The Hindu Business Line : Indian ingenuity fuels HP’s Print 2.0 thrust

The innovator:Mr Bala Parthasarathy, Vice-President of Digital Imaging, HP, and co-developer of the online photo resource, Snapfish, announcing India plans in Singapore on Tuesday. —

Anand Parthasarathy

Singapore, Sept. 11 An online consumer photo storage and print service — a key element of global printer-leader Hewlett Packard’s newly announced Web-enabled thrust — has a strong India connection: Snapfish, its hugely successful, Internet-based photo resource where registered users can store their family albums — and have them printed and delivered when required — is the brainchild of Indian Institute of Technology alumnus, Bala Parthasarathy who went on to co-found a US-based company of the same name in 2000.

By the time HP acquired the start-up in 2005, Snapfish had acquired 13 million customers who liked the way the free resource allowed them not just to put their pictures on line – but also to have them printed almost overnight when ever they needed prints.

This combo of secure storage and painless printing has seen the membership grow to 40 million today – using 4 peta bytes or 4 million gigabytes of storage, Mr Parthasarathy Business Line, on the sidelines of HP’s annual technology showcase here on Tuesday. Now the Vice-President of the printer major’s Digital Imaging division, he added that Snapfish would soon be offered in an Indian edition — the planned launch is late 2007. While Indian members can already enjoy the online storage and album sharing features, HP is currently establishing links with printer players in as many Indian cities as possible before the ‘desi’ launch. “We will also Indianise much of the content like greeting card tools,” Mr Parthasarathy added.

Snapfish is one of the crucial ways HP is reinventing itself for what is being called Web 2.0 — the newly emerging ‘Net-enabled’ consumer era. Its own realisation is being called Print 2.0 – a mix of wireless printing, touch-based access technologies, kiosk-based printer services, and ‘smart’ solutions for printing content from the Web.

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