Millennials: No roses for Valentine's Day please
The demand for gift cards and e-gift cards is soaring as they are seen as convenient options both for the giver and receiver.
Bengaluru: India's millennial Valentines are in no hurry to grab red roses for their beloveds this time as they believe a wide variety of personalised gifts are better arrows to invoke Cupid.
Surveys show that apparel, accessories, food and beverages, electronics, health & beauty, travel and cabs, cinema & entertainment are the most bought and booked e-gift items online in the last 13 days for this year's Valentine's Day. Interestingly, over 80% of these buyers are tech savvy and belong to Gen X &Y.
Garin Cheb, 25, a techie from Ludhiana says: “Red roses and bouquets have become just thrown-in items with expensive gifts. No girl is going to be happy with just roses alone.”
“I've asked my husband to get me a pair of diamond ear studs. Well! roses... he can get me a few if he wants,'' says Pranika Anand, a doctor with a chuckle.
The Indian gift card market is expected to reach $80-85 billion by 2024. Of which e-gift cards are expected to be the major chunk of the market at $70 billion.
“The demand for gift cards and e-gift cards is soaring as they are seen as convenient options both for the giver and receiver. Who wouldn't like to get personalised gifts, the things that you really want,'' asks Arvind Prabhakar, CEO and Co-Founder of GyFTR (Vouchagram), an online-to-offline platform which enables brand currencies and create digital gifting & rewards ecosystem. GyFTR currently has more than 50,000 terminals that sell gift vouchers and coupons from over 130 Indian and international brands.
The platform facilitates seamless gifting by allowing consumers to buy gift vouchers from leading brands digitally and get it delivered instantly via SMS, e-mail or as physical vouchers.
“The e-commerce industry and the coupons space share a healthy symbiotic relationship and it also mutually helps the giver and the receiver,'' says Ashok Kumar Reddy, founder & CEO of GrabOn, a Hyderabad-based online couponing company.
GrabOn currently has a monthly subscriber base of over 6.5 million users and 3000+ merchant partners onboard, and boasts of helping India save over 300 crore in the last financial year alone by providing top offers, deals and discounts to shoppers.