Picsquare – The Journey Thus Far
The roller – coaster ride started a year ago and we are still on it, “We” are the Picsquare team. Hi! I am Manish and this is the story of how Picsquare started.
It started with a simple problem; as a student in the US I could not send photos to my parents in India. They were not very keen on seeing the pictures in email, so I had to get the photos printed locally and fed-ex it to them. The fact that it involved so many processes it took me one complete one semester (4 months).
When I returned back to India, I teamed up with Kartik. I knew Kartik from good old IIT days; we were neighbours in the hostel. We both are passionate about entrepreneurship and wanted to start something. That led to numerous terrace brain-storming sessions with hundreds of idea coming and passing. Finally we zeroed on to the idea of online photo printing in India. We found there was still a gap in the market and so was born our dream – Picsquare.
You won’t find that name in the dictionary, it’s a combination of two word: Pic(ture) and Square, square in hindi means ‘Chauraha’ usually a central meeting place in towns and villages. Here people gather in the evening after their day’s work is done to chat, relax, unwind and share their lives. That’s our vision for Picsquare, to provide a space to the Indian community where they share their life with their loved ones through the medium of photographs. A bridge between people, who are situated far away, providing them a convenient way of sharing photographs, be it through online sharing or sending prints.
Today we are the easiest and most cost effective way of sending photos to India for people staying abroad and for people within India.
We started working for Picsquare in September 2005 as a two man army. Then Anuj (batchmate of mine from IITB) joined us. It was a good addition to the team, but unfortunately he couldn’t continue because of personal reasons. For couple of months we (Kartik and I) supported Picsquare doing everything from A to Z. But now we are good team, active advisors and investors who are always available to help us.
However, a lot had happened in between, some of them definitely worth sharing, which we will be doing in out future posts.
Now, we have restaged Picsquare with a great new look. Alak our star designer has played a critical role in redesigning the website. So go ahead take a look at it, we would love to hear from you both raves and rants, anything that will help us make Picsquare better.
Manish
Very interesting. Best of luck for the future.
Hiren
October 16, 2006 at 4:53 am
Hey!
I just happened to see your site today and could not wait to order some photos to shipped to my parents back in India. I sincerely wish you guys a great success !
-
Mallik
Note : I will try to do some marketing for this great service once I get my orders shipped. ..just a small appreciation for young enterprenuers like you from India.
Mallik
October 25, 2006 at 2:03 am
Hi Mallik,
Thanks a lot, sincerely appreciate your cooperation. Do let us know your feedback after you have received your order.
Manish
manish
October 27, 2006 at 5:16 am
Well, looking at Picsquare’s journey, all I can say is that limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless…..Way to go!!
Ankita
November 14, 2006 at 10:09 am
Read about you in BusinessWorld online and came to see how it works. Have just ordered 50 prints to send home to family – I am confident the first experience will be a good one, if not, will still come back to support you guys! Was hoping there will be some way of fitting the description on the photos so the folks home can see what places etc. we are showing them. Any thoughts?
Giridhar
November 17, 2006 at 12:12 am
Just wanted to tell you 2 things –
in fireforx, your homepage flash part doesnt show at all occasionally. just the top links and the bottom links.
once i ordered some prints, but when it reached me, the large 8 X 10 print was stapled through. Please take better care on such stuff…
best of luck
Matt
November 18, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Its a great work and innovative idea of ordering prints. i have spread it among my friends…..
All the best for ur future.
Cheers,
Nitin Jaigude
Nitin Jaigude
November 23, 2006 at 10:10 am
Matt, thanks for your comment. As we discussed on email we take care that this won’t happen again.
Infact now we have a new partner for delivery – DTDC. They are much efficient and provide quality service. We will soon be introducing tracking mechanism.
Ankita, Giridhar, Nitin, Thanks for your comment. Sincerely appreciate your cooperation.
Giridhar, we will work on introducing a feature by which you can add description to the photos you want to print.
Manish Agrawal
November 23, 2006 at 12:18 pm
i have used so many sites for sharing my picture to others..
but i really like this site desigh and unlimited upload of the image..
last month i ordered 100 pic and i got it after 3 days.. some print is not up to quality .. the same picture i print in GK vale in bangalore the quality was really good..
Please take care of all picture quality in future
All the best
Pradeep
November 26, 2006 at 2:01 pm
I really feel this was a great idea of business as I personally have been on the lookout for such a service for several years now. Evrytime I received ad emailers from websites like Shutterfly, I wished there was a similar service in India too. Right now even Kodak is providing such a service but you guys have huge price advantage. Also, in terms of quality you guys appear to be better.
I have been doing my part of spreading awareness about Picsqquare among my friends here in India as well as abroad. But I think you should advertise a little more on the net. Infact, if I hadn’t visited to the DTDC site, I would have never known about your website.
All the best wishes on this project and keep up the good work…
And yes..please add few more items like photo albums in your store. I mean, nothing fancy, just the common variety that is usually given for free by Photo studios if you place a big order.
Thanks
Nekibur Rahman
November 28, 2006 at 7:39 pm
Hi Guys,
You are doing great work !! …Just keep the Service Levels improving & you will see business coming in your way. In India its important that Service Standards are kept good in order to attract people to the Internet business.
All the Best !!
regards
Sandeep
Sandeep
December 15, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Hi !!!
cool idea guys!!!
all the best for the future….
my cousin took sme prints trgh ur website…quality was ok.
if u cld give a range of prices for diff kind of prints ( like quality -medium Rs 5,quality- excellent Rs 10)then i think ppl wld be happy(ier)…
chakki
January 25, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Hi guys
‘Excellent’ is the word which came to my mind after browsing through ‘picsquare site. I run a digital color lab and studio with the latest technology.
I think we can use this for garnering more friends and utilising them for my business. Now ‘picsquare friends’ can utilize my photolab through this site and get their ‘MEMORIES PRINTED’.
We can be contacted through 9884498101/9840678501
T V Ravikumar
March 4, 2007 at 6:46 am
Here comes another service from HP, the world leader in photos. giving you infinite storage space and Free Sharing , with ever adding new products visit Soon.
http://www.snapfish.co.in from HP
Bijoy Meethal
July 30, 2007 at 10:14 am
Hi I am totally fed up with customer service of picsquare. I trusted them and placed big order of almost 600 photographs, they did deliver the snaps but charged me twice, once on visa card and other on ICICI. When I contacted them, one of their representative Suhail said we have not received amount twice contact CCavenue, when i contacted them, they gave me the details that I have been charged twice by merchant picsquare so need to contact them for refund. details are
This is in reference to your below mentioned mail.
In response to your query we have checked our records
and were able to trace out two transactions are
carried out by you with the order numbers:
PIC328131181524546857 and PIC328131181525047240 which
are successfully processed through us and the same has
been forwarded to your merchant. Hence you have been
charged twice on your account.
Please note that Cancellation / Refunding of
transaction is a process which is always initiated /
carried out by the merchants and ccavenue can not
intervene in it.
After that i have been contacting picsquare customer representative but none of them ever responds, so be careful while doing any business with them. I have also alerted all my friends who were to order services through them.
Avanish
August 6, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Hello Avanish,
We sincerely apologize for the delay in refunding your amount. We have processed the same now.
This is a rare case where the customer support has not responded on time to your query.
We ascertain you that in the future, this is not going to be repeated.
We are glad to have you as a part of Picsquare family. We always try to serve you better.
Thanks,
Kartik Jain
http://www.picsquare.com
+91 93422 01622
Kartik Jain
August 7, 2007 at 9:12 am
I have not checked whether amount has been refunded or not, but I take your words. Also to let you know main reason why I was not aggressive and placed such a big order in first instance was because i read that young enterpreneur manish agrawal is from bhilai and i wanted to support this endeavor as I am also from raipur-bhilai. Hopefully you guys will not let me down in future.
Avanish
August 7, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Hi Avanish,
Thanks for your support and encouragement.
We assure you that we will never let you down in the future.
Thanks,
Kartik Jain
http://www.picsquare.com
+91 93422 01622
Kartik Jain
August 8, 2007 at 8:24 am
free car quote
Excellent post. Keep it up!
Anonymous
March 9, 2008 at 9:35 am
Hey,
Why are you charging tax (@12%) on postal charges.You are charging tax on amount after adding postal charges that is not correct. You can charge tax on print cost not postal charge.
I have printed lot of snaps through online but never paid tax on print charge.
I have one more suggestion, Pls think once more on postal charges which are Rs18 per 50 extra snaps. Pls consider on that also.
Rgds,
Deepak
Deepak
March 11, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Unfortunately for the first time in my life im having to leave a negative comment about some one online.
Picsquare is one of the most unproffessional and laid back service i have ever seen for online photo shipments. They do not stick on to schedules and are very laid back in their response. Would advise people staying away from it if you have time constraints n value your time.
Ram
October 13, 2008 at 11:19 am
Hi Ram,
Please allow me to explain the situation and reason for the delay in processing your order.
We normally process the order in 2 working days. Your order to us was received on 7th evening, hence it should have been shipped on 9th. However, 8th and 9th was holiday in Bangalore on the occasion of Dusshera. Hence your order got delayed by 2 days and we shipped your order on 11th evening.
We would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. At the same time, we hope that you would realize that this delay was beyond our control.
Manish.
manish
October 18, 2008 at 11:34 am