Bangalore-based online photography company Canvera.com has roped in Bala Parthasarathy, one of the co-founders of Snapfish, as an advisor. Parthasarathy co-founded Snapfish alongwith Rajil Kapoor, Suneet Wadhwa and Shripati Acharya in 1999 and was with the company through its acquisition by District Photo and an eventual sale to Hewlett- Packard in 2006.
Currently, Bala is Partner at AngelPrime, a start-up incubator based in Bangalore.
“I saw in Canvera a highly disruptive and extremely unique vision for the photography market and I am really excited to become a part of a very innovative company in this space,” Bala said in an official press release.
Canvera, launched in 2008 as a web-enabled photobook company, forayed into e-commerce in March last year providing hosted e-commerce solutions to photographers, allowing them to market themselves better and monetize their work through printed products, online solutions and stock photography.
The company, co-founded by Dhiraj Kacker and Peeyush Rai, has financial backing from Footprint Ventures, DFJ and Mumbai Angels.
“We are extremely excited to welcome Bala to Canvera’s board. As a hands-on manager at Snapfish and now an investor, Bala brings a global perspective to this rapidly changing industry which will be invaluable to us,” said Kacker.
In addition to Bala, Canvera’s board includes Peter Knaack who was VP Operations at Shutterfly– a direct competitor to Snapfish in the US market. Kacker too was an R&D engineer at Shutterfly having worked there from 2000 to 2004.