Photodilse – What’s it about?
Look around and you will find every second person around are into photography, and
most of them indeed are amazing. However, with so many photographers around there are not many platforms where they get an opportunity to showcase their talent except for social networking sites. But with Photodilse, the amateur photographers get an opportunity to showcase their clicks and also improve their skills.
Photodilse is not a mere website but a community. A community where a German photographer is mentoring and guiding a Delhi based amateur artist and an artist from Israel is sharing his work and gaining fans and followers from India and Indonesia. The artists are not just mere photographers they serve as guides and mentors for millions of our viewers.
Check out the website here.
The Founders
Photodilse is owned and managed by two co-founders- Sudeep G. Samanta and Shailesh Lad, both Mumbaikars by birth and spirit. Sudeep and Shailesh go back a long way, from being childhood friends to having pursued their postgraduate degrees from the M.S. University of Baroda and now co-owners of a startup. The owners both have worked in unison for several assignments including organizing events at Wilson College where they were enrolled for a Bachelors’s degree to developing commercial websites but Photodilse has certainly been the most special thing for them so far.
The idea and inspiration behind Photodilse
Photodilse started out as a casual thought during a conversation in the college canteen. Both of the founders saw great potential in the idea and received a positive response from their other photographer friends who agreed to contribute with their photographs. However, the agreement didn’t last long and most of them bailed out at the last moment. Having had to start from scratch again, Photodilse finally went live.
Challenges faced by the founders
For Shailesh and Sudeep, the major challenge was finding the correct methodology to implement their idea. As both of them belonged to the field of life sciences, coding and developing a website wasn’t really their forte, The duo began with learning and understanding the way things work “online”.
Once that was done, the second problem was convincing the photographers, after all, no one would entertain twenty years old boys asking for interviews let alone the photographs.
Finally, since the duo were only bootstrapping, marketing and spreading the word was the toughest part, to make themselves visible in the vast milieu of products that already existed.
Partnerships with elite photographers
During the interview with TimesNext, when asked about their partnerships, the duo stated:
Our partners and collaborators are the talented photo artists that we have featured,
pioneers and world renowned in their respective fields.
Some of the elite photographers on Photodilse are Mr. Sudhir Shivram, Ms. Marina Cano, Ms. Rathika Ramasamy, Mr. Dharma Chandru, Mr. Shaaz Jung, Mr. Nimit Nigam, Mr. Shikhei Goh, Mr. Vicky Roy, Ms. Elena Kallis, Mr. Osman Ghani, Ms. Sapna Reddy, Mr. Richard Bernabe, Mr. Vinod Krishnan, and others.
The founders stated that their experience of interacting with each one of these photographers was fantastic in different ways. Their enthusiastic inputs on multiple occasions helped them improvise the product.
The first milestone for Photodilse
The first milestone for the startup was achieved much before the world knew about the website. It was amassing all the information, from selecting artists to be featured to compiling custom interview questions and finally presenting the art in a manner that stands out from everyone else.
Being done that, the second milestone was a crash!
Yes, a crash! During one of their monthly editions, the response so huge that their webserver was humbled leading to numerous calls/texts and emails that really showed them the worth of the product that they had created.
The current growth status
Photodilse since its inception has been able to publish photographs of more than 100 photo artists from all over the globe. Photoartists’ club include pieces from amateurs to those who are renowned all over the world for their work. Photodilse has amassed over 5,000 photographs, 100,000 visitors, and 750,000 page views since its inception. The Photodilse community consists of Photoartists from several parts of the world-spanning around 35+ countries.
Photodilse – The Vision
The founders aim to transform Photodilse into a stock photo website in the years to come. The plan is to target brands like Canon, Nikon, and related companies for advertisement.
An e-magazine is also on the pipeline that will cater specifically to photographers. They aim to make revenues from the advertisements in the magazine as well as by conducting photography events.
