Nottingham friends create app to make gift-giving easier just in time for Christmas

A pair of Nottinghamshire friends say they are putting the joy back into gift giving this Christmas with a new app. Co-founders Ash Sobhani and Adam Kulpa of Gifty, are hoping to make present exchanges less transactional and more personal this year by helping friends and family members figure out what to get each other.

Gifty is a free app designed by the friends, who met whilst studying Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, to take the stress out of gift giving by sharing ideas and your own gift lists. Mr Sobhani stated: "We just thought gift giving was trickier than it needed to be."

He explained that most people found themselves making group chats without a specific person in it when it came to their birthday, and whilst everyone has had those Christmases where people get the gifts right, a lot of the time "they just didn't know what to get you" and you end up with things you don't want or gift cards.

Mr Sobhani continued: "I genuinely believe that gift giving can be quite amazing and build connections and bring people together." Gifty, which is now run by a team of five friends, is hoping to change the way people give and receive gifts for any occasion, whether that's for birthdays, weddings or anniversaries.

"Gift giving is losing its essence" said Mr Sobhani. He added: "People struggle with getting gifts and so they resort to toiletries or really standard gift cards and its become very transitional, there's no meaning behind it."

The app is designed to be almost like a social media platform, where users can add the items they want or their interests to their gift list to help give people ideas. Anything the user adds can be seen by the accounts they add, such as those of friends and family, and whilst these people can also collaborate and add ideas, to keep an element of surprise the user can still only see the ideas that they themselves have added.

Mr Sobhani explained they want to help more people give "great" gifts and not just get something for someone "out of obligation." He continued: "We don't think that there is a shortage of ideas we just don't think there's a good transmission of these ideas.

"It gives people a way to create suggestions about each other and gifts." Similar to other social networks, users will have the ability to upvote ideas posted.

Gifty has recently become an Amazon affiliate and also hopes to "support local businesses that offer something unique", such as the Tree Kitchen in Nottingham. The team is based in Nottinghamshire, and so they want to grow in the city first and improve the areas gift experience before hopefully expanding to other areas.