Itasveer is an online digital photo printing service that has around for a while. It is run by four ex-IIT Delhi guys and they are based out of Gurgaon. They recently launched a couple of features, which differentiates their service significantly from others. The digital photo printing space in India (surprisingly) has a bunch of players now- Picsquare, Merasnap, Snapgalaxy & Photomasti. Picsquare has in fact, got seed funded previously, so that’s an indicator that this segment has commercial viability.

Itasveer has struck a novel deal with Microsoft, in being the only Indian photo printing vendor, from where you can order prints of your photographs, right from within Windows Vista. This is actuated through the photo printing module in Vista, called the ‘Online Print Wizard‘ (OPW). Ashish Goel (of itasveer) explained to me that this deal was materialized after a great deal of effort; they had to go through a process of validation, before Microsoft signed on the partnership agreement. They also had to develop the web application for OPW and integrate it into Vista’s photo print ordering workflow. I feel that itasveer may have to wait for the wider adoption of Vista, before they start seeing material gains. But it is immensely enterprising of them to have thought of this partnership with a global giant, and executed it to perfection. I am sure, all of us can learn something from their example.

Itasveer has also launched a doodling application called the Doodlepad, a Flash based tool where one can design graphics, add backgrounds, borders, editable text, multiple photos etc to be used as an imprint for gifting items like T-shirts, mugs, greeting cards etc. Check out this link for details. They have also partnered with an NGO called Parichay, for ethnic hand made photo albums. Proceeds from the sale of these albums go to Parichay. On the web application front, something that stands apart on their website is the testimonial section, called Bouquets & Brickbats. It reflects customer feedback in a credible way, and points to the teams’ progressive thinking at an overall level. Other than these, itasveer offers all the regular features like other photo-printing services- the ability to upload photos, order prints, have it couriered across to any address of your choice etc.

In my previous reviews of Picsquare & Merasnap, I had said that the photo printing service busines is getting increasingly commoditized, and companies would have to differentiate their offering, to gain the attention of customers. Itasveer’s latest moves are exactly in this direction. The 1.6 lakh photographs that users have uploaded to their servers, are proof that they are doing well in customer acquisition as well. Future plans for the team includes getting ready to seek external funding, and doing something around mobile phones.

I feel something else is going to happen in this space. What started out as being a photoprinting service from these startups, will gradually metamorphose into an online gifting service, with photos prints being just one of the many things they do.

Gladoo is a vertical IT job search engine that has gone live recently. It offers single search access to jobs by aggregating job listings from all major job portals, classified sites, agencies, and company websites. It has been created by Avake, a software solutions provider having offices in Silicon Valley and Noida. Gladoo’s creators are aiming to make career search simpler and also fun, hence the name Gladoo, which is derived from the word ‘glad’.

Gladoo’s crawler indexes various job sites like Naukri, Monster, TimesJobs, Jobsahead etc and ranks the jobs by relevance to the search criteria. You can also post your jobs to the site using this form. The homepage has a Google-like search interface, along with a very smart iconic navigation for the most common job categories like developer, fresher, sysadmin etc. The job listing page seems inspired by what you have on Bixee (now owned by MIH), allowing you to drill down by role, experience or location. In fact, Gladoo is closely modeled on Bixee, with two notable differences- it contains only IT jobs, and the fact that, you can also post your own IT jobs on the site. The current revenue is based on contextual internet advertising. The future revenue model will also have paid recruitment services to employers and other career related companies.

A vertical search engine for jobs, in my opinion, make a lot of sense. There are at least a dozen job sites in India to start off with. Then there are various genres of websites (or blogs) that have job listings- city portals, classified sites, websites of job or placement consultants, company websites with the ‘careers’ section, not to mention the increasing trend of people prospecting for employees on personal or corporate blogs (I also do it on my personal blog). Hence the basic rationale exists. The question is whether you can create a crawler that can (lawfully) crawl all these sites, index them and create a relevancy algorithm that works well. I am aware of at least two other job aggregator cum search engine– Bixee and Recruit (from a HongKong based job consultancy which is headed by an NRI) , focused on the Indian job market. Bixee has been around for a couple of years and has a considerable head start. In that sense, Gladoo has made a wise start by addressing a niche, i.e. only IT jobs. But it will have to prove its worth in the coming days & months.

—–

Something interesting to note is the gradual horizontal layering, that starts happening in a vertical, as it starts maturing. The Indian online job space is a good example. If I was a Indian techie, searching for a job on the internet, I have essentially three options to choose from now.

– use a jobsite like Naukri, Monster etc
– use an vertical aggregator cum search engine like Bixee, Gladoo etc (which also index corporate websites, blogs, placement consultant websites etc)
– use an all purpose search engine like Google, Yahoo, Guruji, Rediff etc

Off course, each horizontal option comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Let me reserve that discussion for a later post.