Tweetup in NOIDA on Jan 24th

Posted on: | January 18, 2012 | Posted by: Dhiraj | View Comments

I am going to be in Delhi on Jan 24th and Adobe has very kindly agreed to host a tweetup for a small set of photographers. The time is not yet fixed, but will most likely be in the afternoon on Jan 24th at Adobe’s office in NOIDA.

My personal goal for these tweetups is to meet all types of pro photographers and hear about the challenges and opportunities both technically and on the business front. I will be bringing some of our printed products for everyone to see and will be ready to demo our online hosting and ecommerce solution that we call Vivyo. But mostly I would like the attendees to drive the discussion around photography so the agenda will not be very tight.

We’ve done one of these earlier in our Bangalore office and it was quite a fun discussion because there were such a variety of photographers who attended. We of course had the benefit of having our production facility and design center there so there was a lot more to show and spark discussions around. That will of course not be possible outside Bangalore. But hopefully it will still be engaging for everyone.

Please email care@canvera.com if you are interested to participate. I’d like to keep it to a maximum 5-7 photographers.

Tweetup in Mumbai around Feb 1st

Posted on: | January 16, 2012 | Posted by: Dhiraj | View Comments

I am going to be in Mumbai around Feb 1st (definitely there on the 1st but may come earlier and stay longer) and would like to invite photographers to a tweetup. We had a very successful tweetup in Bangalore and while there is nothing like taking a tour of our office, production facility & design center, we had requests to do this in Mumbai and Delhi.

I’d be happy to buy a few photographers coffee and answer questions you may have about Canvera. We can keep the discussion open-ended and free flowing.

If you are interested, please email care@canvera.com a preferred date/time around Feb 1st and preferred location (ideally at a coffee shop). I will make travel plans accordingly.

I will try to restrict this to 5-6 photographers as I’d like it to be meaningful for everyone who makes the hike.

See you in Mumbai.

Wedding Albums: A post by photographer Naina

Posted on: | December 7, 2011 | Posted by: Canvera | View Comments

This post was originally published by Photographer Naina Redhu on her “Knotty Tales” blog and is being republished here with the author’s permission.

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Wedding albums are the latest addition in the Indian wedding photography arsenal of Knottytales. And the tale of how I got to this phase is an adventure in itself, which I am going to relate below, alongwith the lovely sample albums I acquired yesterday. Thank you Canvera!

When Karan and Priyanka hired me to shoot their Engagement Ceremony, one of their requirements was that they wanted a printed album. While I had been thinking about including wedding albums in my deliverables in the wedding photography packages, I had no quite done anything about it except passive research.

After having trawled through blogs and websites of other wedding photographers, mostly internationally, I would end up salivating at the wedding albums they were providing to their clients and would subsequently end up being disappointed and unenthusiastic when I tried searching for an Indian wedding album provider that specifically worked with professional photographers. I had heard of services like SnapFish, Blurb, iTasveer, Zoomin and even Canvera but had not invested time in finding out more – except getting a flipbook printed with SnapFish.

The CEO of Canvera, Dhiraj, had responded to my initial query about their albums but other things had taken over and I had no pursued the lead. Then after Karan & Priyanka’s wishes were expressed, I set about looking through my email for Dhiraj’s initial email. This led to being contacted by Mr. Rizvi and Mr. Rajiv from Canvera.

They came to my home-office on a weekend – I told them I could wait till Monday but they insisted because maybe they could sense I was anxious about the albums for my client and also because they probably understand that taking the final decision to have an album printed doesn’t happen overnight. They were carrying their sample albums and price lists and product lists and each album they took out of their “magic bag” was better than the previous one – not because the albums themselves were spectacular – but because I could see the potential they held.

The last album they took was the deal-sealer for me – I am soon going to be ordering that coffee-table book from them. I bade them goodbye with a promise to send them layouts for two studio sample albums, which I wanted to use to show paper samples to my clients. These are the albums you see in the images on this blog post. 8 inches by 8 inches, custom black leather covers and 20 printed sheets each with a variety of papers that the client can feel and choose.

I was apprehensive about the quality of the wedding albums they would be delivering but I am in LOVE with the two albums that were delivered yesterday.

Since this was a special order, I was told that the delivery would be made in five working days as opposed to their standard two days. That was fine with me, I was in no hurry. Until I got a call from a wedding planner who was considering hiring me for one of their weddings and definitely wanted to see physical albums because the bride wanted a wedding album designed and created by the photographer. And I had a meeting in TWO days.

Not only did Mr. Rajiv and Mr. Rizvi from Canvera expedite my order and bumped it up to a print and delivery time of two days, Mr. Rajiv was constantly on the phone with each day updating me with the status of my order. And mind you, it wasn’t I who was calling me up to ask – he was calling me up to tell me. I am, quite frankly, shocked with this level and quality of service.

Once I had paid for the orders and the image files had been received by their expert printers, I got a call from their office where a gentleman said to me, “Madam, we have received your images for the 8 by 8 albums. But Madam, there are many dots on the images.” My heart lurched. Dots?! How could that be? Did I send them the wrong files? He said, “All images have dots Madam. Do you want me to remove them? Make the images smooth?” That’s when it hit me, he was talking about “noise” and “grain”. Phew. I requested him to let the images be as-is. I’m sure there are photographers who like their images without grain, I do too, sometimes, but I’d selected my images for this print job quite carefully and had included the noise on purpose. The gentleman then went on to say, “Madam, also, on page two, the lady in the lehenga – her head is a little cut off from the top. Do you want to send a fresh image? The bleed will take away another 5mm Madam.” This was another scenario I had contemplated and had included the image in the album on purpose. I have designed books earlier and am aware of how a bleed works, which I am sure the gentleman on the other side of the phone was not aware of. What brilliant service! Impressed.

I got updates from Canvera’s end each time a major milestone of the job was complete. The albums have gone into print. The albums have been printed. The albums have been shipped – FedEx alongwith a tracking number. Wow.
The day of the meeting arrived. I was supposed to leave at 1800hrs. No album. At 1700hrs I texted Mr. Rajiv asking him if he knew anything about the delivery. The package tracking facility on the FedEx website said, “At local facility in Noida”. While I was on the phone with the FedEx customer service, Mr. Rajiv texted me telling me he was on the phone with them as well! Ten minutes later, the package was at my door. It was 1745hrs and I had what I wanted.

The wedding planner LOVED the albums. Everything about my interaction with Canvera has been spectacular. Preferred vendor for me. Mr. Rizvi and even Dhiraj have asked me about the status of the albums and my feedback and I wanted to let them know via this blog post that I love everything about it. I do have one request – please customize the typefaces / fonts more – for the cover foil. Pretty please. I will pay extra.

And just today, I came across this blog post on Tiffinbox about Wedding Album design and why a Wedding Album might be a big deal for couples. Nicely written and makes an emotional connection. I am never going to be able to look at wedding albums as an “extra” expense again. Oh, and the price range for the albums I will be designing and creating with production by the Canvera team will be starting at INR 4,500 for a simple, minimal flipbook and the pricing will go upto INR 75,000 for a full blown leather-bound lay-flat coffee-table book. Hope to get some more produced and shoot them for display on the blog.

- Naina

About the Author: Naina Redhu is a photographer based out of New Delhi, India and her specialty is candid, non-posed, documentary style imagery that is emotive and has subtle mysteries. Weddings are a special part of her photography portfolio.

She can be contacted on Facebook or Twitter.

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* If you are a photographer and would like to do a guest post for the Canvera Blog, please drop an  email to blog [at] canvera.com.

Note: All images in this post are copyright of Naina Redhu

Canvera’s first tweetup: Report

Posted on: | November 28, 2011 | Posted by: Dhiraj | View Comments

So we had our first official Canvera tweetup this last Fri at the Canvera office in Bangalore. Much thanks to Kshitiz Anand (@kshitiz), Pramod Viswanath (@PramodViswanath), Anil Rangan (@anilrangan), Vivek Muthuramalingam (@drvivekm) and Vijay Raj (@msigeek ) for taking time out of their busy schedules to spend time with us. A few of them have even been kind enough to write a small report on this meeting that I have reproduced below.

As a company we are deeply interested in all technology that powers photography and imaging. In fact, today our most popular product Coffee-table-books/Photobooks/Albums (with weddings being the largest application for them) could not be produced at quality, scale or fast turnaround time without significant technology. From colour science to workflow automation to order tracking, a lot of technology goes into it. So our interest in holding such meetings is really to hear from photographers of all types on how technology is affecting their photography and for us to stay on top of the changing needs of the market.

We started the tweetup with a tour of our production facility, followed up by look into our design center and finally a demo of our online platform Vivyo. All through we chatted about various aspects of photography, challenges, market expectations, lay of the land, etc. We had perspective from a full time documentary photographer, a design consultant who also does some photography, an IT engineer who dabbles with photography and two software guys who are following their passion to build a landscape photography business – we could not ask for more variety in a first meeting! We also got some very specific ideas on new products and initiatives we could undertake and discussion is already underway to test them out.

This was better than we had expected and we hope to do more of these. Please stay tuned for announcements for future tweetups. Also, if anyone wants to hold a photography related tweetup, please let us know, we’d be happy to play host.

Notes from the photographers who attended

@kshitiz writes:

“One of the amazing things about being in Bangalore, is that you are always surrounded by some amazing people, who are so passionate about what they do. Dhiraj and Peeyush are two such folks!

I have been a loyal Canvera customer since quite some time now, and this tweetup organized by Dhiraj and team, was something that I could not miss, especially when the a thing on the agenda was to show around the Canvera’s production facility. As a photographer, it is very simple to just see the final output in the form of a photo book. But it has always fascinated me to know the level of complexity that one goes through to get a book that is more like a piece of art in itself. The awesome books that come out are a treasure of memories and a testimony to that is that all my clients who have received the Canvera photobooks have loved it!

Needless to say, all were amazed at the amazing facility in terms of the equipments that are being at par with the best in the world, the quality of paper and the processes in place.

What impressed me most was the attention to detail that is paid at every step. Whether its in the consistency across printers or the lamination of the pages or the cutting of paper, to ensuring privacy of the customers and the photographers.

It may sound easy, but when you get to know that all these have to be done in a maximum turnaround time of 48 hours, you are left amazed! Moreover the challenges that they face by doing a business in a country like India, is something you have to appreciate the founders for and taking up the challenge.

A trip like this had my respect level for the founders and the people involved in the smooth running of Canvera, go many levels high! When your belief in something becomes stronger, there is nothing but a world class product and service that you can expect, and I have been thankful that Canvera is able to provide that so far!”

@PramodViswanath writes:

” It was a small tweet that I happen to notice on a Monday morning by one of the relatively new photo printing start up – Canvera, Bangalore. Little did I realise that My response to the tweet would actually make my week! It has been a week since that small tweet association happened and I am still reminiscing on some interesting talks we have had on #photography.

When I looked at Canvera’s blog, I noticed that as part of tweet up, Dhiraj (CEO & Co-Founder), Peeyush (CTO & Co-Founder) & Kultar (VP Manufacturing) would be hosting it for us. Without thinking twice, I just shot them a mail and registered myself confirming my participation.

Little did I know that I would be meeting 3 other fantastic human beings Kshitiz Anand, Vijay Raj and Vivek ! It was 3 hour long discussions and boy-o-boy one of the best tweetups I have ever had. We almost skimmed through various things about our passion called photography.

What struck me the most was, down to earth attitudes of young entrepreneurs – Dhiraj and Peeyush.  In last 3-4 years, the amount of sacrifices that might have gone behind the scenes for them is inexplicable. The entire workflow at Canvera facility is simply mind blowing and super optimised. I am glad I went for this tweet up and got an opportunity to meet the gentlemen in person.

Icing on the cake was when Dhiraj came down to thank us for coming down for the tweet up. Very warm and heartening experience it was! “

@drvivekm writes:

At the recent tweet-up at the Canvera’s office I was both shocked and surprised having been given a glimpse into the facility of what I thought was just an obscure website catering primarily to wedding photographers. I thought they wouldn’t really be interested in photographers who dabble with documentary and editorial work, a small minority with inflated egos who fuss endlessly over the quality of print. I decided to see what it was all about.

Canvera’s three floor facility is impressive with over 250 staff that seemed really busy. Dhiraj and Peeyush, the co-founders told us that the lion’s share of their business is driven by the wedding photography market – a reflection of the photography market of India. They expressed a keen interest in all types of photography and catering to the needs of all genres.

Canvera can surely be of help to pro photographers to make portfolios or small edition books. I saw a few of their books, both wedding and non-wedding and there surely is a possibility of making that beautiful crafted, square format, tirelessly designed book that photographers would be thrilled to share with their peers, clients and even put up for sale.

I have been told that the Canvera’s design team is extremely photographer friendly. Designers are encouraged to interact directly, understanding the photographer’s design preferences and enabling them to build a bond for future collaborations.

Peeyush’s Vivyo demo was insightful. Once the loose ends are taken care of, we can claim to have a Photoshelter or a Livebooks right here. At a much lesser cost. With e-commerce and social media built in seamlessly, Vivyo is sure to attract photographers who want to have and maintain a website all by themselves. I am hoping that the full fledged version of Vivyo will be launched soon so that I can jump on to it too.

Tweetup at Canvera’s Bangalore office

Posted on: | November 21, 2011 | Posted by: Dhiraj | View Comments

We’d like to informally meet with photographers for two reasons:

1. Educate a little about Canvera: Our history, values, background of the people etc. We’ll also give a behind-the-scenes look on how we operate – this will include a tour of our production facility and our design center
2. We’d like to hear from photographers about their challenges and issues

Who should come: Photographers interested to learn about  Canvera and engage with us about the industry

Where: Canvera HO (which includes our production facility and design center)  in HSR Layout, Bangalore (see map)

How many: We’d like to keep this to 5-7 photographers so we can give good attention to everyone

How to get invited: please send an email to care@canvera.com and we will confirm the first 5-7 photographers who write to us.

When: <It will be sometime latter half of this week and we will confirm the time/day to photographers we invite>

Who all will attend from Canvera: Dhiraj (CEO & Co-Founder), Peeyush (CTO & Co-Founder) & Kultar (VP Manufacturing)

Building a Brand by Building Trust

Posted on: | July 11, 2011 | Posted by: Dhiraj | View Comments

This post first appeared on the VCCircle blog here

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One of the biggest challenges faced by any startup in any part of the world is earning customer trust at scale. Different economies offer different types of challenges; some of the challenges can be overcome by good execution, good timing and intelligent allocation of capital but some are out of the control of individual companies and depend more on the operating environment. Having lived most of adult life in the US (majority of it at startups in SV) and now running Canvera in India I can see how the operating environment in India makes it difficult for consumers & channels to trust up-and-coming brands.

Let me illustrate this with the example of the US mail order business transitioning to e-commerce. The Sears Catalog was first introduced in the US in 1888. From then to, say, 1995 when the internet started taking off, the entire eco-system of the mail order catalog business was built out. This included laws such as mail order fraud, privacy protection; it included development of a credit card payment network and consumer friendly business practices such as fraud protection; it included insurance products that would protect consumers and businesses; and it also included nearly all businesses adopting good practices to build trust in the mind of the consumer. With over a hundred years of “investments” it is safe to say that by 1995 calling a toll free number on a catalog and giving your credit card and contact details to an unknown person was a no-brainer transaction for nearly all consumers in the US. In spite of that, with the advent of e-commerce nearly every payment company – Visa, MasterCard, Amex – spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the late 90s telling consumers that it was OK to type a credit card number online offering $0 liability for online fraud. I remember my very first online transaction in 1996 when I was carefully looking if the connection was over SSL or not and then checking with the credit card company to make sure the right amount was charged. Whatever you might say of the late 90s tech bubble it definitely brought the whole category to the forefront and helped create consumer awareness and trust. That was a lot of hard work and a ton of investments (in the billions of dollars) built on a strong foundation of the mail order business that allowed e-commerce as a category to achieve reasonable scale.

India is an emerging economy and that level of maturity of good enforceable laws and business practices does not exist. My wife once unsuccessfully tried to take money out from the ATM of a well known bank but the amount was deducted from our account. When we reported the issue, we were told that it will take 6 months to correct it! I started sharing this story with friends and was surprised that nearly 50% said that they had faced some such issue which took a lot of time to correct. This average level of poor experience with national banks is bad for everyone, it makes the consumer gun-shy. If a national bank cannot be trusted, what chance does a small company have? It does not matter if one company follows good practices, everyone in the category must do the same. I am today spammed by SMS messages and emails from many companies that I can’t turn off even though I am on DND/DNC and have unsubscribed to the emails. And neither can I find a way to get the companies fined. This is bad for everyone in the eco-system. In the race to get “traction” when startups don’t behave well it hurts everyone.

Necessity is the mother of all inventions
While on one hand this sometimes feels like an insurmountable problem, it is also at the heart of the biggest opportunities that exist in India today: across categories we are witnessing the transition from unorganized fragmented businesses to national level brands that consumers can trust. As opportunity costs for individuals rise, more and more consumers will rely on brands to save them time and hassle. A bank that is able to quickly resolve issues in a friendly manner will get repeat and referral business because the consumer would much rather spend their time increasing their earning potential. A company which even without the stick of enforceable laws respects privacy of a consumer will find a much more willing audience to their marketing activities. So what specific actions can a startup do to earn this trust and build a brand?

Get the basics right
In my opinion it is really back to basics execution: focus on people, culture and processes. No secret sauce, no magic potions, just a simple nose to the grind stone acute focus on the building blocks. Long before a startup thinks about mass market advertising (appropriate at the right stage), long before it looks to celebrity endorsements, it must first get the basics right.

People: The founders and management need to spend an inordinate amount of time in the early days in hiring carefully and taking a “go slow to go fast” approach. In India companies become people heavy very fast and this is therefore even more critical to be done very early in the life of the company. There is no way to tell what is “analysis paralysis” during the hiring process and what is done in haste, it all depends on the situation, but a good hire is worth their weight in gold. This is Business 101 and yet very tough to do day in and day out.

Values based culture: It is also critical to communicate values constantly especially in the 1st year of the company. All early employees must be ambassadors of these values. Management must openly discuss the dilemmas the company faces in the market and why certain behaviors are OK and others not. The market will always tempt the company to take shortcuts and the management must make it OK for employees to resist, even at the cost of growth. All decisions must reflect these values; in fact unless management starts feeling that the company is behaving true to these values, there is no point in even putting up on rah-rah posters. Let the posters be a result of values becoming part of the DNA of the company. Let everyone feel them first.

Processes: If people are the sinews of a company, processes are its behavior. Management must be deeply involved to build each business process so that interactions by all constituencies (customers, channels, partners, suppliers) reflects the culture of the organization. A brand is not a marketing message, a brand is what people feel when they interact with the company. The marketing message is merely the ribbon on the package.

None of this is easy: Companies tend to get big quickly so maintaining hiring quality all through is a challenge; instilling the company culture to a larger group is very complex; and given operational challenges in India building good business processes that reflect the culture is that much harder. But in my opinion there is no other way. While none of these requirements are unique to India and probably should be followed by all companies world over, this is a lot more critical for a startup in India to get right early. Done correctly, in the long term this will most certainly be a competitive weapon.

And thus Vivyo was born

Posted on: | July 1, 2011 | Posted by: Peeyush | View Comments

Special pictures deserve a special place. We at Canvera constantly think about ways to improve the way special pictures are presented. Our effort on this front hopefully shows in our printed products. Starting from the quality of the book itself, to the packaging and the supporting services, we try and make the entire experience something that will please our clients.

While printed products have that timeless charm and romance, these days its also very important to be able to share the pictures or videos online. After all, printed products are physical and there is a limit to physical things being shared and interacted with! Today there are various options for online sharing (Facebook, Flickr, Picasa etc.). Most of the casual pictures from your phone are usually shared on these ‘Social Networks’. But what about those special pictures? What about pictures from events that are very very important – a wedding, child’s first birthday, 25th wedding anniversary, honeymoon, a photography exhibition etc. etc. Some pictures from these events can be shared on Social Networks, but you would not want these memories to get lost in your social network timelines after a few months.

For the past two years, we have been researching on how to enable photographers to present their work online in a way their images deserve. After all, creating a personalized website is not easy. There are various elements involved – design, development, hosting, storage, security, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) etc. And if you are in the business of photography, throw in e-commerce. Setting up of online payment gateways is a huge barrier in itself. It does not stop there – today, people want to view pictures on their mobile phones, so your pictures should be seamlessly accessible on mobile devices. Tomorrow it will be the internet enabled TVs, and on and on.

It has been our endeavour to help photographers focus on what they do best – take stunning pictures – and leave the rest to us. Hence we decided to work on an online presentation, e-commerce and social platform for photographers.

Today, we are happy to present Vivyo – an online platform for photographers. Using Vivyo, photographers can create real photography websites within minutes. The look and feel of the website can be customized using a rich library of website themes available on Vivyo. It is completely integrated with social media. You can share pictures to Facebook & Twitter right from the website, and add pictures from Facebook, Flickr etc. to your website. Visitors to the websites can order personalized products, be it prints, posters, calendars, or other photo gifts.

For professional photographers, Vivyo provides a completely integrated e-commerce platform, supporting all credit cards and most net-banking options. It also allows photographers to collaborate with their clients by allowing image proofing and selection, and provides security through private websites and galleries.

We have currently launched Vivyo in a closed beta mode, and are working with few clients, whom we would like to thank for being part of the Beta Program. Vivyo is already being used by photographers for a variety of online photo applications like Weddings, Photo Exhibitions, School Events, Photographer Portfolios, etc. However, this is just the beginning. We are working to add some very interesting and exciting features in the coming months to make the Vivyo experience even better.

We have published a couple of demo websites where you can get a hands on feel of a Vivyo website. Feel free to play around and let us know what you think.

Photographer Portfolio Demo Website:  portfolio.canvera.com
Wedding Even Demo Website :  wedding.canvera.com

For more information, please visit vivyo.canvera.com or write to us at vivyo (at) canvera.com

Breath of fresh air with Lytro’s funding

Posted on: | June 22, 2011 | Posted by: Dhiraj | View Comments

Earlier today a $50M investment was announced in Lytro a company that wants to fundamentally change how pictures are taken. Click here for the announcement on TechCrunch. The TechCrunch article captures my cynicism with the recent spate of VC investments worldwide when it says “This is also the company for anyone who thinks Silicon Valley has fallen into a rut of innovation-less posing. And it’s the company for anyone who complains that the Valley is more about media and marketing than brass-knuckles, hardcore technology”. Amen! It truly is great to see a hardcore technology investment and some big bets to change the landscape.

I have had one chance to look at Lytro at a K9 gathering in Silicon Valley when it was called Refocus Imaging, but at the time the grander vision which is now laid out was not clear. Apart from that I have read what ever is available on the web and find the company extremely fascinating. And given that this is in Photography/Imaging I am even more excited. Here are some initial reactions (I will be wrong about the predictions, but no harm in putting a stake in the ground):

1. Cost is key. No one can tell today if Lytro is going to be successful. It has its work cut out for itself. There have been past examples of companies that have tried to fundamentally change image capture and they have not worked out as planned. The example that first comes to mind is Foveon. You can read more about it on their website but fundamentally it built technology for capturing RGB in three different sensors unlike most sensors today which capture the three colors on a single Bayer filter sensor. I have seen images from the Foveon sensors and there is no question that they are much higher quality, but the company struggled to find camera manufacturers who’d be willing to pay the extra premium and eventually Sigma incorporated them in their cameras and bought them out in 2008
2. Content is king. A badly taken image of someone very important is beautiful in the eyes of the beholder. Just from that measure the incremental cost of the benefit that Foveon was willing to provide was not worth it.
3. Complexity is bad for scale. With the large amount of data that is captured by the Lytro system, intuitively it doesn’t feel like the processing required can be done cost effectively on a capture device and it will require offline post-processing in the foreseeable future. George Eastman’s genius was the simple message “you press the button, we do the rest”. That simplicity is critical for scale and from the very little information I can gather (I am going to try and find out more), it feels like a major issue for Lytro in the consumer/professional markets (hopefully I am wrong). Visible light falls in the frequency range of approx 400-700nm and typical RGB filters are 3 filters over this range giving us three data points. There are capture devices that capture the information in bands of 10nm for a total of 31 data points. But none of those have made it outside research labs due to the complexity and costs in processing that data. And Lytro captures the entire Light Field!

Regardless, I for one am rooting for the team at Lytro and I am looking forward to learning more. A big kudos to the investors for taking a very bold bet.

Good luck team Lytro!

Hidden costs of starting up a business in India

Posted on: | May 29, 2011 | Posted by: Dhiraj | View Comments

A version of this article first appeared on the VCCircle blog here

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It has now been 3+ years since Canvera got started and we have in this time grown to ~500 people across 8 offices. Needless to say this has been a phenomenal journey where we have serviced the needs of thousands of professional photographers (and by extension 100s of thousands of consumers) all over the country. In fact, there probably is no better time to start a business in India: growing domestic consumption, investment in infrastructure etc; there is just so much to be done for India to make the transition from an emerging economy to a developed econmy. I get asked a lot about some of our learnings through this time and in this post I am going to share a key one about costs of getting a startup off-the-ground in India.

When I look back at some things we got right and the mistakes we made, one very early decision stands out as being crucial. After our study of the Indian Photography landscape Peeyush and I concluded that we should either raise $1.5M in our first round of funding or not do the business. We came to this conclusion by modeling the operations of the business to get to the next meaningful milestone and realizing what all we’d have to build in order to get there. We were extremely lucky that Josh Bornstein of Footprint Ventures bought this argument (what were you thinking, Josh? ) and then Mohanjit Jolly of DFJ (and you too, sir!) followed suit. Our first round of funding, our seed round, ended up being a $2M round. Yes $2M – I don’t know of too many cases where this has happened. And boy was that critical for our present traction. Silicon Valley type early stage investing requires raising a little bit of capital, building prototypes, getting some early customers and then going for an institutional round.  There are a lot of infrastructure related issues that are implicitly taken for granted in developed markets to make this possible. But in my opinion there aren’t enough examples in an emerging market like India. I have come to realize how expensive India is for early stage investing for PRODUCT companies (I think slightly different rules apply to services companies).

Here is the punch line: What makes early stage investments expensive in India for product companies is the inability to buy products, services and infrastructure on a purely variable cost basis and at reliable quality levels in order to do micro-experiments in the development phase of the business. To visualize this difference between developed and emerging markets look at this graph (this is of course an oversimplification but good enough for the point I am trying to make):

What this says is that before you even get started you have to invest a lot in building out the company’s operating  eco-system. Let me illustrate this with some examples that we have seen at Canvera:

1. ELECTRICITY: Canvera has some very expensive high-end digital printers but in order to keep them running we had to buy one of the most expensive UPS units available in the world because the primary attractive feature of this UPS unit was that it “cleans up” the poor quality of electricity for these high end printers without which the electricity would damage the printers. In addition we had to put in place a DG backup as well. This is the fixed cost of electricity even before we got started.
2. CREDIT INFRASTRUCTURE & LAW ENFORCEMENT: Canvera has eight offices and for each of them we’ve had to make significant deposits with the landlord. The primary reason for doing this is that at a basic level a landlord can’t rely on either a credit system or law enforcement to enforce the contract in case of issues so s/he protects himself/herself upfront. This is capital locked up that could go into product development.
3. COLLECTIONS: With only 20-25M credit cards (and no growth in the numbers), India is still a primarily cash economy. But more than that consumers don’t as yet trust electronic payments. The net result for a company like Canvera is that we’ve had to develop our own collections network through a combination of on-the-ground sales, regional offices, relationships with banks & payment gateways, custom software development and custom processes for reconciling payments. It has now been 3 years (and counting) on this effort and while this has been critical for the growth of the company, we still don’t have the scale, cost and reliability of a payment gateway that an early stage company in developed economies can simply plug into (side note: Square has further lowered the entry barrier for small businesses in the US and is growing at a phenomenal rate). I view all this as capital and effort that did not go into core product R&D.
4. HIRING: In one of our largest groups in the company our average hiring ratio is 30:1! We work with a number of staffing companies but the poor quality of resume screening, mis-aligned interests, fraud in application forms etc forces us to hire a set of screeners who pre-qualify candidates and then we put them through vigorous time-consuming interviews. Once candidates join we put them through training and even after all that we end up letting go a number of people. This is all significant upfront cost, both in dollars and in opportunity, that I’d much rather not have to pay
5. ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE DEBT: In most cases banks in India are averse to giving debt/credit even for equipment financing where collateral is available. They typically require 3 years operating history & profitability. We were fortunate that most of the equipment we needed was from HP and we were able to get financing from HP Financial Services but relative to terms a company with venture funding can get for equipment financing in the US our terms were much worse: much higher down payments, very high interest rates. Of course it was better for us to take the financing than not but a lot of startups I know in India are forced to pay full price up front. That is a very poor use of capital.

There are many more such examples. On one hand there is no question about the long-term prospects of the Indian economy and the excitement in being part of the transition of the country from an emerging to a developed economy.  At the same time, I would encourage entrepreneurs (and investors) to carefully consider some of these issues when deciding a funding and execution strategy for their particular businesses. In my opinion there are many meaty problems to be solved in India, but a lot of them may need homegrown thinking. If you are an early stage entrepreneur facing this dilemma about the quantum of money you require early on to develop a business in India, give Josh/Mohanjit a call – they understand this issue very well.

Why I love my job – reason #4: DESIGN

Posted on: | May 18, 2011 | Posted by: Dhiraj | View Comments