Tech-based Platform for Photographers, Videographers VsnapU Raises 2 Cr in Seed Round Led by Inflection Point Ventures

• VsnapU is a photographer aggregator platform that provides photo and video services across multiple geographies for personal and business events which need on demand photography
• Funds raised to be used for technology and business innovation, team expansion and to procure more contracts
• VsnapU has been ranked as one of the Top 10 Activities in India on Trip Advisor and No.1 in Goa
• IPV has announced the launch of $50 million AIF Fund Physis Capital to invest in Series A and B growth stage startups
• IPV has so far invested over Rs. 500 Cr over 132+ deals

A leading platform for photography services, VsnapU has raised over 2 Cr. in a Seed Round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The funds received will be used for technological advancement, business innovation and expansion, and procuring more contracts and team expansion.

Founded by Parminder Sahni and Taranbir Singh, who are passionate about the idea, along with their vast experience in travel and photography. VsnapU is a platform that provides photography services across multiple geographies at affordable pricing. The company aggregates locally available photographers which allows them to provide instant photography solutions to both their B2B and B2C clients.

(L-R) VsnapU Cofounders  - Kaushik Singh, Taranbir Sahni, Parminder Sahni, Anshu Sharma

They are currently present in 40 cities in India and are rapidly expanding across 28 countries internationally through their ‘Travel photography model being led by their Co-founder Anshu Sharma, who has joined recently with over 20 years of experience in travel and tourism. VsnapU works with both, full-time photographers as well as gig photographers.

They currently have B2B partnerships with hotel chains (Taj, The Leela), Travel websites (Make My Trip, Thomas Cook), Holiday activity organizers (TripAdvisor), and platforms like Just Dial. They have done over 30,000 shoots and they plan to expand into the wedding photography business by forging new partnerships with established wedding organizers in the country.

Mitesh Shah, Co-founder of Inflection Point Ventures, says, “A photo speaks a thousand words. Clicking pictures to capture every waking moment of our lives has become a ritual for all of us. VsnapU is addressing this market opportunity to ensure that our life changing moments are captured perfectly. Occasions like weddings, baby shower, maternity, birthdays and anniversary always call for a photoshoot where one can time travel to those special moments whenever we like. However, finding the right photographer has become a challenge due to multiple reasons such as unavailability, affordability, and no way to check track record etc. VsnapU has understood the pulse of the customers and have created a platform which not only empowers emerging and professional photographers but also gives the best possible option to the seekers at any given point of time along with live update and progress on their much-awaited photographs/videos. IPV aims to further elevate their business and help them to expand their horizons in India and international market”.

VsnapU specializes in all categories of photography and manages the processing and delivery on the cloud via their online tech-platform developed in-house. They also share live progress and updates from start to the end of shoots, and the client can view the after-shoot processes like editing and quality scoring on their phone or laptops with the live online panel. Tech framework has primarily been developed by Kaushik Singh VsnapU’s co-founder who brings in his technical experience to the company. They send their trained photographer from specific genre to the desired shoot location, resulting in immediate execution of the tasks. Post the shoot, the raw as well as edited images can be seen along with the quality score. The delivery is made automatically via mail and text message of a drive link valid for 365 days on the cloud space.

Parminder Sahni, Co-founder, and CEO, of VsnapU, says about the demand side, “Photographers should be available as easily as other professionals like doctors, engineers, or accountants. Booking a photographer should be as simple as booking a cab or ordering groceries. As social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler, and Pinterest gain popularity, the photography market is likely to witness rapid growth in the coming years.

While Taranbir Sahni, Founder and COO of VsnapU has the same zeal for the supply end and quotes “We want every individual to be confident while taking up photography as a profession. Every artist should have enough projects & financial stability. They should use their time only in creating content. Not client handling or editing or payment follow-ups.”

The global market for photography is estimated to be $30 billion. Innovation and innovative technologies are the focus areas of industry players. In the years to come, the worldwide photography market is also expected to experience different product launches by market players to lure in users. The startup offers professional-quality photographs and editing skills, which boosts its presence in the market for photography. VsnapU has a first-move advantage for on-demand “tourist photography” inside resort/hotels.

VsnapU is a platform for Photographers with more than 1000 artists who are either servicing travelers from across 28 countries or creating professional e-com content for companies whom they dream about shooting for. These clients use VsnapU as a quality assured booking source for scattered artists across an unorganized industry.

Inflection Point Ventures is an angel investing platform with over 7400 CXOs, HNIs, and Professionals to together invest in startups. The firm supports new-age entrepreneurs by providing them monetary & experiential capital and connecting them with a diverse group of investors.

Gurgaon-based Photo Sharing Platform Spyne Raises Pre-series Funding

Spyne, an AI-driven Indian tech company that helps Online businesses with all kinds of photoshoots and photographers to leverage their visual content for business growth, has successfully raised an undisclosed amount as growth capital in their Pre-series funding.

The investment was led by Angellist, Smile Group, Manish Amin (COO, Yatra), Anil Goel (CTO, OYO), Anubhav Sonthalia (CEO, Sokrati), Deepak Mittal (CEO, TO THE NEW), among other entrepreneurs from leading companies in India. The company raised its seed funding last year, which was led by the Smile Group and other angel investors. 

The Gurgaon-based startup will use the current funding to build and reinforce the AI-based image editing suite that will help businesses in getting images edited 4x faster with the highest precision. The technology will also ensure the marketplace image specifications and customizations are followed during the bulk processing, helping businesses save up to 90% of the costs. 

Commenting on the development, Sanjay Kumar, Co-founder & CEO, Spyne, said, "Every business - big or small - needs HQ images and videos to sell their products and services online. We are in the business of providing the best visual content and photoshoot services to them anywhere, anytime at ~30% quicker with 99.99% accuracy. With the network of 2500+ highly curated photographers across 35+ cities and industry-first Image processing and distribution technology, we are uniquely placed to cater to the large incoming demand coming from businesses in the post Covid-19 era.” 

“With the current round, we are looking to invest deeper in building the next set of computer vision and Deep tech applications solving complex use cases such as auto editing of images in a click, automated curation and quality check, On the fly Image and Design generation, etc. This will enable us to open new markets in the coming months not only in India but thousands of businesses outside India.", he further added.

Currently, an editor can manually edit at max 150 images per day. The company’s high tech editing suite will help accomplish hundreds of edited images in minutes, guaranteeing up to 90% margins, 99.9% accuracy, and 100% on-time delivery.

"I'm excited about how Sanjay and his team at Spyne are working to solve the Image processing problems, faced by most Online Businesses globally, including us at Oyo. Producing personalized high-quality content at an industrial scale is something which very few companies have been able to achieve anywhere, and I am fully behind the team to achieve it eventually," said Anil Goel, CTO, OYO.

The company is also reinforcing its business operations for SpyneStudios and freelance photography networks across the country. Last month, the company opened its first studio in Delhi NCR and added over 150 freelance photographers to its existing network of over 2500+ freelancers. Spyne plans to spread across tier 2 and tier 3 cities and then to South-Asia and the Middle East to help businesses order any kind of shoot at scale at any time and anywhere. 

Currently, Spyne has 2000+ photographers actively using its high-tech content sharing platform, SpyneShare, which helps photographers generate reviews and more business. So far, 6M+ photos and videos have been shared through SpyneShare product. The company plans to extend this product to businesses as well with add-on AI tech-features to instantly track all their products from pickup for a shoot to final image delivery. This perhaps is a much-needed feature that doesn't exist in the market so far.

“Internet marketplaces all across the globe are growing exponentially. Millions of high-quality images and videos of products/services are published every day on marketplace platforms to improve their traffic and conversions. Still, high-quality content delivery and management remain a daunting task. We see the founder-market fit in Sanjay, given his past experience. Spyne has the potential of becoming a global company,” says the Angellist India team.

The company currently provides a wide array of photoshoot services such as HQ images, videos, social media content, 360-degree shoots, 3D rendering, etc to cater to industries including e-commerce, real estate, fashion, Jewellery, and food. 

Spyne has worked with top national and international brands such as Amazon, Snapdeal, Oyo, Big Basket, WedMeGood, Yatra, PP Jewellers among many others. 

Anubhav Sonthalia, CEO, Sokrati says, “Large companies & small sellers alike do not have easy access to high-quality, timely, and professional talent to get converting content on demand across the entire span of India. Spyne, with its core Shoot and AI-driven Image Processing technology, has built a platform that will make the production of Images and Videos at scale available to every seller, and it is as easy as ordering food.”

Spyne was launched in 2018 by an IIT-Kharagpur alumni Sanjay Kumar who has worked with brands like Amazon, Yatra, OYO, etc and Deepti Prasad from Delhi School of Economics with 8+ years of consulting and marketing experience. The AI-driven company provides photographers a new content management experience and an opportunity to work for top national and international brands. With an aim to fill the high-quality content requirement gap in the industry at high volume and scale, the company aims to be the go-to place for all kinds of shoots, visual content management, and image processing requirements across India and beyond. 

Founding Team:

Sanjay Kumar (Co-founder, CEO): IIT KGP, 2005. Ex Amazon, Oyo, Yatra 12+ years in Deep Tech, Product Built multiple successful Online products for some of the top startups and Consumer companies, used by millions of customers globally. 

Deepti Prasad (Co-founder, Marketing): Delhi School of Economics, 2007 8+ years in Consulting & Marketing Genpact Consulting for 5 years+, Media/Economic Analyst to renowned Economist Omkar Goswami for Question Time Show on NDTV.

Noida-based Siftr Lets You Create Your Own Photography Website From Existing Online Content At Instagram, Flickr or Facebook

A picture is said to say a thousand words. It somewhere also depicts the story and the aspirations of the photographer behind it. Every photographer aspires to do something big in his/her career but, unfortunately, most of times their dreams are just confined to a Facebook page with borrowed likes. Changing this scenario and making these amazingly creative people realise their dreams, is a Noida-based startup called Siftr.

Launched a month ago, Siftr is a machine learning based photo curation platform. The platform auto-creates photographers' website from their existing online content present on sites like Instagram, Flickr, Behance, 500px or Facebook, and presents the best photographs in a visually appealing manner.

No doubt, there are hundreds of platforms (eg. Squarespace, Smugmug, etc.) already present online which help photographers create their own websites but the whole creation process involved in these sites is very painful. Further, keeping these sites always updated and fresh with all latest photos is an extremely tough task to achieve.

This is where Siftr's self-updating capability takes the cake and sets it apart from all the other platforms. A Siftr user is never asked to upload even a single photo himself to create/update his website. The platform uses artificial intelligence to continuously analyzes all your photos online and find the best shots to create visually appealing and professional photography shots.

As a result, Siftr claims to be the World's first zero-maintenance, self-updating website.

[caption id="attachment_101898" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Screenshot of a photography website created using Siftr platform[/caption]

The platform is indeed quite handy for pro photographers as Siftr eliminates the need for constant updating. One can just keep uploading new pictures on their preferred social networks and the Siftr platform automatically finds new photos and keeps adding the best ones to the website, which can then be customized according to the requirements. So, while having a client meeting a pro photographers can just bring his or her Siftr link/URL and save a lot of time collecting & curating photos.

Founded by Romil Mittal and Mayank Bhagya, Siftr was launched just 4 weeks ago and is currently fully bootstrapped. It has so far analysed more than 1 million photos.

"We haven't done any paid marketing till now, but plan to start that soon," said Romil. The founders current future plans involves keep building upon their machine learning platform and improve their photo curation algorithms.

Siftr's mission, as the co-founder of Siftr - Romil says is to help these hobbyist and serious hobbyist photographers realise their photography dream and help them get more opportunities and nurture their talent further.

The startup's main target audience are the various hobbyist and serious hobbyist photographers present out there. Due to the phenomenal rise in good quality mobile phone cameras and photography based social platforms, various people have realised their photography talent. Unfortunately though, because of have a day job in a non-photography domain, many aren't able to devote time to showcase their talent to the world.

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