Creativity Married Commerce To Produce This D2C Powerhouse Join Ventures is a house of celebration brands which owns reputed businesses, including gifting company IGP.com and flower delivery service Interflora.in

Over his nearly two-decade-long career, Tarun Joshi has donned many hats: tech entrepreneur, angel investor, aeronautical scientist and most recently, a major player in the Indian direct to consumer (D2C) sector. He is the founder of Join Ventures, a house of celebration brands which owns reputed gifting company IGP.com and flower delivery service Interflora.in, among other businesses. "Now, I aspire to serve every special occasion across India with the amalgamation of design and technology," he says.

Joshi singles out his mother, who set up an NGO in Rajasthan to help Indian artisans monetize their craft, as the chief creative influence in his life. Tech icons Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are another source of inspiration: "Despite humble beginnings, Apple's immense success over the years is an exceptional example of creative thinking. They kept their product designs clean, simple and straightforward rather than being flashy or eye-catching."

According to him, Apple and several other famous international companies such as Amazon and Microsoft have thrived to commendable heights because of their remarkable creativity introduced time and again in their respective services and products. "Creativity and business are two sides of the same coin. The commercial success of any business depends on creative innovations," states Joshi. He has been applying the same mantra in his own D2C business from day one. "As an angel investor in Indian startups across sectors such as e-commerce, financial services, technology and consumer businesses, I recognized early that gifting was an underserved vertical in the D2C sector where much innovation and creativity was needed."

How does one best serve the customers' needs? A number of tools, such as customer-needs analysis, focus groups, and surveys, could be employed, as per Joshi. "A data-driven understanding of your customer can help you deliver bespoke experiences across all customer touch points that no one else can replicate using many marketing solutions, such as customized product recommendations, behavior-triggered emails, custom video content, and AI chat bots," he adds.

With the country's online occasions retail market expected to grow to $90 billion by 2025, Join Ventures is looking forward to expanding its business and launching new brands with insights gathered from the existing portfolio. "We are also currently expanding our delivery network through setting up over 100 new dark stores and are looking to automate wherever possible," states Joshi.