Ferns N Petals wants to pivot from flower delivery to gifting destination

Ferns N Petals Pvt Ltd is one of the early movers in its space, both online and offline. The e-commerce unit of the flower delivery and gifting company is now a decade old, delivering to more than 120 cities. But FNP.com is currently looking to transform itself as a gifting portal rather than being synonymous with flowers, according to Pawan Gadia, CEO (online & retail) at Ferns N Petals.

"This means we would be looking to expand and push our range of offerings in terms of hampers, varieties and brands of chocolate, personalised gifting, corporate gifting, etc. These are all non-competitive products, so that we can add number of transactions," he said on expansion plans and strategy.

When Techcircle.in caught up with Gadia last year, he said that the firm would be targeting to break out of the 60 per cent annual growth it had been clocking for the previous four years and would look to double its business in FY12.

Gadia, however, admitted that the target was not achieved. "No, we haven't attained 100 per cent growth but we have grown at a rate of 60 per cent," he said.

Ferns N Petals, which runs both offline and online sales units, clocked revenues of Rs 20 crore for the year ended March 31, 2011, and has been a profitable venture. More than a quarter of its revenues come from the e-commerce site.

According to Gadia, the average order size on the site has increased to around Rs 1,050, compared to previous year's Rs 950, and the number of orders has increased 45 per cent.

Talking about short-term plans, he said that the focus is on retaining customers and acquiring more. "The numbers will come. At the end of the day, if you want to send flowers, what are the other names that come to your mind?"

Although the firm has been approached by all major investment funds, FNP is consciously staying away from raising capital. "We are a zero-debt company and we have enough cash accruals for our plans for at least one year from now. We have consciously stayed away from diluting our stake," summed up Gadia.

However, fresh competition is building up fast with new players like gift registry-cum-gifting e-commerce site clusiv.in (more on that here) coming into play. In addition, a relatively older player Flora2000 is launching an India-specific independent site called Goldboxx.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)