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eCommerce - Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Photo Scanning's ScanCafe Raises $5.5M

ScanCafe has raised $4M in Series B led by Sigma Partners with an additional $1.5M in debt. Photoscan says it has scanned 10M images since it launched.

The idea here is that you can send ScanCafe some old photos and they will scan and restore them and convert them to digital image or place them in slides or other formats - all for what seams like reasonable prices to us.

The startup is led by Sam Allen who says: "I spent ten years living in the mud and dodging bullets as an Officer in the US Marines. Sam began his affair with photography while combat deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina where I kept a Kodak point and shoot in the front pocket of his bullet proof vest; while it failed to provide adequate ballistic protection, it turned out to be my most useful tool."

Photo workers at ScanCafe's offices in Bangalore do hand photo restoration work.

The startup concept makes sense to us. You could argue that going forward all photos will be digital and that the business' shelf life is limited but we are talking decades for that to happen.

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