Over the past several years, a noticeable shift has taken place in the landscape of social media and personal photography. Many new photo-centric applications have deliberately built their identities around the perception that Instagram, once praised for its spontaneity, has evolved into a carefully curated, almost overly polished space. These up-and-coming platforms have sought to recapture a sense of authenticity by encouraging users to share images drawn directly from their camera rolls — raw, candid, and mostly unfiltered. Among these, some have successfully carved out niche positions: for instance, Locket introduced the concept of lockscreen-based sharing, transforming the act of viewing a phone’s home screen into an intimate glimpse into one’s friends’ lives; Retro embraced the aesthetic and emotional resonance of journaling, presenting a more reflective, diary-like approach to documenting daily experiences; and Yope began assembling what could be described as a more private, closed-circuit version of Instagram, one tailored specifically for small, trusted groups rather than massive public audiences.
Building on this growing trend of personal and authentic content exchange, Mayank Bidawatka — best known as the co-founder of the Indian social platform Koo, which ceased operations last year following unsuccessful buyout negotiations — has reemerged with a new venture. His latest creation, a photo-sharing application called *PicSee*, debuted on a Thursday for both iOS and Android systems. The app’s distinctive goal is to streamline the way people exchange photos of one another. Instead of relying on universally used messaging channels like WhatsApp, iMessage, or Instagram Direct, PicSee is designed to identify pictures of your friends that already exist in your device’s photo library and then facilitate secure sharing automatically, minimizing manual effort or the need for communication intermediaries. The idea is to restore a lost layer of convenience to digital photo sharing — something that often feels cumbersome despite the abundance of tools available.
Bidawatka explained that the inspiration for PicSee stems from a familiar social predicament: many individuals unknowingly possess hundreds of photographs of their friends — snapshots taken at gatherings, trips, celebrations, or quiet moments — which are rarely, if ever, shared back. Often this happens not out of secrecy, but because the sender forgets, procrastinates, or simply loses track of the images buried in their growing photo archives. PicSee’s technology intervenes at this exact friction point. By scanning the faces present within a user’s camera roll, it can automatically detect and collect images featuring specific friends. This automated recognition relieves users from the tedious task of searching manually through enormous digital galleries.
“I’ve been contemplating the challenge of personal photo sharing for several years now,” Bidawatka told *TechCrunch* in a recent phone interview. “When Koo formally shut down last year, I finally had the clarity and bandwidth to revisit this concept and rebuild it from the ground up.” That pause gave him an opportunity to reassess the underlying inefficiencies in social photo distribution and to reimagine how photographic memories could circulate more naturally among close circles.
Within the PicSee ecosystem, once two friends are connected through mutual consent, one can send a sharing request. When the recipient accepts, they immediately receive the first curated set of photos in which they appear. From that point onward, the app continuously detects any new photos of the same person stored in your camera roll and periodically suggests sending them. This process can occur automatically or under user supervision: if the sender does not take any action within twenty-four hours, PicSee will initiate the transfer automatically, ensuring that new images do not linger unseen. However, before any photos are transmitted, the app allows users to review the batch, deselect certain images if desired, and maintain direct control over what content is shared. All media remain stored locally within PicSee’s private data container on the user’s device, and users have the option to move images back into their general storage or delete them altogether. If a user has second thoughts after transferring an image, they can even recall it, which will remove that file not only from their own PicSee interface but also from the recipient’s side — an added safeguard for privacy and discretion.
Privacy considerations appear to be central to PicSee’s infrastructure. According to the company, all the biometric and facial identification processes occur entirely on the user’s device, without being uploaded to any cloud-based systems. This means that sensitive facial data never leave the phone. Additionally, every time photos are shared, the system establishes an encrypted connection, securing the exchange from potential interception. Bidawatka emphasized that the company itself neither stores user photographs on remote servers nor maintains any secondary copies. Furthermore, PicSee integrates a filter designed to detect and restrict inappropriate or NSFW images and enforces technical measures that prevent screenshots, protecting both senders and receivers from unintentional content leaks or misuse.
However, despite its ingenuity, the app faces a formidable challenge: its appeal may remain limited to specific, close-knit user groups. The automatic and recurring nature of photo sharing might feel natural among family members, romantic partners, or very close friends, but it could easily feel intrusive or excessive in broader social contexts. Everyday users already share such intimate imagery through familiar and ubiquitous channels — WhatsApp, Snapchat, iMessage, and Instagram — platforms deeply ingrained in their communication habits. For PicSee to thrive, it must persuade people to choose a completely new application for an activity many believe already has sufficient solutions. This behavioral hurdle could slow initial adoption, confining the app’s appeal to smaller, more intimate circles.
Moreover, as sophisticated as the app’s face detection may be, it still does not address every common social sharing scenario. For example, if someone at a wedding, concert, or party asks you for a specific photo from that event — perhaps a wide group shot or a scene where they are not directly visible — PicSee cannot automatically accommodate that request. Recognizing this limitation, the company has indicated that future updates will focus on tightening the sense of community engagement around photo exchanges.
To that end, PicSee already includes a built-in chat component that allows people appearing in a photo to comment beneath it, creating space for conversations and emotional reactions directly within the sharing experience. Beyond that, the development roadmap includes several ambitious features: the ability to create both manual and automatically suggested albums, smart tools for identifying and removing duplicate photos, and forthcoming integrations with major cloud storage ecosystems like Google Photos and Apple’s iCloud. The team also plans to extend its facial recognition technology to video files, enabling users to find and exchange clips featuring their friends as intuitively as they now can with still images.
PicSee is produced by Billion Hearts, the parent company behind this initiative. Last year, the organization secured approximately $4 million in venture funding to support its ongoing product development and future marketing efforts. The funding round was led by Blume Ventures, with additional participation from General Catalyst and Athera Ventures, underscoring investor confidence in the potential of intelligent photo-sharing tools that blend artificial intelligence, social interaction, and privacy-focused design. Altogether, PicSee represents an intriguing attempt to simplify one of the most human aspects of modern digital life: the act of effortlessly giving and receiving memories among the people who matter most.
Sourse: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/15/co-founder-of-indian-social-network-koo-releases-a-new-photo-sharing-app/
