Unwrapping The Gift

This festive season, BlackBook evaluates the worth of the growing luxury gifting market, and finds out why a perfect present is, almost, an obsession now

- Riddhi Doshi

Almost a decade ago, the most important person on a wedding reception stage was a bride’s brother or a groom’s sister, entrusted with the extremely important duty of collecting cash covers from guests. The job then was easy — take the cover and stuff it in a bag. Plus, you got to be in every single photograph. These days, though, this task can’t be managed by one. You need a dedicated team doing it. Gifting, in India, has evolved rapidly over the last decade, and presents, now, come in all shapes and sizes and in fancy packaging. A custom-made perfume, artisanal chocolates, chairs studded with jewels, travel packages, bottles of fine spirits plastered with the couple’s photographs and the list goes on.

A new social norm

Not just during weddings or festivals, gifts are exchanged on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Women’s Day, for housewarming, bachelor party, baby shower, first promotion, graduation, baby birth and honeymoon. “It has become a social norm,” says Abhishek Mishra, Associate Professor of Marketing at IIM Indore. They would earlier say that your sense of style defines the kind of person you are, and they now say that the gift you give tells a lot about you. It’s natural then that we wouldn’t leave any stone unturned to prove ourselves and please others.

Driven by millennials

Professor Mishra says that the luxury gifting sector will witness a 100 percent rise in the next two to five years, in line with the increased consumption of luxury goods.