We have faced this intimidating task all of our life. Be it a friend’s birthday or your parents’ anniversary or any other special occasion, buying the right gift has always been a task for most of us. We keep thinking for days about what kind of gift to buy and end up giving something which is neither very appealing nor has any utility factor.
Addressing this painst-aking task of gifting the right present for your loved ones is a Hyderabad-based company called FrenchBob. Started by three friends — Anusha Papani, Monish Yerram-setti and Abhinav Rayudu Ambati, it promises to take care of all your gifting needs through its gifting consultancy and e-commerce portal.
So, what really triggered the idea of starting a gifting superhero - as the website suggests “When we were looking for gifts both online and offline for a friend’s birthday, we found far too little options available and to find the right gift it used to take two to three days of thinking and research.
After the research, the final gift might not be available for the big day that we had planned and that is really a big pain. So, we decided to start the gifting startup leveraging the e-commerce setup backed by excellent execution in terms of delivery and personalisation. We did a thorough market research for supply and demand for about a year and launched our full-fledged running version in the second half of 2015,” explains Monish, who calls himself the captain of FrenchBob.
The company, which has got about one lakh visitors to its website so far, is acting not only as an online gifting portal but also has a unique concept of mixing gifts with suggestions.
So if the user is confused about what to gift to the person concerned, FrenchBob will help them by providing suggestions. It also has personalised gifts like day/week full of gifts, Harley Davidson ride, music classes, personalised songs and so forth.
Although Monish claims that the gift recommendation engine and sourcing of the gifts is the biggest challenge they have to able to maintain their delivery time to about four hours and almost 70 per cent of their orders are delivered within four hours. The gifts listed on the website range according to the choice of the consumer but normally it varies between Rs 200 to Rs 2,000.
In terms of funding, the company is currently bootstrapped and according to Monish they are looking for further funding as they go ahead. “We are actively looking at funding currently. Although now we deliver in Hyderabad through our own channel and pan-India via our logistics partner. Going forward we plan to expand to Bengaluru by 2016 in terms of own delivery channel,” he explains.
