HP to buy Snapfish for online photo printing

HYDERABAD: San Francisco-based Snapfish has announced that HP has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Snapfish, an online photo service. As per estimates, the deal would be closed in around $300 million to $400 million within the next 30 days.






"Snapfish's expertise in online photo services coupled with HP's worldwide customer reach will rapidly enhance HP's ability to capitalize on the growing market for online photo printing," said Snapfish CTO, Bala Parthasarathy. Snapfish allows consumers to share, store and print their photos online. Started in 1999 by four Indian entrepreneurs, the online photo service has more than 13 million members and is adding nearly 5,00,000 members per month.





Citing digital camera sales as one of the fastest growing commodities in consumer electronics sales, Parthasarathy said, "As per IDC estimates, digital photography market would be around $27 billion by 2008 and the online photo finishing market share is expected to be around $5.5 billion."





On the other hand, Hyderabad-based ValueLabs that has been providing software development, QA and customer support service for Snapfish for more than six years now is optimistic about the consequences of the acquisition. Addressing the media, ValueLabs CEO Arjun Rao said, "We were an integral part of the Snapfish team and the company closely worked with us in defining the road map for future product releases too. There will be significant growth in the upcoming years in projects and technical complexity of projects."





He further added that nearly 15 percent of ValueLabs' revenue comes from Snapfish and the company is anticipating ten-fold growth in this in the next few years. Talking about whether the company is expecting any business opportunities from HP besides Snapfish, Rao said, "It only becomes automatic. For an online photo service like Snapfish, we have been providing effective service and our expertise in handling mission critical application is quite evident. We have some HP officials visiting our office in the next couple of months. Although, we haven't budgeted any figures to be achieved from HP besides Snapfish, we foresee to take up some activity with them."