In a candid interview with IMAGES Retail, Anil Jhawar, Director, Presto talks about the concept of customisation and how it has evolved in the last 5 years or so. According to him, personalised gifts are now a popular search keyword in Google and consumers are increasingly demanding personalisation in gifts.
How big is the market for specialised gifts in India and what is the growth rate?
The personalised gift market is still in its nascent stage, yet is growing by more than 100 per cent year on year. Special days like Valentine’s, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc. present great business opportunities as customers prefer buying personalised gifts on these days. The estimated size of the customised gifts market today stands at around Rs. 1,000 crore annually.
Please tell us about the number of stores and cities in which they exist.
We have more than 130 stores across India. We are present in prominent cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Guwahati, Shillong, Imphal, Dimapur, Aizawl, Agartala, Patna, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baroda, Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Dhanbad, Kochi, Coimbatore, Trichy, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Allahabad, Kanpur, Siliguri, Malda, and Birtatnagar in Nepal.
What is your market positioning and customer profile?
Presto meets the gifting needs of almost everyone from the urban middle class, irrespective of age, sex or profession. We customer profile includes kids, teenagers, newly-weds, young executives, senior managers, CEOs and even politicians. Presto’s product range has over 500 products, which means there something or the other for everyone here.
Please provide details about your product range and services.
Most of our products can be customised and purchased in a matter of 30 minutes. Presto boasts of a personalised product range that is second to none in the world. We have every kind of product to suit a certain emotion. Our product basket includescustomised gifting items like mugs, T-shirts, 3D crystals, personalised tattoos, etc.
What is the price range for products at your stores?
The price range starts from Rs. 50 to Rs. 10,000.
What is the location strategy for your stores – malls or high street?
The ideal Presto store will be a kiosk or a shop ranging from 40 sq.ft. to 400 sq.ft., located in a high footfall area. We prefer malls, premium high street or shop-in-shop inside large stores.
What is the average size of your stores? How much investment goes into setting up a Presto store?
The average size of a Presto store is 250 sq.ft.
Please provide details of promotional activities that you carry out in your stores.
Presto stores are a happening place. Product launches by celebrities, special event celebrations on Valentine’s, Mother’s Day, etc., and press conferences are some of the below the line (BTL) activities we do. In addition, we do press advertisements, hoardings and other above the line (ATL) activities to drive footfalls to the stores. We also rely strongly on social media marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO) activities, etc. Presto has more than 1 lakh likes on Facebook and over 30,000 hits in its online portal; we aspire to reach 1 lakh hits soon.
What is your expansion strategy to open more stores? Are you looking at other regions of India?
Our expansion strategy is to create a win-win situation for us as well as for our franchisee. We treat our franchisee as our business partner and believe in the simple strategy that if we want to be successful, we have to make our franchisee successful. We already have a pan India presence but currently we are focusing more on the North Indian market.
Our total expansion plan is based on franchising, which is our most successful business model. We are looking for franchisees all over India. We want young and dynamic entrepreneurs with exposure to computer operations as our franchisee. Women, IT professionals, and new entrepreneurs are very successful in our business format.
What are your future plans and targets in terms of opening new stores and new product offerings?
Presto will keep bringing personalisation into newer aspects of human life. Given the efforts of our research and development team and availability of requisite technology, we have already successfully tested personalisation in home decor. Personalised wallpapers, canvas, upholstery, sofa covers, etc. are products that can soon be personalised. We will also be starting photo-books and other similar products that can be personalised. We plan to have 500 franchisee partners by the year 2020.
