IIT graduates Prateek Rathore and Apurv Bansal have come up with a gift recommendation portal that suggests options on the basis of Facebook likes. Apurv tells Divya Kaushik that the idea was conceived to help those who fall short of time to think of something quirky
If you have often thought that there should be someone who should do the thinking for you, even on matters like what should you gift your parents, friends or spouses, then here's some help. IIT Delhi graduates Prateek Rathore and Apurv Bansal conceived Wishpicker — gift recommendation portal — to help people come up with the perfect and unique gift, that in some cases is decided after going through a person’s Facebook profile. “If suppose you want to gift your friend something special and you don’t have time to go around the place looking for something right or you are not at the place where your friend is, we do the needful. We will take your friend’s name and try to find out what she/he likes on the basis of her/his Facebook likes. Keeping that in mind we will suggest a gift,” informed Apurv, who after his graduation in civil engineering, was working in Mumbai. “But my girlfriend was in Delhi and every time I wanted to give her something it was a very difficult task to decide what should I gift. I was in touch with my friend Prateek, who after his graduation went to Spain for further studies and wanted to come back to India. He too faced a similar problem when he wanted to buy a gift for his parents. So we decided why not start something of our own that benefits people like us,” he added.
Apurv feels that Facebook likes speak a lot about the personality of the person and in the last two months, (their website has been operational for two months) they have never gone wrong with their suggestion. Harshita Pandey, a student of Hansraj college chose her friend’s gift through Wishpicker. She said, “I was confused about what to gift my best friend. When I looked up a gift for him on Wishpicker, they told me that he was a Sachin Tendulkar fan, and provided me with a large no of options ranging from books, T-Shirts, posters and other memorabilia based on Sachin. I gifted him Sachin's biography!” Apurv told us that Sachin Tendulkar is one of the favourite pick of the web users and therefore they have variety of options.
Wishpicker has tied up with a large number of online retailers — Flipkart, Ferns and Petals, Happily Unmarried and 15 others. The portal recommends products from these popular websites as gifts, depending on who you are looking to gift. Not only products, users can also choose from a wide variety of experiences (a meal at The Taj, etc), and gift vouchers.
So far they have come up with quirky, interesting gifting ideas like a boxer shorts with ‘The legend’ printed on it and a sandaas ash tray, an ash tray in the shape of the Indian toilet seat. “A girl told us that she is looking for a gift for her boyfriend and his Facebook profile revealed that he is into rock music and likes quirky stuff. So we came up with the idea of boxer shorts. like we have cakes with photos on them, we came up with artificial flowers with photos and sent a bouquet to a girl’s parents. We note down few requirements and then suggest the gift, it can be simple, unique, expensive, cheap, anything that you want. In case you are falling short of time or you are not in the same city where the person you want to gift is, we suggest an e-gift sent on the same day. The gift will reach on the email and the person will know what she/he will be getting in couple of days time through courier,” shared Apurv.
With string of occasions lined up, Friendship Day, Raksha Bandhan, the duo expects the business to shoot up and are therefore thinking of more creative ideas to expand their popularity base.