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The Indian Gift Card industry has seen the quickest adoption in the Corporate and B2B world. This is expected as the Gift Card is an incredibly powerful reward and loyalty tool for the corporate world. Take the case where Abhishek Sinha, National Sales Development Manager,Britannnia was faced with a massive and a highly heterogenous network of distributors and wholesalers spread across the country. To have a system that would accommodate the requirements and choices of each one in that vast network definitely gives an edge for the business and the loyalty the brand strives for. A parallel situation was experienced when Kotak Mahindra Bank wanted to gratify their diverse set of customers whenever they opened a savings account. Prasanth Tandon, SVP, Kotak Mahindra Bank, credited Qwikcilver and the Woohoo E-Gift Card for enabling instant customer gratification and permanent customer satisfaction. Though similar in size and number, the distributor network which has been critical for the success of a brand like USL-Diageo, has not had its fair share of rewards. The problem stemmed from the low penetration of technology amongst the largely ignored last mile of distribution.

B Sridhar, who is the Chief Digital Marketing Office at Diageo-USL, employed solutions from Qwikcilver to effectively tackle the problem and in the process has earned the loyalty of his last mile distributors. Closer to the corporate world, employees and their happiness is what keeps Kankana Baruah, Chief People Officer, Tally on her toes. A happy workforce requires much motivation and employee rewards form a crucial part. From the days of “Cash gifts” to physical gift items which quickly get tagged as repetitive, low quality, useless etc.; organizations across are trying to find the smarter way of rewarding their employees. Thee gift card is the start of the solution to this problem and in one stroke addresses multiple issues that arises in employee rewards – inventory management, quality assurance, packaging and operational issues and most important of them all the employee satisfaction.  For large organizations like Flipkart the immediate tangible benefit of completely avoiding the inventory management hassles and reducing the cost of the same is a huge factor in going the Woohoo way. Hari Kumar who heads Retail : Electronic Devices, Gaming and Gift cards at Flipkart also adds that the power of choice with the Gift Card in hand is not lost upon the end beneficiary who appreciates the reward that much more. With such benefits backing it, it is no wonder that Gift Card Technology platforms have been adopted the fastest by corporate, enterprises and institutions.

A tricky question, “Do we really know which gift to get for our loved one?”  On this note started the 2^nd panel discussion where the panellists recounted their own funny and not so funny experiences of gifts that have backfired. From personal gifting experiences to gifting experiences at weddings, this discussion had it all. The panel led by our moderator Vasanthi dove headlong into the opportunities and challenges for gifting presented by the Great Indian Weddings. The panelists opined that in India gifting is wide spread activity in India, yet we hesitate to ask for a gift, as is evident from the absence of the concept of Wedding Registry. Srinivas Rao, CMO, Lifestyle pointed out that we Indians meticulously scratch off the price tag before we gift, and hence there is bound to be a hesitation in gifting a value based gift card.

The Indian “gifter” has however started to gift experiential gifts like a spa experience or travel experience especialy during weddings is what Rajshree Bakshi, Global VP – Marketing, Taj Hotels has observed. This same point was echoed by Bimalendu Tarafdar, Marketing Head, Wonderla Holidays and Chetan Kumar, VP, Saavn Media. For KG George, Senior VP, TTK Prestige, whose brand category is already a preferred Wedding Gift, the Gift Card program adds a layer of choice for the consumer of the gift and it also drives footfalls to their exclusive stores. The panelists concurred that while there does exists some reluctance on the part of the customer to pick up a gift card to gift, there is definitely a need for brands to push for innovation in the way gift cards are perceived, sold and experienced in the market today.