College Care Packages Go Virtual

The gift-giving season is upon us and for parents with college kids, it's time to send care packages to give their kids a morale boost during exams. Remember getting a care package in college? It was a big deal-free food and affirmation that mom and dad think about you when you're not there.

Regaalo, the brainchild of University of NH students (now graduates), is a social e-commerce site that allows parents, friends and relatives to send gift certificates from local stores, restaurants and hangouts to their student's mobile phone. Regaalo also offers customized care packages that can be mailed to students anywhere in the United States and filled with name-brand candy, food and other items. The site includes a rating system with student preferences to help family members select something special.

Regaalo, a twist on the Spanish word for gift, was started by a group of students in 2011. It started with the NH ICC (NH Innovation Commercialization Center in Portsmouth), with the seed of an idea to do something with mobile and students, says Jessica Streitmater, president of Regaalo. The NH ICC held a focus group of students to develop ideas and from that came the idea for Regaalo, she says. The students entered the Holloway Prize Innovation-to-Market Competition at UNH and won second place out of 45 entries.

While Regaalo focused solely on UNH in its first year, generating more than $8,000 in revenue, it plans to offer its mobile services at colleges nationwide and expects to be in the black in a couple of years. It raised $125,000 in seed investment and recently expanded its mobile services to colleges in the Boston market. It also plans to add other colleges through its new student entrepreneur program, whereby the company is recruiting students who will be paid a percentage of sales. Regaalo's biggest sellers are mobile gift cards for pizza and coffee. Participating merchants pay a transaction fee.

The NH Innovation Commercialization Center offered the company space and expertise to help it launch, and Mark Galvin, managing director of NH-ICC, serves as chairman of Regaalo's four-member board. In addition to its founders-Streitmater; Matthew Robinson, vice president of engineering; Gretchen Eastman, director of product marketing; and Christine Dinisi, director of marketing analytics, Regaalo recently hired its first employee and has three interns from UNH. For more information, visit
www.regaalo.com.