Amrit Vatsa, an IIT Chennai Alumnus who left his well paying job for pursuing his passion spoke to me over e-mail about his venture 'Shaadigrapher'. Its business is in providing candid wedding photography and cinematic wedding films.
1. How difficult it is to run a website based wedding photography business in India?
It is just like running any start-up. It's not easy. It's not entirely impossible to turn photography in to a profitable venture. We are talking about a service industry where there is very weak entry barrier. And that means there is no control of competition. The internet is thus, full of websites of photographers, some offering individual services, others running bigger groups. Personally, I think, it's easy to get into this but to sustain over time, one continuously needs to asses the value that he / she is bringing to a client, relative to his / her competitors. Easiest option looks like offering the same service for a lower fee, but that would not be very wise. Reason being, the number of photographers out there offering "good" photographs from your wedding at low price is way larger than the number of photographers offering "stunning" photographs at a much higher price. But then, to each his / her own strategy. To sum it up, to run a website wedding photography business is just like running any other start-up with the advantage of a low entry barrier.
2. On an average, how many client requests can you take in a month?
Average would be 2 to 3 clients per month (per photographer). Max would be 10. Minimum has been zero.
3. Apart from the services mentioned on the website, do you also offer customized services?
If there are more related things (like say setting up a photo-booth), we often help our clients by being the single point of contact, and we in turn outsource such things. But we don't sell such ideas ourselves. It makes more sense to stick to candid photography and cinematic films. For everything else, there are a million people out there who would get the job done anyway. So being a facilitator is good enough, and helps offer "customized" services to the client.
4. What are your future plans?
Shifting from wedding to documentary film-making is what I am personally looking at. To be frank expanding "wedding photograpy" as a business had never been the idea. ShaadiGraPher.com was something which helped me finance my job-free life. I still dont' regard this as a business venture. I am sure there are better business ideas that I can implement and make those start-ups to bigger companies. But that doesn't align to my personal goals in life, which revolve more around traveling, being free (without any work pressure) and creating stories in various forms.
5. It would be a huge favor if you could share any exclusive content / tips / suggestions for the readers of this blog?
Well I have recently embarked upon the idea of creating 3 minute movies on good real stories and if any of your readers might have a story to be told (of following their passion, a cause they want to be know etc.) - they should check out
www.3minutestories.com
Wishing Amrit & his team of 'candid wedding photographers' at
Shaadigrapher good luck for future endeavors!
