Author: AK Gupta

Around 2008 we were looking for ways and means to scale up the Corporate Gifting business outside Bangalore and Kolkata as our physical presence was missing in other cities. We did appoint franchisees ending 2010 at Delhi, Mumbai, and Kochi but failed within two years due to inherent weakness in the business model. But the exploration journey continued to find ways and means to organize the fragmented nature of the corporate gifts business.

Almost every day we get more inquiries from the sellers than the buyers asking to promote their products to corporate due to our presence on the 1st web page. Remembering so many new products at the opportune moment is not possible by the human mind so the strong need for automation surfaced to keep both the buyers and sellers happy. Read More

The pharma sector through their medical representatives conveys both the benefits of their new discoveries and the latest improvements over existing drugs. For example, a new drug which worked very fast in the blood was needed to be communicated to the concerned doctors. The product team decided to use the fast bowling concept to convey the message to the doctors. Accordingly, a tabletop pen stand was conceptualised with mini cricket ball with a hole for the pen. The drug name was printed on the tabletop gift to help the doctors refer to the given name of the drug. After few weeks the doctors memorised the name of the new drug without looking at the tabletop pen stand fulfilling the desired purpose. Read More

The world is becoming a global village is the most common statement we keep hearing in our daily life to highlight the importance of the movement of goods and services across the globe. It started with online knowledge services, outsourcing of services offline of all non-core activities, and finally even physical goods. China became the manufacturing hub for hard currencies and helped even other cheap labour Countries to have a role in manufactured goods. Disruptive technologies gave rise to new business models and helped forward-looking companies to create the global procurement division. Here again the initial focus was on raw materials and slowly and steadily now it has come down to even promotional corporate gifts to standardise the products across the organization.

Most of the MNCs have created the global procurement division and the role is very clear to find out the best rates at each operational location and to streamline the processes so as to source the various goods from the various geographies in the most economical manner. We have been working with various procurement divisions of MNCs and are in a strong position to help them buy promotional merchandise at the most economical rates. Corporate gifts vary in nature because of the quality, quantity, logo branding, and packaging which makes it difficult for the procurement division to source directly from the factories as repeat orders are very rare. 

In the initial phase, we were helping the global procurement division to check the Indian rates and decide on the various buying indents they use to receive from various countries to place the order on the lowest CIF quote for the approved quality. 

We have an existing relationships with many corporate gift vendors from hard currencies who are buying goods from us to deliver within their respective countries or even in India or nearby countries due to overall cost-effectiveness. “[ninja_forms id=1]”

Sparket was started on October 29, 1986 to focus on marketing and distribution of products and services. We learned that the role of the middleman with the large team is rewarded only if they are continuously adding values through meaningful differentiation. So, around 2005 we entered corporate gifts adding new customers, segments, industries, geographies, manufacturers, and products with USP of VARIETY, RELIABILITY, and CONSISTENCY of the whole experience.

As each requirement is different and factories has different business models our role became more of perfect match making so that each requirement is best served on price, quality, and delivery parameters. Thereby we are helping supply chain management or procurement department pass on the one-time odd requirement to us. Read More

“Wait, wait, then quick, quick.” Corporate Gifts are urgently needed, but rarely purchased in advance of that need. Buyers simply, and correctly, calculate that the advantage of buying before the product is needed are small, while the costs are high. A rational corporate might keep t-shirts, caps, pens, keychains around for their regular need but is unlikely to keep various other business gifting items ready which are more theme and event dependent.

Most of the time products and services under corporate gifts are, almost by definition, unimportant, uninteresting, uninvolved categories so they are delayed till the last moment. However, when the occasion or event dates comes closer…. suddenly the need to solve the problem is overwhelming. Now your determination to get the problem solved right now and, more important, get it done right, so right that the colleagues or team members have no reason to complain, can lead literally, to a rapidly increased heartbeat, cold sweats, team arguments, and so on. Read More

Normally we faced the challenge of zeroing on the:
a) best choice of gifts,
b) within the given budget,
c) for the various target audience,
e) within the given time frame

What we desperately needed was an automated catalog of all the available gifting products with relevant details and multiple filters to narrow down to the few curated products to fast forward to decision-makers. The good part is with a lot of time, energy, money, and passion during lockdown we have completed the automated platform and are in the testing phase before launching for the corporate gifting reseller partners. Read More