across the web – all at one place. Essentially, a one stop shop for the best gift ideas! They can choose from a wide range of gift products, gift vouchers, experiential gifts etc. Users can also filter results based on personality, budget, type of gift, and various other parameters.
- We have 20 e-commerce partners as of now, including Flipkart, HappilyUnmarried, Ferns and Petals, etc. We plan increase the number of tie-ups soon.
- Gift recommendations are also made based on the likes and interests of the recipient on Facebook. This is a very real reflection of their personality, and helps people select gifts that the recipients actually ‘like’!
- The Wishpicker story:
- Wishpicker.com was launched (in Beta) in Jun 2013 by Prateek Rathore, and Apurv Bansal to fix the broken gifting market. Prateek and Apurv were batchmates at IIT Delhi.
- When Prateek was pursuing his management studies at IE Business School in Spain, he was looking to send a gift back home on his parents’ anniversary. There were a large number of gifting websites, but no one could actually help him figure out what to gift. Confused, and disappointed, he called up his sister back home, and asked her to go buy a nice gift from the mall. Apurv faced the same problem when he was in Mumbai, and was looking to send gifts to his girlfriend in Delhi.
- This got them thinking, and they realized that deciding what to gift was a problem faced by a large number of people on a frequent basis. They knew they could solve this using technology. Prateek didn’t take up a job after completing his masters, Apurv quit his job at Bain in Mumbai – they both came back home to Delhi and started Wishpicker
- Future plans:
- Wishpicker is smart platform with an extremely scalable model, given that they are completely cloud-based, and do not hold their own inventory. As a result, they plan to expand internationally soon after cracking the Indian market.
