Diwali season: Gifting companies feel freeze of IT slowdown
gifting companies are feeling the freeze of the slowdown in the IT and IT-enabled services sector this Diwali season.
IT/ITeS companies — which, with their huge workforces, are among the biggest spenders on Diwali gifts — have slashed their gift budgets by up to 50% and some have done away with gifting altogether, gifting companies such as PrintStop, IGP, Loopify and Swageazy told ET. «There's a blanket reduction in gift budgets. IT typically accounts for about 50% of our clients; there's been a 50% drop in their spends,» said Pratik Shah, cofounder of customised gifting company PrintStop.
Empower Your Corporate Journey with Strategic Skill Courses
Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM LucknowIIML Chief Marketing Officer ProgrammeVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Chief Digital OfficerVisitIIM LucknowIIML Chief Executive Officer ProgrammeVisitOne of its biggest IT clients with 100,000-plus employees had last year allocated gift budgets to over 50 teams and even gifted high-end TUMI bags worth ?60,000-70,000 each to some employees in high-performing business units. This year, the same company has allocated gift budgets to only five teams, Shah said.
Another large IT player, which had earlier initiated talks with PrintStop for sustainable gift hampers for employees for an order value of ?5-6 crore, pulled out at the last minute.
At Mumbai-based eco-friendly products marketplace Loopify, IT companies made up 50% of sales during the 2022 festive season. This year, that has fallen to 12%, driven by rationalisation of costs as tech firms trim their expenses, its cofounder Hemal Gathani said. «One of our biggest IT clients did not do gifting at all this year,» he said. «However, I think this is a temporary blip and next year
