Gift makers from Tiruchi craft presents with a personal touch

Cash-rich but time-poor? If you are looking for gifts that convey your wishes more effectively than store-bought knickknacks, these Tiruchi-based artists specialising in handmade presents and instantly reachable through social media, may have just the thing for you.

The Prink

Product: Diorama boxes

An ideal gift for those who love taking pictures and looking at them (that would be nearly all of us), the ‘Miniature Box’ from The Prink online store promises to create keepsake dioramas that are sure to be a hit on any showcase.

“We are trying to help people remember their cherished moments such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and special occasions with little boxed three-dimensional displays that are curated by the customer. So, along with supplying their photographs, they also get to choose items that will make up the rest of the diorama,” says Sanjai Praboo, co-founder and CEO of The Prink, an e-commerce portal for personalised gifts that started in 2020.

The market for such customised novelty goods is crowded, says Sanjai, but what makes The Prink stand out is the time factor. “Most artists working on dioramas usually ask for advance notice of at least two weeks to a month, because they require a lot of handwork. But we complete the Miniature Box orders within 24 hours of ordering. Since we ship our products extensively within India, our boxes are delivered within a day or two of dispatch,” he says.

Sanjai quit his job as a software professional to work with his mother Amutha Siva at the family’s 22-year-old printing firm based in Pugalia Pillai Street in Tiruchi.

The web-based offshoot started in 2020 during the lockdown with pop-up cubes called the ‘Prink Bomb’, a card paper contraption that literally bursts out of a box filled with confetti and automatically assumes its shape with the help of strategically placed rubber bands.