Digital photo printing for NRI’s - Picsquare and the gang
Just getting back to normal after a great Diwali celebration over the weekend. Uploaded photos from the event to Flickr. Unfortunately, my parents are not tech savvy and so sharing photos with them through Flickr is not a viable option. Besides, they prefer prints over digital photos. Enter digital photo printing services targetted towards NRI’s. The premise is simple. Create an account, upload photos, select the photos you want printed, enter receipient’s address in India and you’re good to go.
If my memory serves me right (please correct me if I’m wrong), Picsquare was one of the first players in this market. Picsquare was started by two IIT Bombay alums - Manish Agrawal and Kartik Jain. They recently received funding as part of the TiE Entrepreneur program.The idea was conceived when Manish was in US and faced challenges in sending prints to his family in India:
Manish, while in the States, traveled extensively and thus wished to share his enchanting experiences with his near and dear ones in India. Unfortunately, no service was accessible enough for him to send the photos he clicked.
To try firsthand, I setup an account and uploaded some photos. The site provides you the ability to upload a single photo or multiple photos (using an applet). Using the applet, you can drag and drop photos from your desktop to the site. You can tag photos, add comments and invite friends and family to view the photos.The site makes good use of lightbox effects for viewing the photos. You can also view your friends photos and comment on them. You can order prints, t-shirts, greeting cards from your photos.
The prices are fairly cheap (3 Rs. per print excluding shipping) and they run great promotions from time-to-time. I cant comment on the quality of the prints since I did not place any order, however, from the testimonials section of the site, it seems that have quite a number of satisfied customers.
One thing that works in their favor is that unlike some of the other tech startups, they have a sustainable business model.
The design and the user interface (after logging in) appear a bit crude at times and can be polished further. Personally, I would like to see less LightBox effects, but then, thats just me. They should also consider various marketing channels, since a lot of the folks I talked to in the US (potential customers) havent heard about them.
Overall, Picsquare does a great job in terms of concept and execution.
There are 2 main challenges they face and it would be interesting to hear their take on them:
1) Most of the photo printing labs in India also offer digital photo printing services at competitive prices. Several of my friends send photo CDs, which their parents get printed at these brick-and-mortar shops. How does Picsquare intend to address this ?
2) Lot of the NRI’s already use other photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Yahoo photos, Snapfish etc. extensively. Considering the number of photos I have on Flickr, it would be very cumbersome to migrate them to Picsquare and then order prints. If Picsquare can offer automatic migration of my photos from Flickr, it would become a potent weapon in their arsenal. Alternatively, they can also see if its viable to enter into agreements with Yahoo / Flickr on shipping and printing photos to India. The last point may be a long shot, but I’m just thinking out loud.
There are several other players in this photo printing services for NRI’s:
123shots, Merasnap, PhotoMasti and Rangeelaphotos (I bet there must be more that I did not include here). I did not find the others worthwhile and so chose to profile only Picsquare as part of this post.
November 16th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Hi Pranav,
Do have a look at http://www.itasveer.com when you find the time.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Soddisfare emozionante. Siete buoni a fotoricettore-progettate!
February 5th, 2007 at 8:16 am
http://www.uclickweprint.com as the name suggest is the new kid on the block of online digital photo printing arena.Just have look at it.Its fresh and looks great.
February 24th, 2007 at 5:01 am
[...] Picsquare is an Indian startup offering photo sharing and printing services, which I profiled here. [...]
June 4th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
[...] I have always held the opinion that integration into existing photo sharing sites like Flickr, Snapfish etc will be a big step towards increased adoption of digital photo printing services like Picsquare, iTasveer etc. [...]
July 29th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I ordered a mug with a teddy from PICSQUARE somewhere arnd two weeks back. And after ordering I found a small bug in their application and reported it to the PICSQUARE TEAM. Mr. Manish Agarwal got back to me informing me that they have fixed the bug but when i received my order i found out that the image that got added because of the bug was still there but i wasn’t disappointed as it wasn’t looking that bad. Just to inform the picsquare team i wrote a mail to them informing them about the error and strangely today i received another mug from them with the corrections made. I am glad to have ordered from your end and this special care certainly would earn you loads of customer.
Cheers and may your biz flourish.
Ciao…
July 31st, 2008 at 9:09 am
You must also try http://www.printbucket.com . Its a no nonsense service. Purely for the purpose of digital photo printing. Their service is excellent, and interface is so easy to use. you don’t need to be a computer graduate to use their service. One more company, I would like to recommend zoomin.com. All the best to all of them out there.