Flowers, chocolates Passe, Gift a Website to your Valentine

Tired of gifting flowers and chocolates on the Valentine's Day? Try gifting something unique this time around -- a Website!

Hyderabad-based vsplash.com, a Web communication start-up, is offering gift packs that would help users across the world create personalized Websites and gift them to their loved ones. The gift pack, priced at Rs. 500 in India and U.S. $14.95 elsewhere, also includes fashion jewelry from Estelle. A woman buying the pack will get for her valentine a bracelet, while a man could gift his girlfriend with a chain and a pendent.

Talking to IANS, Umesh Tibrewal, founder and chief executive officer of vsplash.com, said it is a new concept in gifting and first of its kind in the world. "People are fed up with giving out the same gifts every year, they are on a lookout for something innovative and so we came up with the ideaof gifting a Website," he said.

On the pricing strategy, Tibrewal said, his company carried out a survey on the gifting patterns during Valentine's Day and had found that the average Indian was spending Rs. 300 to 700 on gifts, while in the United States, people were spending about $9.95 to 24.95."We understood well our target audience -- the urban youth -- that is technology-savvy, and (getting done) a personal Website for Rs. 500 is unthinkable," Tibrewal told IANS.

The user can either buy the gift pack from a store, pay in cash, and get a 16-digit digital prepaid card, or log on to www.vsplash.com, and create a Website and pay through credit card. The gift pack is available at leading gifts and greetings corners, and swanky eating outlets in 10 cities -- Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai,Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Pune, Kochi, Nagpur and Jalandhar.

Users can customize six Web pages by using 20 basic designs and 216 colors that are on offer.

Each of the Web pages have in-built instrumental music and a user can also put in photos. Five other Websites can also be linked to the personalized Website.The company has drawn up a rigorous online and ground-level marketing strategy for the product. Though the product is available in 10 cities, the company is focussing on Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

In Mumbai, vSplash.com has tied up with Dominos, Nazara.com, contests2win.com, Mirinda, PizzaCorner and MacDonalds for their ad campaigns and promos. It is offering a contest wherein a lucky user could win diamonds worth Rs. 50,000. vSplash.com has also roped in star couples Shah Rukh Khanand Gauri, and Arbaaz Khan and Malaika, for the promos.

The celebrities will choose a lucky couple through a contest, which will win them besides diamonds, a trip to Bali, a helicopter ride and a drive in a limousine. Tibrewal, a management graduate from University of California, is happy with the initial response to the campaign. The 27-year-old bachelors aid it has been "extremely encouraging."

Vsplash.com, an integrated Web communications solution company that facilitates the creation of fully multimedia-enabled Websites, made adebut at the India Internet World 1999 in Delhi.