Giftxoxo – Enrich Your Lives Through Activities And Experiences
Bangalore-based Giftxoxo is an appreciation management, rewards & recognition, incentives and employee engagement platform. Its SaaS platform is being used by various corporates globally and in India. The company was started in April 2012 and now has around 110 employees. It is headquartered in Bangalore with regional offices in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai.
Giftxoxo is helping to build the culture of appreciation, accountability & engagement in companies through its simple RnR platform with a redemption catalog of experiences & gift vouchers.
About Co-founders
The company was started by 4 Co-founders who come with good academic and professional background with good complementary skills.
Sumit Khandelwal – MBA (TAPMI) with experience in Metro, Wipro Consumer Care & Hexaware.Handles Strategy, Finance, BD.
Manoj Agarwal – MBA (IIM K) with experience in Flipkart, Manipal, Yahoo. Handles Marketing, Products, HR.
Abhishek Kumar – Engineering (IIT – Mumbai) with experience in Evening Flavors. Handles Engineering
Kushal Agarwal – MBA (Wellingkar) with experience in BIDCO. Handles Sales & HR
SUJATA SANGWAN SPOKE TO MANOJ AGARWAL, GIFTXOXO’S CO-FOUNDER
How did the idea came to start Giftxoxo?
The idea came around when Manoj who was working with Flipkart in 2012 found that gifting contributes significantly to any eCommerce revenues and still has many unsolved issues around it. Similarly, Sumit who was working with Metro Cash & Carry handling private labels found some interesting gifting ideas which were working well in lot of western countries but were not tried in India. This is how they got together and conceptualized to bring experience gifting in India.
Special key features of the startup
Giftxoxo is one of the pioneers in experience gifting in India. The idea of experience giting has been well appreciated by corporates and individuals. Its SAAS Rewards platform is also one of its kind with latest technology and features. The startup claims that they have been growing well over last 4 years.
Product Categories of Giftxoxo
Giftxoxo offers 2 versions of the SaaS platform – XoxoEngage and XoxoLite. XOXO Engage is specialized full version that enables rich analytics, engagement tools, timeline approach etc. to make the offering unique and customized for an organization. XoxoLite is a DIY (self serve) platform which any company can use to get started with few clicks. The platform can easily integrate with existing collaboration and HR platforms used by the organization. Giftxoxo redemption catalog is specialized by offering the widest range of listings of experiences, activities and gift vouchers. It offers over 3000 unique experiences and activities across categories like activity travel & adventure, gourmet, health & wellness, and art & learning. The experiences are also open for personal consumption & gifting by individuals.
How is the startup different from the existing ones?
Talking about their differentiation factors, Manoj said, “There is no other company in India who does experience gifts. Hence we are uniquely positioned. For rewards and recogintion we compete with some global players. However, we are different in terms of our agility to delivery, effective pricing and a cutting edge catalog for redemption.”
Funding status and monetization
Giftxoxo raised a small seed round in 2013. The startup is now in process to raise a Series A round. It earn commissions on its experience sales. The company also have recurring income from its rewards software solution.
Giftxoxo sells the XOXO Engage tools to HR heads of organizations. The sales channels are DIY, on field sales, inbound sales and channel partners. It employs a direct sales team that sells to its 600+ corporate clients who use it reward employees, provide sales incentives or for corporate gifting purpose. XOXO Engage Lite model is open online prepaid tool, which is used by small companies for opening Experience based Reward catalog for their employees. Giftxoxo has more than 100000 registered customers currently who redeem points for activities, experiences and gift vouchers on the platform. These users are also allowed to buy experiences & activities for personal consumption as well.
Challenges faced by startup while setting up the business
Like any other start-up, Giftxoxo also faced various challenges. Some of the challenges which are mostly common across startups were hiring the right team and getting those initial customers. “However, in our case the idea was unique to India and hence we also took some time to find the right product market fit and iterated to get that right,” added Manoj.
Traction details (Present status and future plans)
Giftxoxo is working with over 600 corporate clients and over 1 lakh direct consumers. It work with most of the top corporates in India. The company target a revenue of Rs 100 Cr by FY 2017. It works with over 1000 vendors across India for hand picked and curated experiences. These vendors are seamlessly integrated through a technology platform to ensure high quality and automation to manage catalog, inventory, scheduling and bookings.
Market size and market opportunity
Talking about the market size, Manoj told that we are working in a market size of approx Rs 60,000 Cr in India alone. After few months, we will also cater to some global markets making it a much larger opportunity.
He further added, “This space has lot of opportunity. However, one has to have the right product market it. A generic fit all strategy won’t work as this requires a niche understanding.”
Check out the this video to know about the Giftxoxo’s activities and experiences
