Bangalore, Feb 15^th 2012:
Canvera.com, India’s leading online photography company, today announced that Bala Parthasarathy, one of the Co-Founders of Snapfish, has joined Canvera’s board as an advisor. Bala founded Snapfish in 1999 and was with the company through its acquisition by District Photo and an eventual sale to Hewlett-Packard. Bala was also General Manager & MD of Snapfish International where he led the growth of Snapfish to one of the largest online photo sites in the world with 100M+ users in over 20 countries. Bala is presently Partner at AngelPrime a startup incubator based in Bangalore. Speaking about joining Canvera’s board Bala said, “I saw in Canvera a highly disruptive and extremely unique vision for the photography market and I am really excited to become a part of a very innovative company in this space.” Dr. Dhiraj Kacker, CEO of Canvera, said, “We are extremely excited to welcome Bala to Canvera’s board. As a hands-on manager at Snapfish and now an investor, Bala brings a global perspective to this rapidly changing industry which will be invaluable to us.” In addition to Bala, Canvera’s board also has Peter Knaack who was VP Operations at Shutterfly (NASDAQ:SFLY) - a direct competitor to Snapfish in the US market. Dhiraj too was an early R&D engineer at Shutterfly having worked there from 2000 to 2004. “With the addition of Bala, we now have perspectives from two of the most admired companies in this space which I am sure will hold Canvera in very good stead”, said Dhiraj.

About Bala Parthasarathy:
Bala is presently partner at AngelPrime a startup incubator based out of Bangalore. Prior to starting AngelPrime Bala worked with Mr. Nandan Nilekani on UIDAI project where he played a seminal role in defining the application strategy and developer ecosystem for the project. Prior to that Bala founded Snapfish in 1999 and was with the company through 2010 including its acquisition by HP in 2005. Bala was General Manager & MD for Snapfish International where he lead the opening of Snapfish in more than 20 countries in Europe and Asia Pacific. Prior to Snapfish, Bala co-founded Wyatt River Software, which was acquired by what is now SafeNet and started his career as one of the early engineers who built Digital Link, which went public in 1993. In 2006, he was recognized by University of California - Santa Cruz with its highest honor for alumni as a “Distinguished Alumnus”. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.