The Journey Of PortraitFlip Towards Painting Big Pictures
Pune: A Pune-based startup, PortraitFlip, has been providing services to turn photos into a handmade paintings by housing more than 190 custom painting artists across the globe. Their vision is to change the experience of gifting for its customers and empowering the ninjas of the art world.
PortraitFlip took birth in the hostel no. 1518 of Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai as a means to satisfy Sunny Kumar’s (the founder) college whims and fancies. While the entire hostel was busy preparing for interviews, Sunny was making his dream of becoming an entrepreneur come true.
Not to take away the credit, it was in fact Sunny’s best friend that triggered this idea in his mind. His friend was desperately digging the internet for a company that could create a handmade painting from a photo. There were hardly any services in India and the US-based companies were charging a bank to deliver.
With this thought, Sunny decided to jump in with an understanding that if the marketing went well, the gifting industry was uncrowded enough to make big bucks. In the September of 2017, PortraitFlip was born. The initial investment was of a mere Rs. 23,000 and within one and a half year of its advent, it was yielding a turnover of Rs.3.5 crores.
Although initially, PortraitFlip was an experiment to sate Sunny’s college whims and fancies, over time it started painting the big picture for itself. A spontaneous initiative skyrocketed to becoming one of the fastest-growing startups of Pune.
Steadily Sunny realized that his off-the-cut endeavor was not only improving the gifting experience it was also empowering and uplifting the artist community. A worldwide problem of artists earning in peanuts was being resolved on a minor level by PortraitFlip with Sunny providing a decent living to an average of 190 artists across the globe. Besides, calling up the responsible duty he fulfilled by creating employment for the potential youths of the country.
Sunny believes that the youth is packed with ideas and energy, and one such individual has the power to positively influence the entire nature of a startup. He often speaks up his team of ten renegades with a lot of pride.
It has been two and a half years, and today PortraitFlip is one of the hundred startups that is inspiring budding entrepreneurs. With a turnover of Rs. 6 crores since inception, it is targeting to hit Rs. 15 crores by the end of 2021. It is majorly famous for its compilation and pet portraits and secures a TrustPilot rating of 4.6 out of 5.
Flipping photos into paintings and delivering them across borders without any shipping cost, PortraitFlip has become one of the most famous companies in the US in the handmade painting sector. Besides, it is forethinking of sheltering more than 500 artists including a decent 20% of Indian Artists by the end of 2022.
PortraitFlip is not only touching skies internationally; it is also wanting to move a step forwards by entering the pet market. The planning has already begun with its sister website dogisworld which will soon see a list of pet products on the go.
With this, PortraitFlip is slowly becoming one of the most inspiring startups in India.