Online photo sharing, printing gaining grounds in India
This is the Web 2.0 era wherein companies’ bank on user generated content to push their businesses. Its like people having the raw material and companies having the financial power combining themselves to deliver a final product. And hot on the heels are the new services like iTasveer, Pic Square and ZoomIn. These services enable the user to share their favorite photos and even print them. For the time being, we’ll be concentrating only on two services, ZoomIn which is relatively a new one and iTasveer. Let’s get a basic overview of what these websites offer and who has an upper hand on whom.
The core service offered by both these websites are same. And the main source of revenue for them is from users placing orders for their prints. This is a new concept in India as the conventional photo studios rule the roost. But to encourage users to use their service and print their photos from them, ZoomIn currently gives 20 (4X6) prints free and iTasveer gives 15 for the same size. This means that, you have to pay only for the shipping.
Storage Space: The disk space allocated on both the services is unlimited which can help you dump all your photos from your hard disk to their servers. Pretty Neat! However, there’s one catch found on iTasveer. If you again want to download all the pictures, you can download images not more than 100MB per month. That is the only restriction they have.
Uploading: Both the services are again at par. Uploading on both these sites is a breeze and they also support other photo sharing services like Picasa and Flickr.
Ordering: Here, ZoomIn is a clear winner. Ordering photos on ZoomIn is pretty easy and fast because of the AJAX based interface. On the other hand, iTasveer seems pretty cluttered and confusing for a first time user. However, one thing to be noticed on iTasveer is the cropping tool. This tool, which is absent on ZoomIn makes it handy that only the relevant subject comes in the print.
Pricing: Well this is the most important criteria. iTasveer’s prices are a tad expensive in comparison of ZoomIn. But the 4X6 prints which is the normal size for a family album is 50 paise cheaper than ZoomIn. This saving is not much but it can save some bucks for you if you’re ordering in bulk. The shipping price charged is also neck to neck with ZoomIn charging Rs. 25 whereas iTasveer charging Rs. 30 for a order.
Product Variety: iTasveer’s store clearly says it all. They print photos even on T-Shirts, Mugs, mousepads which lacks on ZoomIn. I am sure ZoomIn must be thinking to expand their product portfolio with something better and competitive.
As it’s said that nothing’s perfect in this world, neither of the services can be termed as perfect. It just depends on the user on how he uses it. In some points, ZoomIn won the accolades and in some iTasveer. As more and more players spring up, this service factory will be interesting to monitor.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS Feed OR Email Alerts!
Somebody was thinking way ahead then both of us and somebody was just not ready to accept, his loss!!!
Hi! This is Ashish from itasveer.com. Thanks for the great review and feedback – extremely useful. We will definitely look into how we can make our ordering process more intuitive.
Hi Rajiv,
I’m writing from MeraSnap.com, one of the digital photo printing services in India. While interesting, your analysis of this space would have been complete had you dwelt on the business model and the revenue streams of the photo printing players. That would perhaps give a clearer picture of the business and its feasibility for the long run. Looking forward to your post on that front soon.
Warm Regards,
———————————————————
V V Kadam
68/b, 21st cross, 2nd block, Rajajinagar, Bangalore – 560 010, INDIA
Ph: 080 – 23420885 / 41277432 / 98867 73007
http://www.MeraSnap.com
| Moments of Joy. Printed & Delivered |
~ + ~ Get your digital photos printed & door delivered anywhere in India with http://www.merasnap.com ~ + ~
Thanks for your insightful post. We have many exciting and innovative improvements coming very soon. We expect a rapid pace of improvement in building a service for India and NRIs worldwide that’s truly world-class. If anyone else has tried ZoomIn, I’d love to get your feedback here or on our blog.
Thanks,
Clint
ZoomIn.com
This is a very interesting article. as you have rightly pointed out, each player has its own unique strengths, positioning and market segment.
All these sites are so rich in features, that the comparison among them is hard to make. Consumers who are looking for value for money, low printing and shipping costs are in greater number and I see the price war is close among all these players and is imminent. This is a wonderful article with a valuable perspective. Please keep writing.
Oops! All big players here. All sites are great. I had tried zoomin, itasveer & printbucket. Very competitive prices. From the whole lot, I liked printbucket.com and zoomin.com
Another new and simple photo sharing website is MyAlbum.in. This is the Indian version of the international photo sharing service MyAlbum.com. Photo upload as well download is free. Also it allows categorizing photos in albums and sharing them. Other facilities include photo hosting, slideshows, storage and embedding.
Hi Guys,
Great Reviews there but leading the India’s Online Photo Printing Market is not anyone among these THREE.
Snapfish from HP is the leading Service Provider in Indian Photo Printing Industry.