By Uwin Lugoda The best gift you can give someone is something that they actually want; this makes buying gifts very tricky, and most of us look at vouchers as the solution. Gift vouchers have become a staple in gift-giving, and are often considered the perfect gift. So how do you improve an already perfect gift? Just ask Gift Up. When Roshith Ranasinghe, an old boy from St. Joseph's College, with dreams of one day starting his own company, met Dinuka Rubera, who coincidentally shared the same school and dream as him, little did he know that he was meeting his future business partner. While attending APIIT, both boys decided that someday they want to run a company that helps benefit consumers. While working at their corporate jobs, Ranasinghe and Rubera worked on innovative ideas that would benefit people. After trial and error, they went on to create Gift Up on November, 2018. Gift Up is an automated system that helps manage, send, and receive gift vouchers, while being in the comfort of your own home. Gift Up also gives the sender the option to select what voucher they want from a wide array of merchants that have partnered up with the website. Ranasinghe stated that when they were looking for ideas, they actively looked at consumer convenience products, along with the gift voucher market, both locally and internationally. “So we were thinking of how we can make it easier for people to buy vouchers, and we thought why not give an online platform where people can actually choose the merchant and whatever the voucher they want.” Gift Up stands out further by giving the receiver a choice to pick the merchant they want. The website allows the receiver to swap merchants, and get a voucher from a store they want to shop for the same price as the voucher they received. “Say some one received a voucher from Hameedias and they want to change it to Grocerypal, then they have the ability to do so.” As for how it works, Ranasinghe explained that all one has to do is visit the website, pick a merchant, pick a value, enter a personal message and add the person’s mobile number and email (optional). The vouchers are then delivered directly to the receiver’s phone or email, where all they have to do is go to the store with the barcode provided, get it scanned and use the four digit code they receive to redeem it. This process is not only convenient for the consumer, but safe for the merchant as well. The four digit code that the consumer receives is an OTP (one time pass) and cannot be used again. Gift Up also gives the sender the opportunity to schedule when the receiver gets the voucher, whether it needs to be sent immediately or on a later date. This not only benefits individuals, but large corporations too. Ranasinghe explains it best saying: “Let’s say you give out physical vouchers and you have a customer base of 10,000, it’s a real process to write 10,000 letters or sign 10,000 vouchers; with our system, you can simply add an excel file and issue the vouchers either at that time or on relevant dates. This also can be used for your employee birthdays or achieving sales targets. All these reward programmes can be planned at the beginning of the year itself to remain active throughout the year. It happens automatically, so you don’t have to do anything.” The website also allows companies to have a backend that allows them to track how many customers have used the vouchers, giving them a proper analytical view of their engagement. Gift Up is already working with a bank, where they use the platform for promotional purposes as well as to allow customers to change their credit card points into a voucher. The website uses a very simple revenue model by taking a commission from the merchants that have partnered up with them. “We look at it as an added source of revenue for them, because we do the spending when it comes to social media and promoting the platform and their vouchers.” Speaking about the profitability of it, Ranasinghe stated that since they had only just started the company, they are focusing towards getting more traction on the website, and since its initiation, Gift Up has been gathering a lot of traction with both the customer and merchants. This has especially been the case during the month of December when there’s an abundance of gift-giving. To date, Gift Up has 20 stores partnered up with them, with 10 more to come by the end of February. These stores include big brands like Hameedias, Midnight Divas, Shirt Works, Jetwing Hotels, Cool Planet, and few online companies like Grocerypal. According to Ranasinghe, they didn’t only create this platform for the use of big brands, but also smaller and lesser known merchants that operate on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. While the number of visitors increased in the last two months, the most crucial thing to happen to Gift Up is the validation received from the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA). Ranasinghe stated that they received a grant from the ICTA, because they see the potential of the system and the opportunities it present for the future. He further stated that the ICTA validation helped them overcome one of their greatest challenges in increasing their merchant base. “So, as a small start-up, we were struggling to get certain merchants on board – to tell them there’s value in this and that it is cost saving for them. But that’s where the validation from ICTA came into play. Getting validation from the Government is a big deal for us, which enabled us to approach the corporates more easily and promote the platform.” While currently being a small company with a team of just four, Gift Up has bigger plans for the future. They are set to release their mobile app before the April season for both IOS and Android, making it easier to access from wherever you are. Ranasinghe also stated that they are looking into other markets in which gift vouchers can be involved.