Welcome to the 2025 edition of The Ken’s annual gifting guide, created 100% through subscribers (including The Ken’s staff, who are all subscribers too).

This year’s guide is based on two different sets of subscriber recommendations—the Coffee Survey (31 August, 314 responses) and the Gifting Survey (28 September, 255 responses).

There are no ads, no sponsors, no affiliate links. There are also no links to Amazon, Flipkart, or other major e-commerce platforms. In some cases, we couldn’t find local retailers who offer the item, hence some dollar prices.

The text inside quotes under each recommendation comes from subscribers. The Ken’s comments follow those in most cases. To keep things simple, we’ve combined multiple recommendations into one in many places (for example, automatic wrist watches, semi-automatic espresso machines). 

There are a few new categories we’ve added this year—“Learning & Knowledge”, “Causes”, “Coffee”, “Pets”, “Personal Gear” and “Apple” (what can we say? A lot of subscribers love to gift and receive Apple products).

We’ve made it easier to see last year’s list by simply clicking a button. You can also upvote individual items.

We know we’re a bit late this year. But we’re hoping to make this a list that gets updated throughout the year from now on. 

Lastly, remember there is no right list or wrong list. You may disagree with some of the recommendations, or you may be angry at some of the missing ones. Help us make it better by telling us, so that we can make this list into our list.

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The Ken’s 2025 Gifting Guide

And here’s wishing you and all your loved ones the warmest, safest, and happiest Deepavali! 

You’ll find your usual books and photos section from Tanim and Jonathan below. 

Before you dive into that, my colleague Arundhati is working on a fascinating story about how the nature of work has changed in 2025. In her words, “Capital constraints, fewer hikes, more layoffs, as well as the allure and weight of AI disruption are coming together all at once. Just what is all this doing to people’s ambitions?”

Take this five-minute survey and tell us.