Here comes ‘experience', on Yellow Cycle!

Your whacky wish is her business. Her products are like nothing we know of but are created to last forever.

Next time you feel gifty, goofy, splurgy, high or low, for yourself or one of yours, dial Neha Arora's office.

Her elves ensure that your wish is granted — glitz-wrapped, ribbons, rose petals, chocolates, balloons and all. Until it whisks that lucky someone away into a wondrous experience.

Fancy giving a dear one a wine-sipping outing in one of the Nandi Hills vineyards? Or, sending a cousin up in a helicopter over Bangalore [for now]? Or, wanting yourself to airily sashay in a micro-light plane? A wild all-gals bachelorette evening party? Why not dazzle someone by having a five-star chef from the Leela or ITC hotels come over and spread out a five-course meal in their own kitchen. Or, ...?

Neha Arora's Yellow Cycle may have all the answers.

“We're in the business of gifting, we make it magical,” the Founder- CEO (Chief Experience Officer), Neha Arora, enlarges. “You know, like making dreams come true, gifting out-of-the ordinary experiences that people never forget.”

The complaint: “It's a pity there are no limousines here.” Feel cheated, indeed. If you do pick the micro-light ride and name a day for the flight, a BMW comes to pick you up. For others, it's a chauffeur driven sedan.

The Arora ‘wand' — for want of a magical word — is called the Yellow Cycle, it conjures up 16 delectable experiences and some more are due soon. Since the former corporate communications manager who worked with HP, HCL Comnet and other companies turned entrepreneur around October 2011, she has dished out some of these gift concepts for over 80 people. At charges ranging from Rs 2,800 to Rs 25,000, generally for two.

First customer

The experience is now arranged only around Bangalore but the requests come from all over. Her first customer was an Amsterdam-based NRI who gifted an experience to a brother. Some more NRIs have rung the Yellow Cycle.

Arora, 31, says companies are catching up with her to dress up their rewards for their employees. Investors (“I don't know in what form”) and franchise inquiries are trickling in.

Right now, break-even is at least half a year away but her Yellow Cycle is going to be on a roll, up and up, Arora hopes. It's exciting, gruelling to execute the gifts or think up new concepts. “A lot of sweat and sleepless nights – just like how a baby gives you stress – still it's what I want to do.” It's also early days for business. “You need to sell 40-60 experiences a month to survive, not rest with a dozen or so. If you asked a young person to pick between an iPad and a micro-light ride for a few hours, he or she may still want the iPad.”

For now, Arora is urging companies to add magic to their employee incentives. They could replace shopping vouchers with a Yellow Cycle experience. A tie-up with a gift voucher company is happening. “A dinner outing is passé, material gifts may not meet your taste. Experiences never die.” The Elves ensure that every experience is clicked into an album and videographed as a CD – part of the package.

The yellow in the logo of her card as well as on her T-shirt, it seems, is the colour of sunshine and happiness.

It started with a childhood fascination with Enid Blyton's wishing chair. The inspiration came during a Singapore holiday in 2010, when she was left impressed by the precision and details of the ‘Imagineurs' of a theme park. Somewhere later she quit her job and did retail consulting for a large electronic items store. The trigger to the start-up was when she couldn't find any new and exciting eatery for her foodie husband's birthday.

Arora, a mass communications graduate bred in Kolkata, anchoring in Bangalore, turned it sunny side up. “I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.”

Basket of experiences

Her yellow bicycle has “no pedals, just a basket of experiences”. It is still mostly a solo Arora flight with some unmentioned investment in setting up the office, the jazzed up bicycle and to pay her Elves. When curious people call in to inquire or make an order, a handful of freelance ‘Magic Elves' writes in the wishes, works out the frills and delivers them ribboned.

Sometimes Arora goes out on the yellow bicycle to hand over the gift kit to the caller's friend or family.

The concepts run from ‘eight dance types in 8 hours' to ‘an aphrodisiac evening' to being ‘a rock star in a studio'. Arora has a score or so partners to make the dreams come alive.

“I'm still constantly investing, in ideas, in laptops, for example. MBAs are applying to be an Elf and I got 120 applications in 45 days. Between cooking up new concepts and executing the ones in hand, there is no time to go through them.”

But first, “We need to create suppliers.” An online gateway may come up. Facebook is a pitch point. If a bright yellow bicycle with tassles or such hits you in the eye at a restaurant or a mall, you will know who put it there.

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