Amit Murumkar of West Windsor has created Canvsly, a free app for your child’s artwork. “Canvsly has been a personal journey for me,” he says. “I was a pretty decent artist as a kid. I had won a few competitions and really enjoyed painting. Today I do not have a single piece of art that I can show my kids. Unfortunately my parents could not save any of my artwork.”
Born and raised in India, his father was a professor of Russian literature at Osmania University and his mother taught high school math and science. Both are retired now.
“Canvsly helps you capture, organize, share, and cherish your child’s precious artwork anytime, anywhere, and forever,” he says. “Most of us display it on the walls or refrigerators, which is great until we realize that our kids can churn out more artwork than the walls or refrigerators can accommodate.”
Artwork can be uploaded to Canvsly through the app’s camera or from images already on your device. Each child has a separate folder, and within each folder users can create a timeline to display art chronologically. Friends and family can be invited to view artwork stored through the app. Through a partnership with FujiFilm, art can be transformed into 25 different products to give as gifts.
Currently Canvsly is available for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch, and plans are in the works for an Android version and a website on which Canvsly can be viewed from any browser.
Murumkar graduated from Osmania University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, an MBA from VJIM, and a master’s in management information system from the University of Texas at Dallas. He chose Texas because he had many friends who were studying there.
He moved to Plainsboro in 2002. “It was a time when it was relatively hard to find jobs, especially for an immigrant who needed a work visa,” he says. “During that time I made a lot of friends in the area and really enjoyed the proximity to Princeton. I moved to Virginia for my first job, then returned to the area in 2005. I’ve been here since then and absolutely love it.”
Murumkar has worked at Capital One, Barclays Capital, TIAA-CREF, and Forward Thinking Group, and has been a global solutions software architect with Citi since 2012.
His wife, Chandana, is a financial analyst and helps on Canvsly. Their daughter, Eerah, is three and a half, and a student at the Children’s House of Windsor. Another child is expected in November.
“When my daughter made her first piece of art I knew I had to do something better to preserve these creative moments,” he says. “I realized that this is a common problem with most parents. We want to save these artworks but logic and space constraints do not allow us to.”
The app has more than 5,000 users and has received awards and been written about on TechCrunch, TechCrunch Japan, and Yahoo Japan.
“Transition to iOS 7 was pretty smooth as we had tested the app thoroughly, but like most of the other apps we have seen issues on iPhone 5S,” he says. “We have taken measures and have released a new version of the app that will help us exactly pinpoint what the issue is when an app crashes.”
Canvsly is not only for parents with children at home creating artwork. Do you have artwork from your adult children in a box in the basement? Now you can save it somewhere digitally.
“I truly believe that every child is an artist and their pieces of art deserve a safe home so we can all cherish these precious moments anytime anywhere and forever,” he says. Visit www.canvsly.com.
