Interview with Jyoti Ramnath, CraftMyGift

Jyoti Ramnath

Founder: CraftMyGift

[Category: Home-sprung Business Model: Part I
Preen The Passion]

 
http://www.craftmygift.com/

CraftMyGift creates unique gifts high on creativity and personalization. It is not just a gift shop but the team works as a gift advisor to suggest and create gifts which are perfect for special occasion. Their philosophy behind this business idea is that gifts are a wonderful means to express your thoughts and feelings for your loved one and it requires great detailing and attention to ensure it creates an impact. CraftMyGift was started in 2008 with a vision to make the art of gifting an enriching experience. CraftMyGift creates gifts for individual occasions, corporate gifting as well as for events. CraftMyGift also works with corporate companies for creative branding ideas.



1. A little about your background – education, past work experience, do you have entrepreneurial roots?
I come from an engineering background with a work experience of 6 years in Hewlett Packard. I have completed my MBA from ICFAI as well as done a certificate course on Entrepreneurship from IIM-B. I am very much a first generation entrepreneur. My parents and relatives have always been working professionals.

2. Is this your first entrepreneurial venture? If no, then which were the earlier ones? Are you still involved in them?
This is my first venture which I took forward to turn it to a complete business. However I was conceptualizing and building business plans on another business in the area of Solar Energy but it never saw the day as my business partner and I were quite young to understand business and were focusing on the un-important things. But it was a good learning experience.

3. What did you learn from your earlier ventures?
Though I won’t call my stint with Solar Energy business as a venture but still the experience with that taught me that getting to sales is the primary important thing in a business. First time entrepreneurs often spend too much time on selecting a business name, logo designing, business card design, website etc but often ignore to set a strategy to make money. It was a small learning but did help me focusing on the right thing when I started CraftMyGift.

4. What market segment and industry are you addressing now?

We currently focus on 3 different areas:

A.      Personalization Experts for Corporate Brand Promotional Needs

a.     We work with corporate business launch teams as a personalization consultant advising on creative gifting ideas for product launch. We also work with various Event Management Companies as a gift expert to provide creative giveaway gifts and speaker gifts.

b.       We work with corporate marketing teams as a personalization consultant advising on how to add the personal touch to their marketing initiatives and leave a strong brand recall on the most important client's desk.

B.      Corporate Gifts

a.       We bring a creative angle to corporate gifting with ideas and concepts which are attractive, out of the box and have an impact on the gift recipient.

b.       We create gifts for business partners, recognition gift kits, and occasion based gifting.

C.      Personal Gifts

In the area of personal gifting, we give a lot of importance to emotional impact and flexibility to personalize the gift as per an individual's needs.

5. How did you arrive at this business idea?
The trigger for the business started from my passion of adding personal touches to gifts to make them more meaningful. When I explored the market, spoke to friends and did some basic market research, I realized people often end up creating personal gifts on their own as there are not many services they can use to create personal gifts which are creative and gives them the flexibility to convey their emotions. When I say personalized gifts, it is not just about adding a photo to a mug or greeting card but adding more thought to the gift idea, making it attractive & creative and above all express the emotions.

6. How have you funded your business (right from its inception)?
I have funded the business from my personal savings till now.

7. What have been the challenges – finding the business partner, financing, recruiting, selling etc. Which in your experience has been the most difficult challenge to overcome?
Building a business poses challenges at multiple stages. But if the spirit is high, one does think of innovative ways to overcome the challenge. I have faced challenges in finding the right talent for the company, getting customers, establishing B2B associations. Till now the most challenging has been working in the B2B domain and we are continuously finding new ways to provide maximum value adds to businesses.

8. What is your revenue model?
We sell gift products to make money.

9. Are you profitable now?
We recently met the break-even point.

10. Last, but very important, a little about your family – how did you manage to strike a balance between the home, kids and the new venture?
Luckily dealing with personal life and business has been completely easy for me. Since I stay with my parents, almost everything back home is taken care by them. They have been a big support. I haven’t yet stepped into married life, so I have all the time to give to my business.

The Perspective:
Jyoti is an example of a budding and successful entrepreneur who has innovatively used her passion to create business model out of it. She did the market survey before starting her venture and found a gap where there were limited service providers for personalised gifts, with very limited ideas. Jyoti added creative and innovative thinking and addressed the gap with a much wider range of gift ideas. She also took the idea to broader functional areas, including creative branding ideas in her gamut of services.