Confirmed: Infibeam Acquires Picsquare.com

Bangalore based photo printing portal Picsquare.com has been acquired by online retail firm Infibeam.com. We’d received a tip-off regarding the same a week and a half ago, and though it had been denied then, Picsquare co-founder and CEO Manish Agarwal has now confirmed to MediaNama that the deal is done. Update: Picsquare, which has around 10 employees, will continue to work as a separate brand, and will share technology and offerings with Infibeam. Agarwal declined to comment in the details of the deal - whether there’s cash involved and the Picsquare founders have a lock-in period, or whether there’s stock involved, and they’re going to work with Infibeam.

Startup acquires startup
What, really, is Infibeam? According to an old release, Infibeam was launched as an automobile portal in 2007, by a software development firm of the same name. It featured car reviews, industry news, finance options, EMI calculator, used car listings and a car rental service. It then expanded its portfolio to include a mobile section, and followed up with segments on watches, fitness equipment section, Jewellery, Apparels, Books etc…it diversified. Photo Printing and the customised gift printing knowhow that Picsquare brings, will be another addition to the portfolio.

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Landmark Considering Online Books And Music Retail: Report

Landmark, the books and retail chain in which the Tata group owns 76 percent stake, intends to retail books and music online, reports Televisionpoint, quoting official sources.

If you visit Landmark’s site, it appears they’ve outsourced online sales and distribution to Sify - most of the links lead to Sify Shopping. If Landmark goes solo, that’ll be a significant loss for Sify, since books and music are two of the key products bought online.

Update: Landmark should remove its old site . It appears they’ve gone solo, and are retailing their own books. Thanks for pointing it out Gopal.

What’s interesting is that they’re planning to set up a music store, where users can buy single tracks after sampling online, and also enable users to pause and resume downloads. According to the source based report, the group will set up a separate online venture, and is in talks for online retail rights for music.

Now online retail of music is not new in India, but it’s hardly anything to write home about - it’s been attempted in the past by Soundbuzz (now owned by Motorola), MotoMusic (powered by Soundbuzz) and music label Saregama. I just checked, and Saregama’s site is currently down for maintenance, while their CD retail website - HamaraCD - doesn’t load. Who uses these sites anyway? The problem for most of the retailers is the piracy rampant online - does a user download the music, easily available at a consistent speed, from bittorrent, or a site like Saregama.

The other key issue is the pricing - songs are for around Rs. 12-15 each, and yet are DRM protected which means buyers can port them only to a limited number of devices (usually 1-3 devices). Why bother?

Related:
- OnMobile Global Inks Exclusive Mobile Music Deals With Around 40 South Indian Labels
- Motorola Launches MOTOMUSIC In India With MOTOROKR E8

Picsquare Receives Undisclosed Investment From Bhola Digital Lab

Bangalore based photo printing portal Picsquare has announced an investment from offline player Bhola Digital Lab. This is ironic, particularly since online photo printing services compete with traditional photo printing services; Picsquare has been using Bhola’s printing services, and apparently worked with DTDC for delivery. For Bhola Digital Lab, this is a strategic investment, giving them an online presense, and a means for customer acquisition. The quantum of the investment, or the stake acquired have not been mentioned. Picsquare had raised $75,000 from MChek CEO Sanjay Swami, Snapfish founder Shripati Acharya and Vijay Iyer, VP (Marketing) of Portal Systems.

No inputs in the company release about how PicSquare has been performing, though, just a mention of over 1.5 lakh users. That’s around 50,000 more than the number claimed by another photosharing upstart - MeraSnap, whose userbase was aquired earlier this year by HP owned Snapfish. We’ve contacted Picsquare for more info.

Other companies in this space include Printo (funding from Sequoia Capital and Seed Fund), iTasveer (has a deal with Windows Vista), KPCB and Sherpalo funded ZoomIn, Canvera (funding from Footprint Ventures, Mumbai Angels and DFJ) and others like eYaadein and PhotoMasti.

Future Bazaar Turnover At Rs. 62 Crores; Needs To Get Real On Savings, Reduce Delivery Time

Future Bazaar CEO Sankarson Banerjee tells Business Standard that the company is expecting turnover to treble from Rs. 62 crores to Rs. 182 crores - they’ll redesign, add regional brands and new products, and go offline. Going offline shouldn’t be an issue for the KPCB and Sherpalo backed company, which is owned by Kishore Biyani’s Future Group.

If you take a close look at the site, it mentions the statistics we’ve put up on the right - Page Views, (average) Savings per item, and average shipout time. So from the time an order is placed, it takes Future Bazaar 4.8 days to ship-out an item, i.e. to leave their warehouse and not the time it takes to deliver. Which means that if you ordered tomatoes*, the only thing you can use them for, is to take aim at the delivery guy.

While I’m not saying that 4-10 days is bad, remember that in urban India, you’re competing with retail stores that aren’t too far away from home/work, and some even deliver. Also, I have to question this notion of “savings”. Maybe this is a one-off example, but I bought a 500GB Seagate External HDD a month ago for around Rs. 5200 (with bill and warranty). Future Bazaar has a 160 GB Seagate HDD for Rs. 4999, a 250 GB HDD for Rs. 5750. So not really a saving, though they are comparing with the list price, which is considerably higher, and are offering a 56-58% discount. So I got a discount of around 75%, and can even have the product delivered to me within a few hours. Not much of a competition, eh? Anyway - a more realistic price here, though you can still get it cheaper offline.

Please note that I’m not trying to discredit Future Bazaar - only saying that if the status remains the same, online retail stores will be limited to customers who either don’t know better, or are not in the main cities. Or for some obscure book that the Oxford Bookstore doesn’t stock. Not really for daily purchases, is it?

There is a tendency to underestimate the importance of retail in the online business - the ease of purchasing goods online, the quality of the goods delivered and the time taken for delivery and the ease of dispute resolution will make consumers more comfortable with spending money online. This in turn will help other businesses make money - the online travel business deserves credit for converting viewers into buyers; Retail has its own part to play.

*- Thankfully for the delivery guy, Future Bazaar doesn’t retail tomatoes and other perishables.

Related: Indiatimes Picks Up 50 Percent Stake In Online Books Marketplace A1Books; A Private Treaties Deal