Canvera wins Asia Pacific and Japan Award

Beijing, June 11 (ANI/Business Wire India): Canvera. com, India's fastest growing online digital photography company, was given the Best Photobook prize for the second year in a row at the recently concluded Asia-Pacific and Japan HP Digital Print Award 2009 in Beijing, China.

The photobook category attracted more than 50 entries from the APJ region.

"Winning the award the first time was testament to the expertise Canvera brought to the table. Winning it two years in a row for a company that is less than two years old, has now truly established Canvera as one of the leaders in the APJ region," said Steve Donegal, Director and Business Manager, HP Indigo Division, Asia Pacific and Japan.

"The competition this year was fierce and Canvera won the award because of the overall presentation and attention to detail which included the photographic print quality, the binding and the packaging," added Donegal.

The award ceremony was held at HP Infotrends Customer Conference in the Chinese capital. Dr. Dhiraj Kacker, CEO of Canvera, received the award on behalf of the company. "The award is not only proof of the hard work put in by the entire Canvera team, but also of the quality feedback we regularly get from our very loyal customer base. We are delighted to have received the award and hope to continue to exceed the expectations of our customers."

Headquartered out of Bangalore, Canvera introduced its products to the market in July of 2008 and in 10 short months has already serviced needs of professional photographers in more than 125 cities across the country.

The photographers use the coffee-table books for a whole range of activities - from weddings to birthday parties to corporate shoots and model portfolios. Canvera has regional offices in Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi and Hyderabad with Kolkata, Mumbai and Cochin coming up shortly.

Started in late 2007, Canvera has started setting new standards for the photography industry by being the first branded player in what has so far been a highly fragmented market.

As a branded player Canvera stands behind the quality of its products and has also therefore implicitly made a commitment to ongoing innovation.

"With the growth in domestic consumption and an ever improving expectation of product and service quality by the average consumer, we see a rapid a growth in the photography industry and branded players that give consumers peace of mind will be leading the charge," said Kacker.

Canvera was founded by Dr. Dhiraj Kacker (CEO) and Peeyush Rai (CTO) who have previously worked at numerous successful startups in Silicon Valley.

Dhiraj was an early employee at Shutterfly where he built their workflow automation and imaging technologies. Dhiraj has a PhD in EE from Purdue University where his research was sponsored by HP's Imaging and Printing Group.

Peeyush is a software industry veteran having worked for both large companies such as Oracle and a number of software startups out of Silicon Valley. Canvera is financially backed by DFJ (www.dfj.com), Footprint Ventures (www.footprintventures.com), and Mumbai Angels (www.mumbaiangels.com). (ANI)