Indian e-tailers want you to choose the presents that your friends will pay for

• Indian e-commerce startup Pepperfry is looking at targeting the $50 billion wedding industry in India.
  
• Amazon and other small online gift registry startups already offer the service.
  
• Gifts can be a $65 billion industry in India, Pepperfry tells Business Insider.
  

What if you could choose a list of presents you want at your wedding and let your friends and family buy them for you? That’s an online gift registry, and Indian online furniture retailer Pepperfry is the second prominent player to offer this feature.

Amazon had taken the lead in 2018 by signing actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas right after her wedding to Nick Jonas to promote its gift registry feature.

Smaller online startups catering to weddings have also dabbled with the idea of gift registries although it’s yet to take off on a large scale in India.

“The Indian wedding market is slated to be a $50 billion market while the gifting industry is set to hit the $65 billion number. We are looking at an intersection of these two segments, which plays to the strengths that we currently have,” Abhimanyu Lal, Chief Product Officer, Pepperfry told Business Insider.

There are two-three simple steps one needs to do - create a registry, add the products to their list and then share the registry with friends and family, who can then buy these products.

Big fat Indian weddings have been an annual affair for decades. Why is it that gift registries are taking off only now? “Historically, Indians have been a bit averse to asking for gifts. But today, when Indian millennials are planning their own weddings which never used to be the case before, they can also ask for the gifts they want too,” said Lal.

There may be enough room to grow as India witnesses 10-12 million weddings per year, according to Lal. “So far, we have been associated with the slightly older demographic but with this feature we hope to reach the younger audience as well. When it comes to our category which is furniture, homeware or decor, we are the leaders of the space,” said Lal.

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