Here is your challenge – you want to give your loved one a present, but you don’t know what to choose. You are tired of buying the same (or useless) things every year.
Here is your solution – technology!
A start-up called chipin – a crowd-gifting platform helping people get the gifts they really want and making life easy for those who look for presents.
You can chip in on a present, small or big, by using the app. You can also share your desired present with your friends and family through the app, so they can start chipping in.
This month, B.gain sat down with Fadi Aziz, Founder, and Zuzana Gacikova, Marketing Manager, and talked about their start-up products, how Chipin is progressing and what their next stage is.
B.gain: Please tell us more about your start-up project and how you came up with this idea?
Fadi: We started Chipin three years ago, trying to solve the problem of not knowing what to get someone as a gift. Through personal experience of not being the best gifter myself, as well as my partner Zuzana was struggling to find a perfect gift for one of her friends, we decided to figure out how we can solve this problem; By using data, we can make better assumptions of what someone would want.
We tried to understand why we give in general, and we realised that it is something that’s embedded in human nature of trying to make people build relationships, strengthen trust, and ultimately make someone happy.
We did some more research on how we combat this in terms of solving that problem, we decided to build an app, which we call ‘chipin’, for the sake of being able to chip in on a gift. Since then, we’ve not only built the app, but now we’re in the process where we’re testing it for our main release.
We are also looking at doing a side project as an NFT project to help with funding and continue with the app development.
B.gain: Was it hard for you to identify your target market and target audience?
Zuzana: Honestly, it wasn’t hard because everyone gifts. That’s how we show each other love and appreciation. Speaking out of my personal experience, I’ve always thought of myself as such a great gift giver. Until that particular event, when I realised that one of my very close friends didn’t use the gift that I had got for her. It was very awkward. That’s why I don’t think it was hard for us to identify that everyone gifts: people give gifts to children, people give gifts for weddings, for birthdays, for Christmas for all big events. For us, it’s anyone that wants to gift right, I would say gift in a way that’s more meaningful, more sustainable, less wasteful, and less awkward.
B.gain: What purposes/occasions can the app be used for? How can people benefit from your app?
Fadi: The app, we built it so that it can be used for any occasion. We’ve made the platform that can be used for any event such as birthdays, anniversaries, and weddings – one of the big sections that we want to approach there as well for registries. Christmas is going to be our biggest used period. But again, you can use it for pretty much any event you want. Or even the idea behind, you’re just staying connected with people because you never know when you’re thinking about someone and you know, have an appreciation for them and want to return the gratitude.
B.gain: How did people react when you started talking about Chipin?
Zuzana: People identify with the idea straightaway. Everyone, in their life experience, either didn’t know what to get for someone, or they got a very crappy gift. The feedback we got: ‘Oh, what a great idea. I can’t believe no one is doing that.’.
Usually, gifting has been done in a way that you can have gift registries for big events, but no one uses them for their personal occasions such as birthdays. People usually tend to use them for kitchen teas, weddings, or baby showers.
Gift registers in a standard sense are quite limited in terms of what products are on there. What supplier they need to use to be shipped to someone’s house and whether you can contribute as a group you have to buy singular Items. It’s not like you can chip into something bigger.
Especially coming from our experience; we got engaged a couple of months ago; and when I was looking at gift registries, you have to cater to different financial means of people and your guests. You would have to select cheaper items and then more expensive items. However, we’ve been living together for a long time, and we don’t need any of this stuff. I would rather get money and spend it on a trip to Japan. That’s why, I think, people can identify with chipin straightaway. Especially the first adopters that we got to try the app who didn’t know much about it. They loved how smooth their experiences were and how simple and fast it was for them.
B.gain: You're also part of the Silicon Beach Australia community (B.gain is one of the sponsors of Silicon Beach Australia). You pitched in one of the virtual Pitch Nights and one face-to-face Pitch Night.
What stage of your business development are you currently at. And how is everything going on?
Fadi: Yes, we have pitched at both virtual and physical events with Silicon Beach Australia where we were looking to get first investments.
Our business is still at the seed phase, where we’re looking to raise funds to continue developing and executing our markets and growing our team. For about two years, we went down the route of a traditional start-up where we went seeking funding through VCs and angel investors. We got feedback that we fell short of traction. We felt the same way – lack of resources for executing everything we wanted. Repeatedly experiencing this, we have still managed to get investors on board in the short term. However, we figured out, that instead of us constantly trying to raise funds, we wanted to focus on providing an actual value to the people that we’re targeting, which essentially, is everyone. Therefore, we decided to start an NFT collection; Not only building a community but raising funds to give back to that community through the culture that we’re trying to express, which is gift giving. People who join in early will get credits, they can participate more in our app and our community. And that’s the roadmap that we’ve taken on board.
It’s been engaging and made us closer with the end user. The team has been able to grow as we’ve brought more people on board such as artists and developers. It feels like it’s much more natural, and more involved with the community as opposed to the traditional start-up. It feels more like business, not like a start-up project.
B.gain: As you mentioned before, along with your app, you have also launched an NFT; could you please explain what an NFT is and how can it be utilised?
Zuzana: For anyone who doesn’t know much about NFTs – it stands for Non-Fungible Tokens which are unique digital identifiers that can’t be subdivided and can’t be copied. They are recorded on a blockchain, which is used to certify ownership and authenticity.
The way we do our NFT collection is that once you hold the actual asset, an image of a 3D chicken–which is super cute, by the way–they have so many attributes. We also have a smart contract, and the whole collection is 9999. We’ve been involved in designing every one of them with our designer. He is extremely talented; he is an Australian and lives in Turkey at the moment. Once we are launched, our app and NFT will be connected. If you hold a chook, you will get unique benefits: you’re going to get a free subscription, discounts, be part of our gift raffles and more. Because we aim to get 5000 worth of gifts when we sell out for five years, every month, you’re going to be able to vote on the charities that we pick as we would like to pick 12 charities to donate an equal sum to.
Our NFT collection lunch is going to be done in a few stages – instead of focusing on a specific date and announcing it, we want to build the community from the ground up. The first stage is going to be a framing stage. We will be offering it to people who are involved in our community, join our Discord and interact with us on Twitter. The second stage will be a ‘whitelist’ – we call it an egg whitelist. Once you get on the egg whitelist will get a discounted price. Thereafter, our NFT collection will be open to the public.
By buying our NFT, you support us and grow with us. As 50% of our profit will go back to all the holders, but the other 50% will be invested in the actual app; We want to fund the app development because our main goal is to expand internationally, and build a supplier portal, where we can onboard small businesses to be part of chipin together.
Fadi: Now we’re looking to introduce it to a different audience, and we can not only grow with them but also provide value to their friends and family who might not be tech-savvies but still enjoy gifting.
B.gain: Can people start using your app right now and start chipping in?
The short answer is yes! Our app is available on Google Play and Apple stores. It is in beta, however, it is usable. You can chip into gifts, and from our side, we will facilitate the sorting and delivery of each gift.
We are looking to have our public release very soon. That’s going to be our stable release where we have come out and made sure that everything works fine. However, the only limitation is only Australians can be receivers of gifts. But you can contribute a gift from overseas.
B.gain: Was there anything else you would like to share with us?
Zuzana: We are planning to host some exciting events, different contests, and games for NFT fans, so people can get involved in our community; By coming into our Discord and following us on social media, they can participate and win a chook.
Thank you Fadi and Zuzana for meeting with B.gain and sharing your inspiring journey!
Follow Cheeky Chooks by chipin on Twitter.
Olga Bubnova, Founder & CEO at B.gain
Expert in Brand Management, Marketing and Communications for Tech.
I write about tech in simple terms.