hello and welcome to another edition of kalkine tv's executive corner expert talks in this edition
i'll be shedding light on one e-card company that's enabling easy group signing with no
matter regarding the distance that is icard forest and the best way to do that is to sit
down with a founder diana doncheva welcome to the show diana it's great to have you with us
thanks carly nice to be here it's a pleasure to have you on first and foremost i'd love to
know if you could give us an idea of how online group cards work yes absolutely
so basically online group cards are um just a kind of a evolution of our print cards that
we know from ages and so basically what we did is we started a digital solution where you can
create a digital card so basically an e-card and invite a lot of people to sign so it's
quite a unique feature that you can use for a bigger group so you can invite a lot of people
by sharing a link online and then they can just include their wishes they can include some kind
of interactive digital elements so there is a lot of flexibility in digital group cards and
they've become quite popular in the offices in families which are distributed on around the world
so basically quite the easy solution to use in the covet and after covered times actually
right i can imagine so very convenient and very modern way about getting cards signed
so that's great was it born from from kobe the idea of uh your e-cards yes indeed um so what
we did basically uh we knew that there are other players in the market which had similar solutions
um however i was also in a situation where i needed a group card for a colleague leaving
and then we were all blocked working from home we had to adapt in a way and then i was like okay
let me just explore what we have on the market currently and then i wasn't very happy with what
i could find so in the end yes it was driven by the need of signing cards online by a bigger
group um but it was also kind of a triggered by um by the choice that we had on the market at
that point of time so i wasn't really happy uh with what i could find and then i thought
oh yeah well why not try to make something bigger and better um so that was kind of in the end um
the driving force of ecard forest right that makes perfect sense and i understand that you
have quite a range of features and with your econs rather than just the the regular signing of cards
is there's quite a lot you can actually do with them is that correct yes absolutely so as i was
already mentioning uh you have the possibility to introduce also some interactive elements like gifs
or you can also have images you can also upload some kind of emojis you you have also all those
fonts different styles that you can include to make it really personal and to make it
a bit different from maybe what you've what you would usually have in a paper card right right
i've got to say the gifs really really sell it for me i i think i can using a gif on a card that is
pretty awesome so it's uh glad to hear that that's that option is out there glad do you like it
and uh you know also i actually wanted to ask you uh about the sustainability aspect of it how
does that come into play with them with your with your econs and with your business model
so um we were all really interested in sustainability so in a way that we in our
personal lives would pay attention to what kind of footprint we leave so um that was just uh
let's say natural to us to focus also on the sustainability element in our e-cards so e-cards
first th they are kind of sustainable and much more sustainable than basically the um paper
cards just because uh they don't require paper they don't require um shipping and so you save
on those elements and then you also have just the tiny storage space that you need for each card
so in the end an e-card would be basically one three hundredth of a print card more less
so they are sustainable thanks to the um electronic nature but also what we do on top
because we thought okay that's maybe not enough uh we want to even um kind of balance out what we
generate in terms of electricity in terms of storage so what we started
doing is also donating to tree planting organizations around the world so we work
with different initiatives with different ngos and then we invest on monthly basis uh based on our
revenue um also to tree planting to just make sure that we offset those uh tiny um footprint um
emissions well that's incredible to hear i must say i mean not only are you saving trees by not
actually having these physical printed cards but you're actually going that one step further
to contribute to the cause of sustainability so it's really great to hear and i can imagine your
consumers your customers like it as well yes they do we uh quite often hear feedback that they love
the tree planting elements we've also incorporated quite a lot in our branding so ecard forest
um was quite closely initiated with the idea to to have also the tree planting um but also on top uh
we have a very clear branding on the website which is uh quite connected to tree to tushy
forest so it's kind of a complete package look and feel which our customers really love i can
imagine i can imagine that's the case absolutely i love your website design as well it's a very
modern and very up-to-date and it definitely emphasizes the sustainability aspect so it's
overall great air and uh one more thing i wanted to ask you is actually about the the privacy
factor how does that factor in and how do you keep that that information secure for your customers
yes so we have invested quite a lot and privacy um so that was uh one of the first topics we
wanted to really kick off and make sure that we do things as good as it's possible so we even went a
bit over over the top let's say in a way that we um created a very easy setup so that you don't
really have to register at the same time securing that any link to a e-card is um so personal and
so unique that it would take a computer basically a couple of trillion years to hack and crack this
code so having this very strong architecture in the background allows us to not require any
registration from our users and make it really a one-click process so they would just create a card
and then they already have those very personal and very secure links that they can use and also share
with others without having any doubts of in terms of privacy wow that is terrific to definitely go
that extra mile to ensure that privacy this that is excellent and i'm sure your customers
are very happy with that as well and uh one thing i actually wanted to ask you right before you wrap
up is what we can expect to see from uh from your e-cards in the upcoming year and uh perhaps beyond
is there anything in your pipeline in particular that we can look forward to seeing
yes so um we are working on some projects currently um a lot of them are still let's say in
a very early stage but what we expect to grow for sure is our collaboration with artists because we
do share some designs from artists so basically we just reach out to relevant instagram users who
are kind of let's say hobby um illustrationists and then in the end we incorporate their designs
sharing some royalty so we want to grow that in the future and apart from that i think everything
else is too too early to comment on but uh we expect quite an exciting future for egard forest
well that's certainly very exciting and i i must say it's great to hear that you
absolutely support those small artists and working together with them so that's always a good thing
and we'll definitely keep an eye on your potential expansion in the upcoming in the upcoming years
and uh in months as well there's certainly a lot to see i can imagine but uh with that said thanks
very much for coming on the show diana it's been really great speaking with you thanks a lot khali
pleasure that was diana doncheva the founder of econ forest and if you missed any part of that
chat you can catch the full interview on our youtube channel at kalkine media and make sure
to subscribe i'm emily shields reminding you to save a prize and invest wise with kalkine