Mayank Bidawatka, cofounder of India’s homegrown microblogging platform Koo, has entered the consumer tech space once again with the launch of his new app PicSee, an AI-enabled mutual photo sharing platform now available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Announcing the launch on LinkedIn, Bidawatka said, “We find your friends from your gallery, help you invite and approve them. After a one-time approval, you can exchange pics with them forever. You get 24 hours to review outgoing photos.” The app leverages advanced AI, face recognition, and mutual consent-based sharing to solve a common digital problem: photo retrieval from friends’ phones.
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What Is PicSee?
Developed under his new venture Billion Hearts Software Technologies, PicSee aims to revolutionise the way users share and receive personal photos from their social circle. Unlike traditional cloud-based galleries or social sharing platforms, PicSee enables a secure and reciprocal exchange of photos between users using AI-driven facial recognition.
At its core, PicSee operates on a photo barter system. This means that a user can only get their photos from a friend’s phone if they have similar photos of that friend to share in return. The system encourages mutual sharing while protecting users’ privacy with a 24-hour photo review window before any outgoing image is sent.
Backed by Strong Seed Funding
PicSee is the first major product launched by Billion Hearts, which raised $4 million (around INR 33.7 crore) in seed funding nearly a year ago. The round saw participation from reputed investors like Blume Ventures, General Catalyst, and Athera Venture Partners, indicating strong confidence in the team’s vision and execution capabilities.
The app taps into a widely-felt gap in digital photography—the difficulty of getting your own photos from others’ devices after events, trips, or casual meetups. With increasing privacy concerns and content overload, PicSee offers a more intimate, private, and AI-assisted approach to photo sharing.
How PicSee Works
According to app store details, PicSee uses:
- AI photo finder to detect familiar faces in a user’s gallery
- Face recognition technology to identify people in photos
- A mutual approval system to initiate photo exchanges
- Photo barter mechanism, ensuring both parties benefit
- A 24-hour window to review and approve outgoing photos
Once friends approve each other, photo sharing becomes seamless and automatic for future images, offering a user-friendly experience without constant manual uploads or permissions.
The Road Ahead
With the success of Koo behind him and a fresh take on a common digital problem, Mayank Bidawatka’s PicSee has the potential to disrupt the photo sharing landscape. By using AI and privacy-centric design, the app addresses both user convenience and data sensitivity—two pillars of modern tech adoption.
As more users seek smarter and safer ways to manage digital memories, PicSee could emerge as a go-to solution for private, real-time, and reciprocal photo sharing among close-knit groups.
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