Want To Buy Your Beloved Land On The Moon? This Start-up Helps You Find The Perfect Gift

Come Valentine’s Day and people (read men) are in a tearing hurry to buy the most offbeat and perfect gifts for their loved ones at the very last moment. But most of us fail to think out of the box and the outcome is a pile of all-too-predictable gift items that tend to infest our homes on each and every occasion – be it Valentine’s Day or Christmas, Holi or Diwali. If you want to find the most suitable gifts without the least hassle, try Wishpicker, a 9-month-old, Noida-based start-up that curates and aggregates gift items & gift ideas from reputed merchants and helps you find the most relevant gifts as per your choice/preference – so that you won’t have to hunt for another shop – online or offline. But unlike other gift sites, this one does not sell gifts. Once you find something suitable and decide to buy it, you will be redirected to the merchant site for making the purchase.

Wishpicker uses an automated machine learning system for its gift recommendation engine – so that it can identify usage patterns and come up with most relevant gift ideas based on age, relationship, occasion and other parameters. As a result, the start-up is able to maintain a conversion rate that is much higher than plain vanilla e-commerce stores. And the gift suggestions can be really exotic at times – right from buying a piece of land on the moon to getting your sweetheart’s face printed on a flower petal. Want to know more about Wishpicker and its offerings? Here is a snapshot that captures the start-up’s vision and viability.

Who runs Wishpicker (www.wishpicker.com): A team of nine young enthusiasts led by co-founders Prateek Rathore and Apurv Bansal. While Prateek is a computer engineer from IIT Delhi, Apurv is a civil engineer from the same institution and was Prateek’s batchmate. Prateek also holds a post-graduate degree in Management from the IE Business School in Spain. The duo later roped in Tejendra Singh, a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Patna, as a core technology member.

Earlier, Apurv had worked as a consultant but finally left his high-paying corporate job at Bain & Company in Mumbai to start Wishpicker when Prateek returned to India after finishing his management studies. The duo started working on the concept in early 2013 and Wishpicker.com went live in June last year. “Initially, we were operating from the terrace of Prateek’s parents’ flat in Delhi. But we shifted to Noida when the team grew,” recalls Apurv.

What inspired the venture: Personal misadventures. Both Apurv and Prateek faced great difficulties when it came to finding the right kind of gifts for friends and families. “We were at a loss about what to buy and searching for gifts online simply stumped us. We were overwhelmed by the number of options available across the sites. Also, each site claimed it was selling the ‘best gift’ but that personal touch was somewhat missing,” reflects Apurv. “That’s when we realised that a lot of people face the same problem and we should do something about it. Wishpicker is here so that buying gifts turns out to be a happy experience instead of a harrowing one,” he adds.

What’s the pitch: The name reveals the business pitch, according to the co-founders. As the site is helping people ‘pick’ the right gifts for their loved ones (that’s what you wish, don’t you?), Wishpicker is just the right name for it. And the ‘intelligent’ gift recommendation engine offers a never-before curated experience of gift-buying, helping you become a better gift giver who is both thoughtful and creative. “At Wishpicker, you will find a readymade gifting inventory from across the Internet and you can customise your search for best-ever recommendations. That’s our USP for driving business,” explains Apurv.

How it works: What we like about this site is the all-too-simple user interface in spite of a complex backend. For one, you need not register or log in and can start gift hunting right away, from a wide range of gift items, gift vouchers, experiential gifts, etc., provided by some of the best companies and brands. Gifts can be broadly searched based on age, occasion and recipient’s relationship with the giver. You can further fine-tune the search by setting up various other parameters such as personality, budget, type of gift, product category and so on. Gift recommendations are also made based on the likes and interests of the recipient on Facebook. This is a real-life reflection of his/her personality and helps you select gifts that the recipient will actually ‘like’ and cherish. Wishpicker has already tied up with 20 or so merchants/e-commerce partners, including Flipkart, HappilyUnmarried and Ferns N Petals, among others. It is now planning to increase the number of tie-ups.

As gifts are curated from some of the best brands, users can access the very best that is available across the Web. What’s more, you get all at one place, essentially making Wishpicker a one-stop shop for the best gift ideas. The recommendation engine, based on automated machine learning, has been internally developed by the Wishpicker team and is constantly worked upon to ensure a never-before user experience.

Claim to fame: Stickiness, traction and conversion. Wishpicker wishes to be a Google for gifts and seems to be making decent progress in these three key areas, as per the numbers divulged by the company.

Show me the money: Revenue generation happens through commission per sale. According to the co-founders, the site sees more than 150,000 unique visitors per month and it is growing at 80% month on month. The annual GMV run rate is now Rs 1.5 crore and this is expected to double in the next 2-3 months, given the current growth rate.

Wishpicker is self-funded till date but will be raising its first round of angel funding by the second quarter of CY2014. “We put together a seed capital of Rs 15 lakh and we are now looking to raise under a million dollar for the next round of development,” says Apurv. The money raised will be mostly used for enhancing the technology platform and venturing further into the global market.

“The problem we are trying to solve – deciding what to gift and how to find it easily – is globally relevant. Moreover, we have an extremely scalable model as our platform is totally Cloud-based. So we are planning to go global in a big way soon after cracking the Indian market,” details Apurv. Even now, Wishpicker has a significant presence in the US, the UK and the Middle East as people from these countries send gifts to India. But in the next phase of global expansion in the third quarter of this calendar year, the UK market will be the primary focus of the start-up.

Biggest challenge: There are loads of gifting sites in India but most of them work like normal e-commerce sites, instead of aggregating and curating gift information, powered by an intelligent recommendation engine. “For gifting sites, the competition evolves around stickiness – it is essential to ensure that one finds the right gift for the right occasion and comes back often. But a site with a limited inventory cannot assure that and that’s where we are ahead,” affirms Apurv.

He, however, thinks the biggest challenge is to build the right team. “Without a great team, your business is bound to fail. When running a start-up, you will never be short of work, and will constantly feel the need for more people. But the key is not to hire in a hurry and make sure that the candidate is not only talented and hardworking, but also gels well with the culture of the company. Because a wrong hire will push you two steps behind,” he reflects.

Tips for budding entrepreneurs: There is no perfect time to start your own business. If you believe that you are solving a problem that’s affecting a large number of people and have the confidence that you can execute it with perfection, you should just go for it. Age, capital and experience are more of psychological constraints. Once you begin, everything else will fall in place.