Imagery portal of world’s largest exclusive Indian images launched

Imagery portal of world’s largest exclusive Indian images launched
New Delhi | April 02, 2006 12:39:53 PM IST

For the highly competitive, image-driven ad and media industry where meeting the deadline is sacrosanct and quality is key to survival, it promises an instant gratification.

Among the plethora of portals, this web site claims its uniqueness to peddling exclusively Indian images, which has the potential to trigger a new wave in the stock photography industry in the country, having a market potential of Rs 30,000 crore annually.

The e-commerce web site -- imagesbazaar.com -- is the world’s largest collection of over 5.5 lakh exclusive Indian images. It provides an online access to extremely high-resolution Indian images and there is no need to seek permission from the models for commercial or editorial usage of an image.

"Worldwide, there are hundreds of stock photography web sites like gettyimages.com, corbis.com, jupiterimages.com and fotostock.com. Although the quality of images available on these portals is extremely good but none of them has images relevant in Indian context with Indian faces. Imagesbazaar.com has been launched to fulfil this immense need," says Sandeep Maheshwari, India’s leading photographer said,whose out of the box thinking has earned him a place in the Limca Book of Records.

"Our mission is to provide creative professionals with an imperative resource for searching, purchasing, and downloading innovative stock images," he said, adding that it is both time-saving and cost-effective as one can promptly purchase relevant pictures by spending just a fraction of the cost, which is incurred to materialise a shoot A fully owned subsidiary of Mash Audio Visuals Pvt Ltd, the world’s only ISO 9001:2000 certified modelling agency, the web site is a collective venture of over 50 talented and passionate photographers, led by Mr Maheshwari, who has created a world record in professional photography by organising a 10-hour, 46-minute photo session of 122 models by clicking their 10,044 different fashion shots.

Mr Maheshwari, CEO of Mash Audio Visuals, says each image has been shot specifically for the web site and these cannot be located elsewhere. Also, the images come with choice to buy exclusive rights or non-exclusive rights.

An author of best-selling "21st Century Belongs to Network Marketing", he said the idea was not "ours" as it was given by ad agencies. "In the first 17 days of its launch on February 1, the web site recorded 6.3 lakh hits, and we are enthused by the response." Pointing out that photography is an integral part of any company’s product or brand image, Mr Maheshwari said in the traditional assignment, a photographer is hired to illustrate an idea or capture some event. "There is a creative fee to pay, which can be in thousands per day, and there are expenses related to location, travel, assistants, film and processing, models, make-up artists. The cost can be downright prohibitive and yet there is no guarantee that it will come out as it was intended." But on imagesbazaar.com, the user can select and buy any picture without paying for the cost of the entire shoot. There are various categories such as Indian lifestyle, beauty, business, celebrations, marriage, culture, sports, education, festival, fashion, food, health and each category has thousands of pictures About the portal’s USP, he says the biggest advantage is clients get what they want. "Our USP is unmatched quality of photographs shot by Canon US Mark Two, the best in the business. We can reduce the cost and time of an ad agency by 90 per cent. The cost of a photo varies between Rs 3000 and Rs 6000. In fact, there could be a problem of plenty and this is our benchmark for the clientele’s satisfaction.’’ Once someone buys exclusive rights, that image is removed from the web site. Exclusive rights can cost between Rs 18,000 and Rs 48,000 per picture while non-exclusive rights vary between Rs 3000 and Rs 6000.

"In true sense, this is an imagery portal about the Indians, by the Indians, for the world," he said.

With the economy booming, advertising revenues hitting an upward curve -- Indian advertising revenue is projected to reach Rs 14,000 crore this year and lesser turnaround time demanded by clients, the factors are heavily loaded in favour of stock photography, he argues.

Once the exclusive domain of high-priced advertising agencies, stock photography is becoming popular with creative professionals, thanks to growing online collection, price competition, improved search techniques and immediate availability.

UNI/SKS SC RS1136

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