Gifting Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Woohoo Gifting Blog

Farewell gift ideas for your friend

Your friend is going abroad and you are caught in a bitter-sweet moment, bursting with pride on his achievement and, at the same time, feeling a sense of sadness that you would miss him dearly. Get him a farewell gift to celebrate this new phase in his life as he goes on to experience new places, things and adventures. Here are a few farewell gift ideas you might like to explore.

A nice and sturdy suitcase

Going abroad would call for suitcases in sizes that he might not currently possess. But how would you know the exact size and type of suitcase that would be a perfect for him? A good idea would be to get him a Shopper’s Stop or Lifestyle gift card, as that would give him the option of picking up exactly what he needs.

Good books to keep him company

Travelling overseas often demands long hours being spent at airports and on flights. It could get pretty boring if he has nothing to do to while away his time. In such times, books make good company and a perfect way to lose track of time. You could get him a Crossword, Amazon or Flipkart gift card so he could pick some books that have been on his “must-read” list for a while.

Ready-to-eat packets

Once he lands on foreign shores, there are lots of things he would miss and home food will certainly top the list. Yes! Comfort food is what he will need when he misses home. Get him a gift card from Spencer’s or Big Bazaar so that he could stock up on some ready-to-eat Indian food packets to take with him.

Apparel

A different place would also mean a different climate he would have to brace. This could require him to buy now clothes in-keeping with the demands of the new place and climate. Get your friend a gift card from Shopper’s Stop, Lifestyle or Central. He could go pick a nice jacket or shorts and shirts, depending on where he’s heading.

Miscellaneous needs

You know you want to gift him something useful for him but not too sure about exactly what he needs at the moment? No problem! You could just gift him a Woohoo gift card which he could use across a wide range of brands across different categories to get himself exactly what he wants. This way, both he and you would be happy you gifted him a farewell gift that is useful and not something he would have had to leave behind.

Note: Image is from thecolourjournal.com. Copyright vests with respective copyright holders.

(Post updated on 19 Jan 2016)

Housewarming gift ideas everyone will love!

Housewarming is a special event in most people’s lives. It is a moment of pride and happiness and a culmination of a huge endeavor not only in monetary terms but sheer physical effort and emotional investment. A beautiful gift to mark this moment would reflect your thoughtfulness and joy in their celebration. Here are some housewarming gift ideas everyone will love.

Kitchen ware: The kitchen is the heart of a house. A new crockery set, spice rack, non-stick set, cook and serve ware etc would be a nice addition in the new home. A gift card from Prestige Smart Kitchen, Amazon or Flipkart would be a good idea as the host can select the exact item that would serve the functional and aesthetic requirements of her kitchen.

Bed linen: A new home could do with a dash of colour. Fresh new bed linen would brighten up any bedroom. A gift card from Shopper’s Stop or Lifestyle would be perfect for gifting this as they offer a wide range of design and colour options for bed linen.

Art: Wall hangings, vases, sculptures and other decorative items in silver, wood, ceramic etc convert a house into a home. A gift card from Pantaloons, Westside or Central would give them the choice of buying beautiful things that add a touch of class to the new home.

Home furnishings: Have your friends been considering cushions, curtains or other furnishings for their new home? Then a gift card from @Home or Home Stop would be ideal, where there can choose the colour and fabric of their liking.

Appliances: Small home appliances always make great gifts. Be it a cool toaster, an espresso machine or sandwich maker, gift your friends a gift card from Croma or E-zone to give them the freedom and flexibility to choose the appliances of their choice.

Want to give them even more choices? Gift them a Woohoo gift card, which they could use to pick a gift card from the brands of their own choice from Woohoo.in.

Note: Image is from blovelyevents.com and burntapple.com. Copyright vests with respective copyright holders.

(Post updated on 13 Jan 2016)

This Pongal, celebrate the joy of giving and receiving.

Pongal is a four day post-harvest festival, celebrated with great pomp in Tamil Nadu and by Tamilians the world over. On the first day of celebrations, called ‘Bhogi’, many families get rid of old household items and buy new things, marking the beginning of a new lifecycle. On the second day, called ‘Pongal’, Surya or the Sun god is worshipped for being the benefactor of this world and agriculture in particular. Rice and milk are prepared in vessels till they boil over, signifying the overflow of abundance. The third day is called ‘Maattu Pongal’, when cows are worshipped for their bountiful milk. On the fourth day called ‘Kanum Pongal’, people visit friends and relatives and enjoy in the festivities.

During Pongal, new clothes are worn, friends are relatives are invited to gala feasts and gifts are exchanged. This Pongal, instead of the traditional gifts, gift something that’s different and thoughtful to your friends and family.

Gift cards, gift vouchers and e-gift vouchers from Woohoo.in can make gifting easy and a fun experience, both for the sender and the recipient of gifts. Gift cards are also ideal, especially if one’s family and relatives live far away. They can be easily ordered online, from within the comforts of your home, and delivered at your loved ones’ doorsteps.

Woohoo.in has a range of top brands, across different categories for you to choose from. You could choose to gift your parents a fine dining or a spa experience with gift cards from brands like Mainland China, Copper Chimney, Four Fountains Spa and the like. Or you could gift your brother his choice of books, electronics, watches with a Flipkart or Amazon gift cards. If you’d like to give them the choice with the brands as well, you could do so by gifting them a Woohoo gift card which enables them to use it for purchasing gift cards from the brands of their choice. They could also use the card via the Woohoo app and shop across a wide range of stores both online and physical ones.

Yes, Woohoo now has an app too! If you’d like to make your gifting more personal and instant, you could download the Woohoo app and send an electronic gift card to your loved ones within minutes. That’s not just it. You could also personalize it with your selfies or photographs of old memories from your gallery, a voice note and a text. All this delivered instantly from your mobile to theirs via whatsapp, SMS or email. Try it out today and set a new gifting trend this Pongal!

Note: Image is from india-daily.com .Copyright vests with respective copyright holders.

(Post updated on 7 Jan 2016)

A Rewarding Business

Republished here on: 12 September 2012

As appeared in September issue of Outlook Business. By Michael Correya.

Why prepaid gift cards are becoming popular as an employee reward

Remember when Sodexo passes had become a sort of al- ternative currency? Companies doled out the meal vouchers as a form of tax-free compensation and the coupons gained acceptance virtually everywhere — you could use your Sodexo passes to not only buy a meal, but also your groceries, medicines, consumer electronics and clothes. And then, retailers tired of the high handling costs and delayed payments from Sodexo and stopped accepting the vouchers. There are murmurs that the French company is back in action in India, but it’s still muted.

A Swipe Ahead

Gifting market in India $30 billion
Prepaid gift cards and vouchers market in India $403.8 million
Growing at 30% a year

Source: Global Prepaid Exchange

Meanwhile, a similar concept is gaining popularity — prepaid gift cards. Gift vouchers from individual retailers and brands have been around for ages but they come with riders. You can’t use a voucher in part, there’s a time limit by when you have to redeem the amount gifted and it can’t be used across all stores.

Which is why companies that used to hand out gift vouchers as rewards or gifts (on birthdays, for instance) are now opting for plastic cards that can be preloaded and used for multiple brands — and reloaded for further gifting, if required. “Services like these help companies reduce costs and also eliminate fraud and misuse,” says Jayanth Narayanan, vice-president and MD, Asia Pacific operations, Rideau Recognition Solutions.

While several banks, including ICICI, SBI and Axis, and card company American Express offer preloaded gift cards, some pure-play gift card companies have also set up shop, seeing the growing demand. Bengaluru-based QwikCilver Solutions, for instance, is the largest provider of retailer gift cards and employee reward cards and finds business is booming. “We have tied up with over 50 brands in more than 250 towns across India,” says TP Pratap, chief marketing officer, QwikCilver, proudly. That includes big labels such as Titan, Madura Garments, Flipkart, Shoppers Stop, PVR Cinemas and Café Coffee Day. QwikCilver also provides employee reward cards for companies such as 3M, ICICI Prudential, Intel and CA.

It works like this. The client selects the retailer or brand whose card will be distributed among employees. The money to be loaded on the card is transferred to the retailer, who passes on a 1-2.5% commission to the cards company immediately. The company earns the same commission if the card is reloaded. For the retailer, though, the expense goes beyond the commission: it has to integrate IT systems and instal swipe machines for the gift cards, which can cost upward of Rs 10 lakh.

Sodexo’s popularity slipped with employees when it came under the scanner of the tax authorities. It remains to be seen how long the gift cards reign flourishes.

Gifts that Go Beyond Money

When we think of birthday gifts, a framed picture, a vase or something generic comes to our mind. But when famous celebrities gift each other, they sometimes think in terms of huge high end cars costing tens of thousands of dollars.

A Customized Dodge Ram Truck

Jennifer Lopez (42-year-old divorced Hollywood celebrity, pop music sensation and movie star) gifted a customized white Dodge Ram truck to her 25-year-old boyfriend, backup dancer Casper Smart, on his birthday. A regular Dodge Ram truck costs about 30,000 USD, but with customizations and the works, Jennifer Lopez seems to have blown a cool 50,000 USD on her boyfriend’s birthday. It did not end there; the present was followed by an intimate dinner party at a famous Italian restaurant in Hollywood, where she piled more gifts on her man. Jennifer Lopez demonstrates her love in the only way she knows – by heaping gifts and spending time with her loved one!

But Gifting is Not Always about Money Spent

It’s not about the money you spend, but the quality of the brands you gift that makes a difference. Woohoo.in can make your loved one’s birthday special with a variety of gifting options that you had not thought of before. When your loved one’s birthday rolls by this year, get her a gift card from Satya Paul for a customized, grand designer outfit that she can wear to any major occasion. To make her day perfect, give her a gift card from Mainland China for a romantic birthday dinner. A giftcard from PVRCinemas for a romantic late night movie will be just the right touch to the best night of her life. The right kind and combinations of gifts, with lots of feeling, can sometimes outshine even the most expensive gifts that money can buy.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Don’t like it…yet I am gifting with a Gift Card

(Written by an Indian who is back in India after many years living abroad in the US) I am the kind of a gal who likes to gift something nice, which will make the person remember me by. I think that I have great taste or let us settle for good taste. I take pains to find something nice and that obviously means a lot of shopping and running around. I’ll admit that I do like the (window) shopping part of it. It is also a nice opportunity to pickup something for oneself in the process! So, I never really liked the idea of a Gift Card when it surfaced a while ago; those days we dwelled in the USA. We returned to India a few years back and again I was buying toys mostly for the tots on their Birthdays and watches/dinner sets for the Weddings. That kind of became a norm. As my first son grew older, I had to start attending the Upanayanas (thread ceremony). There started all my troubles. I couldn’t buy the traditional gifts (typically silver/gold – not to mention the recent upsurge of the yellow metal) because the pre-teens won’t like them. If I go with the toys/video games, the older generation will give me looks. My husband suggested that I was better off buying a gift card because the kid or the ‘young man’ can choose whatever he likes. So Landmark became the de facto gift card for all the teens. It still is because it has books, games and toys. It may change from Landmark to something as other youth brands like Fastrack have gift cards now. These days my lazy husband also asks me to buy gift cards whenever he has to travel for weddings ‘cause he doesn’t have to lug it around. The other hidden fear factor that I have with these conventional gifts is duplication, especially in weddings. You don’t want your gift to bring out a sighL Recently, I got a bunch of gift vouchers (denomination 500) from the credit card company because of the hefty points that we had accumulated. I was thinking it would have been so much easier if they had given me a Gift Card. I could have carried it in my purse all the time. I didn’t have to worry about the price tags to make sure that the total was a multiple of 500! That was the very first time that I wished for a gift card J Anyway, these days I have compromised and I console myself that the gift card comes with some advantages. It is ok to give them when you don’t know the person well, if you don’t have the time or if you are just lazy. When you are at the receiving end, gift card is any day better than a lousy gift. Don’t get me wrong – the gifter may have the heart in the right place, but the taste may be really lousy. I always have this nagging thought when I buy the gift card – Will they (giftee) remember that they bought that particular item with the gift card I gave? May be or may be not. I am growing up and am slowly realizing that the joy is in giving! – Mamatha Rao