Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of the shuttered Indian social network Koo, is betting on a different kind of social sharing with PicSee, a new app that automatically detects photos of your friends in your camera roll and prompts you to send them. The app launched Thursday on both iOS and Android, promising to solve the problem of forgotten photo sharing through AI-powered face recognition that works entirely on-device.
The photo-sharing space is getting crowded, but Mayank Bidawatka thinks he's found a gap worth filling. The co-founder of Koo, India's short-lived Twitter alternative that shut down in July 2024, launched PicSee on Thursday with a simple premise - your friends have hundreds of photos of you that you'll never see.
The app tackles what Bidawatka calls "forgotten photo sharing" through AI-powered face detection that runs entirely on your device. When you connect with friends on PicSee, the app scans your camera roll and automatically identifies photos containing their faces. If you don't manually send these photos within 24 hours, PicSee does it for you.
"I've been thinking about the problem of personal photo sharing for years now," Bidawatka told TechCrunch in an interview. "Last year, after we announced shutdown of Koo, I had time to rethink this problem and work on it again."
The timing puts PicSee into a competitive landscape where apps like Locket have found success with lockscreen sharing, Retro has built a following around photo journaling, and Yope targets private group sharing. Each is capitalizing on user frustration with Instagram's increasingly curated feel.
PicSee's approach centers on privacy and automation. All face recognition processing happens on-device, photos are stored locally rather than in the cloud, and the app establishes encrypted connections when sharing. Users can review photos before they're automatically sent and even recall them after sharing, which removes the images from the recipient's device.
The company has also built in content moderation with NSFW filters and screenshot blocking, recognizing the sensitive nature of automatic photo sharing between friends and family members.
But PicSee faces a fundamental adoption challenge. While the concept of always-on photo sharing might appeal to close family members or romantic partners, most users already have established patterns for sharing photos through WhatsApp, iMessage, Instagram, and Snapchat. The app needs to convince people to change their default behavior for what's likely a small circle of relationships.
The selectivity problem extends to use cases too. PicSee excels at sharing candid photos where friends appear in your camera roll, but it doesn't address scenarios where someone specifically asks for photos from a shared event like a concert or wedding. Those requests typically involve sharing multiple photos from a specific time and place, regardless of who appears in them.
Bidawatka's team is aware of these limitations. PicSee already includes a chat feature that lets people comment on photos, and the company is working on album creation, duplicate removal, and integration with Google Photos and iCloud. Future plans include extending the face detection technology to videos in users' camera rolls.
The app represents a pivot for Bidawatka after Koo's closure following failed acquisition talks. Billion Hearts, the company behind PicSee, raised $4 million last year in funding led by Blume Ventures with participation from General Catalyst and Athera Ventures, providing runway for this new direction.
PicSee's success will likely depend on whether it can find the sweet spot between useful automation and privacy comfort levels. The app's on-device processing addresses privacy concerns, but the automatic 24-hour sharing might feel too aggressive for many users, even with review options.
The photo-sharing app market continues to fragment as developers chase the next viral concept, but established platforms still dominate actual sharing behavior. Whether PicSee can carve out a sustainable niche remains to be seen, but Bidawatka's experience building social products in India's competitive market gives the app credibility in a crowded field.
PicSee enters a competitive photo-sharing market with a focus on automated, privacy-first sharing that addresses the common problem of forgotten photos. While the concept is compelling and the privacy approach is sound, the app's success will depend on convincing users to adopt new sharing habits for their closest relationships. With $4 million in funding and Bidawatka's social media experience, PicSee has the resources to iterate and find product-market fit, but it faces an uphill battle against entrenched messaging platforms that already handle photo sharing for most users.
