Code jockey finds her flow chart in gifting

A well-paying job and a fancy profile  weren’t enough for Jyoti Ramnath. The entrepreneur in her was not to be stifled.

The quest attained fruition when, in 2007, after winning a business plan competition during a management programme for women entrepreneurs, conducted by the Indian Institute of Management -Bangalore, Ramnath started drafting a blueprint for a venture.

Her business idea germinated from her childhood hobby of creating unique gifts for friends and relations for birthdays and other occasions.

“I realised that there weren’t too many places where you could get customised gifts for gifting colleagues, family members, etc. Customised gifts were limited to coffee mugs or t-shirts with photos of people who were to be gifted. Hence, I started the groundwork for a customised gifting business,” says Ramnath.

The Bangalore lass started CraftMyGift in February 2008, from an incubation cell at IIM Bangalore.

She has invested about Rs 10 lakh into the venture, all pooled from personal savings.

CraftMyGift mainly caters to corporate clients and individuals for birthdays, farewells, anniversaries, etc.

Initially, the business was restricted to creating charcoal-based portraits for the purpose of gifting.

“But we realised that it would not work well if limited only to charcoal portraits. The portfolio should be expanded,” she said.
“We have created caricatures of people, personalised magazines for couples for their anniversaries,” Ramnath said. “Often customers tell us the occasion for gifting and we create items that would best suit the occasion and person.”

CraftMyGift also creates promotional gifts for corporates which can be gifted to their clients to promote business or certain brands.
“Once a hospital wanted to gifts its patients and we created a first-aid box in the shape of a band-aid. The idea through promotional gifts is that the clients should remember them,” says Ramnath.

However, being a first-generation entrepreneur from her family, and being a bit sceptical about how her venture would take off, Ramnath was not yet ready to quit her job as a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard.

“I didn’t want to quit my job immediately, as I was still testing how this business would work out. So after finishing my work with HP at around 6:00 pm, I would get involved in the venture.”

Till mid 2009, Ramnath kept juggling between her HP job and the venture, before quitting her to get completely involved in the crafting business.

CraftMyGift gets orders from across India and after 3 years, Ramnath plans to take the venture abroad.

“There is a huge potential especially from the corporate side. We get orders from information technology and fast-moving consumer goods companies, event management companies, venture capital players etc. On an average, we get about 15-20 orders a month, some of which are bulk in nature. From 2008,we have seen a 50% growth in business and I’m optimistic it would continue,” bets Ramnath.

Guess it may have a thing or two to do with how well people feel. And they have felt much better since that year, when the global financial crisis peaked