The Pandemic in Pictures: Picxy gives you the Indian images
Hyderabad/IBNS: A time like nobody living today can remember, the coronavirus pandemic has forced the whole world to stay put under lockdown for months on end. Interestingly, this has also led to a huge surge of creation and consumption of content online. Churning out reams of writing is easy enough at this time, but how do you support it with photographs? A relatively young stock photos company, Picxy, may have the answer.
Picxy was founded by Jitendra Emmani, Vamsi Krishna and Satish Madala in 2018 inHyderabad. It now has teams in Bengaluru, Delhi, and Hyderabad. Jitendra Emmani, whose first job was with Amazon, describes himself as being really passionate about content, which has also taken up much of his career so far.
“One of the things that was always missing for us was quickly finding the right image for the content we write,” he said, “Turning out copy could take 20 minutes, but finding an image for which you don’t violate copyright could take 7 hours. This is so for India, specifically.”
While companies like Shutterstock and Getty Images have done a tremendous job of documenting life in the US and Europe in images there is no equivalent for India and one has to choose from the relatively few available on companies focused on other parts of the world.
With Picxy, the founders decided to fill that gap. Picxy was among the 10 startups that successfully completed the 13-week mentorship driven acceleration program of Techstars Bangalore and got an investment of $120,000. Techstars earlier got angel investment of $130K from First Cheque, Jio Haptik CEO Aakrit Vaish, Byju's CPO Ranjith Radhakrishnan, and others.
Photographs from over 6,500 professional photographers, and regular photo enthusiasts and smart phone users from across India and South Asia have resulted in a highly contextual database of half a million images so far.
Uploading a photograph to Picxy takes a matter of minutes after which they are reviewed for quality and included. When sold, the photographer or contributor earns a sum of money. A number of plans exist of those who want to use the platform, including one-off purchase options.
At the onset of the pandemic, Picxy began to include COVID-19 related images thatare free for use. Indian woman wearing a mask and saying Namaste, a childsitting obediently in a chalk circle on the floor while he is served some food,a Disaster Response Force staffer with full body suit spraying disinfectant solution across Hyderabad, Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal distributing face mask to a tea garden workers during lockdown, Doctors coming out of Gandhi Hospital as they wear full body suit and face masks at Covid19 hospital -- there are hundreds of photographs that would fit right in with so much of the virus-related contentbeing created at the moment.
About Techstars
Techstars is the global platform for investment and innovation. Techstars founders connect with other entrepreneurs, experts, mentors, alumni, investors, community leaders, and corporations to grow their companies. Techstars operates three divisions: Techstars Mentorship-Driven Accelerator Programs, Techstars Corporate Innovation Partnerships and Techstars Communities. Techstars accelerator portfolio includes more than 2,100 companies with a market cap of more than $26 Billion.
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