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From addressing gaps in meaningful and reliable gifting to building a robust omnichannel and hyperlocal delivery network, Tarun Joshi, Founder & CEO of IGP outlines IGP’s journey and vision. In this interview, he discusses shifting consumer behavior, the growing role of personalization and speed, competitive differentiation, and the company’s expansion strategy across India and international markets.
What inspired the launch of IGP, and what gap in the gifting market were you aiming to address?
IGP was born from a simple insight that gifting in India had become transactional, rushed, and often disconnected from the emotional intent behind it. Having personally experienced the challenge of being away from family during important occasions, I saw how difficult it was to celebrate meaningfully despite the strong cultural importance of festivals and relationships in India.
We realized that while people wanted to send heartfelt gifts, especially for Rakhi, birthdays, and long-distance moments, there was no reliable, end-to-end platform that combined genuine sentiment with quality, personalization, and timely delivery.
Our goal was to bridge this gap by building a relationships-first, technology-driven gifting platform where people can express emotions effortlessly and trust that their gift will reach exactly as they imagined.
IGP focuses on emotional connections through gifting, how is this philosophy reflected in your overall customer experience?
At IGP, we see ourselves less in “gift boxes” and more in “relationship building”; that’s why our entire experience is designed around emotional delivery, not just physical delivery. From the moment someone lands on our platform, the navigation, curation, and recommendation tools are built to help them articulate what they truly want to say, whether it’s love, gratitude, or celebration, rather than just ticking off an occasion. On the execution side, we back that sentiment with speed (same‑day and 30‑minute personalised delivery), real‑time tracking, and reliable quality, so the emotion behind the gift never clashes with the logistics.
Could you highlight your core product categories and how personalization plays a role in your offerings?
IGP operates across multiple core categories - cakes, chocolates, hampers, homeware, flowers, and a wide range of personalised lifestyle products such as mugs, cushions, keychains, and even custom‑perfumes. Across these categories, personalisation is not just an add‑on; it’s central to the proposition. Customers can upload photos, names, initials, or custom messages, and our in-house tech and machinery enable rapid, on-demand personalisation, turning standard products into unique keepsakes that feel tailored to the recipient. This is seamlessly supported by our hyperlocal fulfillment network, enabling 30–60-minute delivery without compromising on speed or quality.
Fast delivery options like 30-minute and same-day delivery are key differentiators, how have you built capabilities to support this?
We’ve built a hybrid model supported by a network of 100+ dark stores across 29 cities, along with in-house logistics and local affiliate partners. This distributed infrastructure allows us to stay close to demand and enable fast delivery windows.
On top of this, our in-house tech stack maps real-time demand, optimises inventory positioning, and dynamically assigns delivery routes, ensuring that personalisation and dispatch happen in near real time. This allows us to produce, pack, and deliver even last-minute customised orders within 30–60 minutes or same-day timelines.
How has consumer behavior in the gifting segment evolved in recent years, especially across different occasions and regions?
Over the past few years, gifting has shifted from “occasion‑driven” to “emotion‑driven”; people now gift more frequently, not just on birthdays and festivals but also to say sorry, celebrate small wins, or simply stay connected. Across regions, metros continue to lead in impulse and last‑minute gifting, while tier‑II and tier‑III cities are catching up rapidly, especially around Rakhi, Diwali, and Valentine’s. We’re also seeing a clear preference for personalised, experiential and premium gifts, especially for anniversaries, corporate gifting, and romantic occasions, where customers are willing to pay more for premiumness and sentiment over mass‑market options.
What has driven IGP’s expansion across India and international markets, and which regions are currently your key growth drivers?
IGP’s growth has been driven by three things: a scalable, tech‑enabled operating model, strong brand recall around “gifting with feeling,” and the rising demand for reliable, fast, and emotionally intelligent gifting solutions. Domestically, metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad remain our core volume drivers, while tier‑II and tier‑III towns are emerging as high‑growth pockets due to improving digital adoption and rising disposable income. Internationally, key markets like UAE, US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and select countries are growing fast, particularly around Rakhi, Diwali, and Valentine’s, where NRIs and diaspora communities seek authentic Indian gifting experiences delivered with reliability.
Does IGP operate on a franchise or partner-led model, and are there plans to expand through franchising?
IGP operates primarily on a partner-led, asset-light model, supported by a network of over 100 dark stores across 29 cities and a growing offline footprint of owned experiential retail stores, with an established presence in Mumbai and the recent launch of a new store on Golf Course Road in Gurugram. These dark stores and retail outlets are company‑operated or tightly managed partners allowing us to keep brand standards, product quality, and delivery speed tightly controlled.
Over the next year, we plan to scale our dark‑store network to around 200 locations and further expand our owned/curated offline retail presence in key cities, using this omnichannel infrastructure as the backbone rather than pursuing a broad franchise model at this stage. While we remain open to selective, structured franchise‑style arrangements in specific markets in the future, any such move will be carefully calibrated to ensure it aligns with IGP’s “gift that feeling” promise and operational rigour.
With rising competition from quick-commerce and online gifting players, what sets IGP apart in this space?
Gifting is fundamentally an emotional exercise, while most quick-commerce platforms are built around transactional speed and convenience. IGP is designed specifically for these high-intent, emotion-led moments, where the focus goes beyond delivery to what the gift represents.
We specialise in personalised, occasion-driven categories like cakes, hampers, photo gifts, and curated keepsakes, supported by a network of dark stores and partner studios that enable rapid, same-day and even 30–60 minute delivery. Unlike horizontal platforms where gifting is just one of many categories, IGP aligns its technology, supply chain, and brand narrative around the idea of “gift that feeling,” creating a more meaningful and differentiated consumer experience.
What have been the biggest challenges in scaling a multi-category, time-sensitive gifting business?
Scaling a multi‑category, time‑sensitive gifting business has meant reconciling very different perishability curves - cakes versus chocolates versus home‑deco or photo‑based gifts, while still promising near‑instant delivery and personalisation. Layering this with peak‑season spikes around occasions like Diwali, Valentine’s, and Rakhi has tested every part of our supply chain, from inventory planning to last‑mile coordination.
Beyond operations, maintaining consistent quality, brand tone, and service standards across an expanding partner and dark-store network has brought about many learnings. That said, these very constraints have pushed us to sharpen our tech, strengthen our processes, and deepen our focus on reliability, turning what started as operational hurdles into a moat that makes our emotional‑gifting promise more resilient and scalable over time.
What are your key priorities and growth plans for the next 3–5 years?
Over the next 3-5 years, IGP’s focus will be on strengthening its leadership across key categories such as cakes, chocolates, hampers, and personalised gifting, while continuing to expand its presence across tier II and III cities as well as select international markets.
A key priority will be to further build on its omnichannel strategy, combining its growing offline retail footprint with a strong dark store network to improve discovery and delivery speed. The company also plans to deepen investments in AI-led personalisation, demand planning, and hyperlocal fulfilment, enabling faster and more relevant gifting experiences.
Additionally, IGP is looking to expand into new formats such as experiential and subscription-led gifting, while continuing to strengthen its brand positioning around meaningful, emotion-led gifting.
