The 8,000-Mile Hug: The Story Behind Our First WOW! Moments

In the early 2000s, Paridhi was part of a small team in Indore running aapkaindore.com, helping people living abroad send gifts back home - cakes from familiar bakeries, flowers, photo prints, Rakhis for the festivals.

She used to run the operations and made follow-up calls to check if everything had arrived.

She shared this story about a call that stood out. A sister in the US had sent a Rakhi for her brother, and when Paridhi called to confirm if it had reached him, he told her it felt like it had come directly from his sister. The team had bought the Rakhi locally and handled the delivery carefully, but what mattered to him was simply that someone had thought of him and sent it.

She heard the same thing over and over. A birthday cake arrived and someone felt remembered. Photo prints came through and felt like a direct connection. With every delivery, people told her they felt less distant from the people they loved.

Paridhi has worked on many different things since then. Video calls became easy. Apps made sending gifts routine. But what she remembers from that time are the voices of people when they got these packages, how much it meant that someone had thought of them across the distance.