Collaborative Photo-Sharing App Shutterpair Collects All Your Photos in One Place

I admit I take a lot of photos. I truly believe in the saying “a picture speaks a thousand words” and that photos are the best way to capture the finest moments that will never be replicated again. So apps like Burpple and Instagram are my personal favourites, and here’s another new photo app that I might possibly fall in love with – Shutterpair.

Shutterpair is an instant and easy way for users to share photos taken on their mobile photos and digital cameras via shared albums. So why would you want to have a Shutterpair account when you already have an Instagram account? The idea behind Shutterpair albums is that it is collaborative, where users can collectively upload photos from their Android or iOS devices directly to the selected photo album. So now with Shutterpair, my friends won’t be complaining that I’m slow uploading my photos again. Ever.

As for photos taken using digital cameras, users can also add them to the albums via Shutterpair’s web platform. You can also choose to share your albums privately with selective groups of people, or even share them via social media platforms. And the team has big dreams, and hopes to be as successful as the hugely popular Instagram. Co-founder Ritesh Angural elaborates:

Instagram is a place for individuals to showcase beautiful photos. [Our team members are] all Instagram fans ourselves but we feel taking photos on Instagram – and every other platform currently – is a solitary activity. They do not capture the aspect of taking photos in groups. Our belief is that photos taken together belong together; right from the moment you take them. That said, we aim to become the next Instagram, in a way that we view them as a role model.

Shutterpair pivots from travel idea

The idea of Shutterpair is in fact a pivot from being a travel app, named Rovoria, that the team was originally working on. Rovoria was a self-serve platform aimed at companies operating tourist attractions to build a mobile app to provide more information to tourists and feature a and simple drag-and-drop interface. Ritesh explains the reason for the pivot:

In a nutshell, that didn’t work out for us because most attractions didn’t care for a self-serve platform and the tourists we surveyed did not see a need for an app for every attraction they visited. That prompted us to go back to the drawing board. We recalled all the tourists we had spoken to and discovered four different problems they faced.

One, organizing a group trip was difficult. Two, there is a language barrier for some. Three, without internet, it was difficult to get around. Four, it was difficult to collect all the photographs taken together in one place. For the last problem, that was how Shutterpair started.

Shutterpair beta launched a week ago, and has already seen an encouraging 1,500 photo uploads. Ritesh also said that the team is seeing signs of organic growth, since Shutterpair can only be used in a group setting.

Future focus

The team comprises three National University of Singapore (NUS) graduates, James Dam, Joshua Newman, and Ritesh Angural with backgrounds in computer engineering. The friendship among the trio goes a long way back, with Joshua and Ritesh attending the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) and scrubbing toilets together while serving their National Service. They are bootstrapped in this new venture at the moment.

On upcoming plans, Ritesh tells us: