Moments that matter

"PictoSo is designed for the millennial generation, those who are increasingly living their lives on their mobile,” remarked Lord Karan Bilimoria of Chelsea who along with his cousin and business partner Rashid Bilimoria and app developer Philipp Reisinger launched an instant photo-sharing app for IOS on October 6, 2015 to coincide with the Freshers’ Week at Cambridge University. Being free to download from the iTunes app store or from www.pictoso.com, it enables groups of users to instantly create shared albums of photos and 10-second videos.
Having always been "keen on photography from the time I was a student and always bought the latest camera,” Karan can appreciate that images stored in a cloud on PictoSo servers can be shared at high resolution without taking up extra space on mobile handsets. Not only can users create albums of their favorite photos for easy and instant access, they can additionally share via social media, email, SMS and messenger the pictures they have edited with filters, effects and stickers, and annotated with captions.

"Among all the photo sharing apps available to download, PictoSo is unique,” stresses tech entrepreneur Rashid, founder of Zyfin and co-founder of Boston Analytics. "We have built it with a genuine need in mind — families and friends looking for a simple, fun and instant way to share the moments that matter with the people that matter. Whether it’s a gig, a party, a sporting event or a great occasion like a wedding or graduation ceremony, PictoSo…users can share life’s moments forever, answering everyone’s picture sharing needs,” he adds.
The app has been designed to have "the greatest functionality and an intuitive interface so that it can be used by people of all ages, from eight to 80. We want the whole family to be able to get involved, so simplicity and ease of use were essential… What is most remarkable about the app is how instantly it works. You upload a photograph and it immediately appears on a shared album on everyone else’s phones within the group,” remarked chief technology officer Reisinger who is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in the US.
When Parsiana enquired how they would handle competition, Karan stated in his email response, "There is nothing out there on the market which has all the functions PictoSo provides in an easy to use and convenient manner. With Instagram and Facebook, the photos are shared publicly where lots of people see them. On Snapchat the photo disappears and WhatsApp is essentially about messaging, not photography. PictoSo combines all the elements of these platforms into something that is better.” To make it competitive the app will soon have iPad capability as also an Android version.
From the time PictoSo was launched in Cambridge, in one of the world’s leading tech clusters, "and getting the reactions face to face from students…the response has been very positive. You could see the way that people instantly liked it and wanted to use it. Since then we have had hundreds of downloads,” pointed out Karan. The media campaign for the launch was entrusted to Seven Hills to secure widespread coverage in the UK national, regional and business media.
Expecting one trillion photos to be uploaded to the internet this year Karan commented, "We are witnessing the convergence of a number of trends: smartphone usage rising significantly, broadband access and speed expanding rapidly; and the cost of data storage and digital tools falling.” He further observed that while smartphone users were in the minority in 2012, today they represent more than two-thirds of users in the UK. According to their research "there are 130 million smartphones in India against one billion mobile phones. As costs go down and smartphone usage surges, India becomes a gigantic market for the venture.”
To justify his foray into the technology sector after building Cobra Beer — a global drinks brand which is currently stocked in 98.6 % of the UK’s curry restaurants and thousands of supermarkets and pubs across the UK — Karan conveyed, "It is important to work with the right people when starting a business. Starting Cobra Beer with a partner was very important because we had complementary skills and supported each other through those early days which were really tough – to the extent that we lived and worked all hours, in the same place, giving it everything to get it going.”