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![[Will e-gifting ever become as popular as e-mailing?]](05lead.gif)
Shirley Singh
Lavish expressions of ardour, shy tokens of love, spontaneous notes of remembrance and myriad other emotions are whizzing across the Web. They've taken the delightful form of gifts and are traveling from lovers to their beloved.
Where it once thrilled people to send and receive mail at electronic speeds, it's now amazing them to be able to send and receive that thoughtful present right from their computer. As the Internet gains velocity in India, people are discovering the ease of e-gifting to friends and family who are miles away.
Electronic goods, apparel, accessories, artefacts, sweets and flowers span a kaleidoscopic array of goods available online. While e-shopping is an attractive alternative to actual shopping, e-gifting fulfils a need.
Says Hareesh Tibrewala, co-founder and president of homeindia.com, "Gifting is very different from shopping. Gifting is more budget driven (and not product driven), the customer does not want to spend too much time shopping and the customer wants the brand to do a kind of pre-selection of items so that the whole process can be completed fast."
Sending a gift to someone far away is often a Herculean task, which gets greatly simplified online. Just ask Akash Jauhar who was in France. Earlier, whenever he wanted to send anything to his Bangalore-based girlfriend, he had to tell his sister in Mumbai, who then sent money to one of her friends in Bangalore to buy and convey the specified gift. Then, says Akash, one day I found out I could send things via Rediff and that was great since I could now do it directly, and faster. I've sent soft toys, flowers, and even a perfume to her via Rediff. It was so much easier and thankfully, private too!"
While girlfriends seem to be the largest recipients of online gifts, moms are not far behind. Ajoy Krishnamurthi, vice-president, e-commerce, at rediff.com, says, "This may sound surprising, but our track of orders in the past few months shows the highest number of gifts are being sent by children to their moms." Says Kiran, who gifted a Titan watch online to her mother, "It's become so clichéd to get something for your mom and place it quietly in one corner of the house; this was an interesting new way to do it."
For those working and living outside their hometowns, gifting online is more than an interesting option - It's one more precious connection, one more way of letting their family know they are thought of. Says K Vaitheeswaran, corporate spokesperson for Fabmart, "Except on occasions like Valentine's Day, a huge chunk of gifts is being sent by children in other cities to old parents, and from aunts and uncles to nephews and nieces in other cities."
Whatever the relation, whatever the gift, it's the combination of convenience and reliability that's fuelling e-gifting. Your gift site takes care of parceling and courier, keeps you posted on the progress of your order via email, makes sure it reaches the person on the given date, and informs you when it's delivered. It works just like e-shopping. So once you place your order, you can relax.
The single largest deterrent to online shopping, though, is fear of using one's credit card. However, most sites today employ SSL encryption to secure private information. One of the largest providers of this is ccnow.com.
In that context, Ajit Kumar, a businessman who owns several credit cards, says "Using a credit card online is not the danger. Having a credit card is the trouble - since anyone who gets your card number and expiry date can use it online to make purchases." If you're still averse to the use of credit cards, several sites offer other payment options like cash on delivery (for shopping, not gifting), cheque payment, demand draft, gift certificates, Netbanking, etc. Also check out these safe shopping tips.
Another doubt is quality. Says Komal Doshi, who once bought a pair of diamond earrings through one site, "The diamonds were the most minuscule ones I had ever seen, not at all like what they looked online. It would have been worse if I had gifted them to someone." One solution, she says, is to gift only branded stuff online, where the quality of the product cannot be tampered with.
It is also important to choose a good site. Do not go solely by special features. They don't matter as much as good reputation and efficient customer support.
If you want to send something specific, there might be a site specialising in just that - like Bangoes and Gift Mangoes for mangoes, Heritage Arcade or Art Stall for Indian art, and Flowers Online or Gift Flowers for bouquets. If you cannot decide what to send, a Gift Certificate could be a safe bet.
For a particular city, you might want to contact local sites like Ahmedabad.com, Reach Gujarat, Calcutta Mall, Delhi Gift Centre, Orissa Market or Coimbatore.com. You can send stuff to the US via Amazon or Red Envelope.
Some general sites worth checking out are Home India, India Plaza, Indian Gift House, Bharat Planet and Ace Gift 2 India.
But the best laid plans sometimes could, and do, go awry. As Akash relates, "A small bouquet of roses I once sent online to my girlfriend actually turned out to be a huge one and she had difficulty carrying it home from her office where it was delivered. She said that one gentleman actually thought that she was selling roses!"
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