Did that ring a bell somewhere in your mind? Did it remind you of the last time you were surprised with a gift? Or did it remind you of the claims advertisers make to sell their products to you? Gifts do go a long way to make someone feel special, make them feel cared for or simply it shows that you care!

But imagine yourself as the one who has to be on the giving end. There begins the problem. What would the receiver like; will the colour strike a chord? Will it be helpful or will it just lie in some corner of the house without being used neither thrown away because- oh wait! It was a ‘gift’. Enter Oyemigo to this scene to sort out your dilemma.

Oyemigo is a radical shift from the conventional concept of gifting. It brings the advantage of online social relationship to the traditional, very personal act of gifting. Oyemigo creates a very open and elegant way of sharing your heart’s desire with your friends and family.

The founders of this portal observed the many occasions where gifts were exchanged and how confused people usually were while buying gifts and this observation primarily induced the idea of Oyemigo.

Also, the many instances where people end up receiving the same items as gifts felt like a dampener to the entire idea of the gifting process which is why they thought of having a platform where people could communicate directly about what they wish to receive. The unique feature of being able to contribute for one’s wish list further eases the tedious effort put in for making a contribution offline and this only further strengthened their motivation.

Now one may ask, what is so different about this portal? After all, there are many gifting sites available online.

Firstly, Oyemigo is an exclusive gifting platform. The primary aim of the portal is for users to wish for gifts and share it with their friends and family. Also, it enables users with the ability to contribute towards one gift, which is quite different from other portals.

Secondly, the layout and design of the portal is so simple and intuitive that anybody can upload their gift wish and share it with their friends and family. Unlike other websites which put across a lot of information on it, this one is simplistic and user friendly in nature. Also, to help users to understand about using this portal in a more effective way, they plan to upload a video guide shortly.

Startoholics had a chat with one of its founders, Anselm Chettiar and here are a few things that would give you a better glimpse at these entrepreneurs’ journey.

What are you most excited about at this moment regarding Oyemigo?

As Oyemigo is still in the testing phase, we are really excited about the response we will get once we begin full-fledged promotions. Also, we are raring to have a go at the features in the pipeline, because they are going to be the REAL game changers.

The feedback from our beta testers has been most encouraging for us. The most gratifying feedback has been how user friendly the portal is, something that we had aimed from right at the conception stage. Very little has been done to promote the portal till now, and hence, we are expecting a lot more of responses when the final testing phase is over and we engage in a lot more promotions.

What challenges have you faced in your entrepreneurial journey? What has been the toughest decision you had to make lately, if any?

An entrepreneur’s life is full of challenges – the most difficult being whether the idea you want to work on is worth the effort or not and being patient through the life cycle of a start-up. Although, I have always been able to stand by what I believe in, handling ups and downs is not easy and I am constantly improving my ability to do this as time passes. It has been very difficult to convince people why a phase-wise inclusion is better than throwing the kitchen sink at the users.

In Oyemigo’s case, the most difficult decision was to eliminate a plethora of features to keep it as simple and intuitive as possible for the users. I have been constantly asked as to why a certain feature hasn’t been included in the portal yet, and it has been very difficult to convince people why a phase-wise inclusion is better than throwing the kitchen sink at the users.

Who would you say is your biggest competitor?

Although wishlist.com and  giftster.com also provide a gifting platform, the features and functions are not the same as Oyemigo. So they only come close to being our competitors but do not provide the same features.

How do you see Oyemigo as in the next 5 years?

Oyemigo has the potential to attract and retain millions of users to add and share their gift-wish, at the same time create relationships within the portal with their friends and family. We will also use third party e-tail stores to sell their products, which have been added by a user as their gift-wish, directly from the portal.This provides a one-stop solution to the users to select, share and buy their gift-wish through Oyemigo. If proven successful, Oyemigo will be able to showcase and sell consumer products directly.

What more do you wish to include to take Oyemigo to the next level?

There are a lot of features that have not been integrated into the portal yet. We have carefully chosen to keep some of them out until we find the best way to include them in the portal without disrupting the user’s familiarity towards Oyemigo. For example making sure a contributor’s credit card is not charged until the user does not approve it is a feature that has been developed and yet not integrated since we are yet to analyze the results of the feature’s test run. Unfortunately we cannot reveal most of the upcoming features since there is a road map that we have to follow regarding their releases.

So this was the story of a gifting portal that plans to spread its wings and fly higher in the near future. Whether they win over their target audience and create a place for themselves in their lists will take time to be revealed. But looking at their passion and the austerity towards their work, we do wish that they find success very soon!

Also have a look at Wishpicker and FunthingStore, two unique gifting platforms!

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