Festival hampers
Diwali and new year boxes for staff and clients, dispatched early because couriers slow down through the season.
Everybody enjoys choosing the gift. The hard part is counts, sizes, spellings, print time, packing and getting it into the right hands on the right day. That part is ours.
Gifting fails in the last mile, not in the catalogue. The idea is usually approved in a single meeting; what goes wrong afterwards is a sizing sheet nobody filled, a logo file that arrived as a screenshot, three names spelled from memory, and a delivery that reaches the office the morning after everyone left for the break.
We treat a gifting round the way a dispatch desk would. Who receives what, in which tier, at which location, by which date. Then product shortlist, a physical sample you can hold, artwork frozen, branding approved on the sample rather than on a rendering, counts verified twice, cartons labelled by destination, and a handover plan for the day itself.
Most of the rounds we handle are for offices spread across more than one address, with a team in Kharadi, another in Pimpri-Chinchwad and a set of people who are travelling that week. So the sheet carries every recipient, every address and every exception, and whatever is not handed over on the day has a named plan rather than a cupboard.
Every photo here is from an event our team planned and ran.
Every gifting round we run moves through these six pieces of work.
Options matched to occasion, budget band and how useful the thing will still be six months later, with samples to hold.
Logo placement, print or engraving method, and individual names where the gift carries them, proofed on a real sample first.
Tiers, apparel sizes, locations and exceptions collected in one sheet, so the order quantity is a fact rather than a guess.
Multi-item kits assembled, boxed, sealed and labelled by destination, with spares built in for damage and last-minute joiners.
Consignments split by office and city, sent with enough buffer for festival traffic, and tracked until somebody signs for them.
Counters, a marked list, staff who tick names off, and a queue that moves while people are still enjoying the event.
Diwali and new year boxes for staff and clients, dispatched early because couriers slow down through the season.
Welcome sets for new joiners, restocked in small repeat batches rather than one large order that ages.
Milestone pieces for employees completing years, usually personalised, so spellings and dates must be verified.
Bags packed with notebook, badge, agenda and sponsor inserts, sorted by session and delivered to the registration desk.
Individually addressed pieces going to many cities, where packaging quality matters more than the number of items.
Something for children and something for elders, counted against RSVPs and handed out at exit rather than entry.
Small personalised pieces prepared quietly at short notice, often needed within the same week as the announcement.
Light, cheap to carry and instantly branded, sized to footfall rather than to a fixed invitee list.
Treat gifting as a delivery project with a fixed deadline, because that is exactly what it is. The item you choose matters far less than whether the right person receives the right version of it before the office empties. Everything below works backwards from the moment of handover.
Write the recipient list first. Tiers cause more awkwardness than budgets do, so settle early whether contract staff, new joiners who start next week, people on long leave and the security and housekeeping teams are included. If leadership receives something different, decide whether the difference will be visible when boxes sit side by side on a table. Collect apparel sizes through a form with a hard closing date and order a spread beyond what the form returns, because sizes submitted in a hurry are optimistic. Add spares for damage, for the joiner nobody mentioned, and for the person whose box is dropped.
Stock is usually available; branded stock is not. Screen printing, embroidery, laser engraving and box printing each have their own turnaround, and personalised items multiply that time because every piece is unique. Send print-ready artwork rather than a logo pulled off a website, and specify the exact finish you expect. Approve branding on a physical sample, not on a digital mock-up, because print colour on fabric, metal and paper behaves differently from a screen. If a name or a date is engraved, have two people from your team check the spelling list against employee records and sign it off, since one wrong letter turns a thoughtful gift into an apology.
Fix the handover date, then place every decision on a line before it.
| Counting back | What must close on this line | Cost of letting it slip |
|---|---|---|
| Eight weeks | Occasion, tiers, budget band, rough headcount | Choice shrinks to whatever is already in stock |
| Six weeks | Item chosen, sample seen and held | You end up approving from a photograph |
| Five weeks | Artwork frozen, name and spelling list signed | Personalisation is the first thing dropped |
| Four weeks | Branded sample approved, quantity confirmed | Colour and placement become a gamble |
| Two weeks | Production finished, counts physically verified | Rush charges and deliveries arriving in parts |
| One week | Kitted, sealed, labelled by destination | Sorting happens at the venue, in front of guests |
| Handover day | Desks staffed, ticked list ready | A queue forms and the gift feels like an errand |
Pack for the journey, not for the photograph. A hamper that looks beautiful on a table can arrive rattling, so anything fragile travels with filler and an outer carton. Label every box by the office, floor and desk it belongs to, and keep a packing list inside and outside. Around Diwali, courier networks are at their slowest exactly when everyone wants delivery, so outstation consignments leave a full week earlier than city ones. For teams working out of Hinjewadi, Baner or a client site, decide in advance whether the gift goes to the office, to a home address, or waits for the person to return. Name one person at each receiving location who will accept the consignment and confirm the count on arrival, because a box signed for by whoever happened to be near the gate is a box nobody can trace on the day it is needed. Photograph a finished kit before dispatch as well, so any argument about what should have been inside is settled in seconds.
Handing out is a queueing problem. One table for several hundred people will take longer than the event itself, so split by alphabet or by department, staff each counter, and mark names off a printed list so nobody collects twice and nobody is missed. Hand out at the exit rather than the entrance, since people carrying boxes stop networking. Keep a small reserve aside, and record who could not collect and how it will reach them. When the gift is being presented on stage rather than collected from a table, rehearse the pass: somebody hands the box, somebody else clears the empty hands, and the photographer knows which side to stand on. Reconcile at the end of the night, counting what went out against what came back, so next year's order starts from a real number instead of a memory. Branding for the venue itself, from welcome gates to stage graphics, is covered on our event branding page; this page is only about what leaves in a guest's hands. The recognition and engagement calendar that most gifting rounds hang off is described on our employee engagement events page; here we handle the supply side that feeds it.
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It involves choosing an item, branding it, packing it and getting it to every recipient before a fixed date. The choosing takes an afternoon; the rest takes weeks. Sizing, spellings, counts, print approval, kitting, labelling and handover are where rounds go wrong, so we build the plan backwards from the day the gift must be in somebody's hands.
Start about two months before the day you want gifts handed over. Branded stock has to be produced, samples approved and boxes packed, and courier networks slow down across the festival weeks exactly when everyone is dispatching. Consignments going to other cities need a further week beyond that. Starting late does not always raise the price; more often it narrows your choice to whatever is already produced.
Cost is driven by quantity, the branding method, how much of the gift is personalised, packaging, and how far each box travels. Engraving and individual names cost more than a single logo repeated across the order. Multi-item kits add assembly. Rush production and split deliveries add the most of all, which is why timing is the cheapest thing you can control.
Yes, on items that take engraving, embroidery or printed inserts. Personalisation needs a clean list exported from your records, checked by two people in your team and frozen early, because each piece becomes unique and cannot be swapped later. We also produce a few unnamed spares, since a damaged personalised gift cannot be replaced from the same batch at short notice.
Split the crowd and hand out at the exit. Several counters divided by department or alphabet will always clear faster than one table, and staff at each counter tick names off a printed list so nobody collects twice. Position handover where people are leaving, because a guest holding a box stops talking to colleagues and starts looking for the door.
Yes. We split consignments by destination, label cartons by office, floor and desk, and send outstation boxes earlier than city ones. You get tracking and a signature for each consignment. For people who are travelling or working from home that week, decide in advance whether the gift waits at the office or goes to a home address.
The ones people still use months later, which usually means everyday items of honest quality rather than novelties. Consider whether the recipient has to carry it home on a two-wheeler, whether it works for every age group in the team, and whether the branding is tasteful enough that they will actually use it in public.
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Pune · PCMCTell us the date it must be in hand
Share the occasion, the recipient count and the locations, and we will send options with samples and a working-back schedule.