UrGift Demo Day Video

I wanted to share with you the video of the presentation of UrGift at Wayra´s Demo Day (in Spanish):

Published on YouTube.com on Feb 27, 2013

UrGift.in es una aplicación móvil en la industria de "social gifting", que le permite a los usuarios compartir su Wish List, para que los amigos puedan escoger y enviar regalos deseados y útiles, de una forma muy sencilla y desde su Iphone. Los usuarios pueden regalar de formar individual o invitar a otros amigos a contribuir para un regalo de grupo. Inicialmente UrGift.In compartirá el Amazon Wish List pero en el futuro UrGift.In se conectará con otros online retailers y otros servicios de wish list. UrGift.In es una de las startups aceleradas por Wayra Colombia para la clase de 2012. También fue ganadora del INNPulsa_MassChallenge Pitch Competition en MassChallenge en Boston en Octubre de 2012, la aceleradora de negocios mas grande del mundo.

UrGift.In is a reality!

An Update for UrGift.In (www.UrGift.In)

Since its foundation -soon after my first post, @vickyricaurte and I (@marceloburbano) have dedicated part of our lives to our Start-up. In May, we won a spot on the 2012 Wayra class. Wayra is an accelerator created by Telefonica.

In December 2012, We launched our iOS app and closed our seed-capital round. 2013 is going to be our year. Wish us luck! @urgiftin

The Kickstarter for Kids Education

[UPDATE: JAN 2013]

Since I posted my idea I saw this very interesting commercial from Dodge trying to sell cars through something like a wedding registry (How to Change Buying Cars Forever). I thought that it was pretty innovative. If a car can be sold using this method, ANYTHING CAN. I like UrGift.in even more.

[Originally Posted: Jun 2011]

NEED: 

Parents keep getting too many toys for their children. So many toys that the children end up not playing with them because they are overwhelmed with choices. Friends and Family keep giving parents toys for their children because that is the best gift option (i.e. the chance of choosing a gift being that a toy that the children wont like is almost null). A solution that some parents have opted for is to keep some toys unwrapped so they can be re-gifted later.

Another incredible need that parents suffer from is the raising price of education. Parents have started to invest more and more on education funds to be able to afford higher education for their children when they grow up.

DESCRIPTION: 

Create a website for parents that can work like a wedding registry. Instead of being for a wedding this website would be for the child´s future education. Each parent can personalize what he/she wants to include in the wishlist but it would be divided in low ticket items (i.e. books for freshmen year) so any Family member or Friend can give whatever amount of money they want to. The money will go towards an account managed by an asset manager that would promise some type of return. The website can be tied to a mobile app that can make it more social so, for example, when grandma wants to give her grandson something, the app will remind her that there is a better option for her grandson: His future education. I am sure I can build on this idea by adding some gamification to the equation plus some incentives from the asset manager, etc., but I am sure you get the idea. It can even work like Kickstarter where there are very low ticket options (e.g. $1) so you can tap into the gift card industry and steal some share from that market too)

ATTRACTIVENESS: 

The business model is pretty simple. We will charge a fee to the asset manager for bringing money to the table. The Gifting Industry is difficult to size as people purchase stuff without necessarily telling you what would be the use for it. Some sources value the gift industry in the US as a whole at over $300 billion. I am sure even if we take a very small piece of this pie and multiply it by a 1% fee to the asset manager you still make several million dollars.