This tech startup is all for new artists, but is aiming to beat Zomato

Photo credit: laifalight / 123RF Stock Photo

The name GuitarClub is most likely to be associated with music, gigs, and rock concerts. But don’t judge the book by its cover. This startup has ambitions to beat restaurant-finder Zomato, in terms of pulling footfalls for hoteliers and restaurant owners.

Founders of GuitarClub describe the eight-month-old startup as a platform that seeks to connect upcoming indie artists with real estate spaces like cafes, restaurants, and hotels. It conducts ticketed events that can be bought on their website, just like BookMyShow.

Another event coordinator? Not exactly. GuitarClub has developed proprietary software to automate event management. From record keeping, pricing analysis for each artist, to demand ratings, to venue management, GuitarClub’s software suite aims to help both artists and hoteliers.

Getting past failure

Started in January 2016 as a music discovery platform, much like Gaana and Saavn, GuitarClub was soon butted out by these bigger competitors. The bootstrapped startup did not have the resources to battle the marketing spend of well-funded companies. It drew the co-founders – Pawan Kumar, Siddharth Gandhi, and Aditi Aggarwal – back to the drawing board.

GuitarClub was created to be sturdy after founders suffered a failure in a previous venture.

“We couldn’t have survived against Gaana and Saavn. So we had to shut it down. But we were determined to do something with music and creatives,” Pawan says. That’s when the team turned to the offline channel.

Having lived the pop-gig culture played in numerous cafes and restaurants in the US, Pawan wanted to facilitate it back home. The team ran a survey spanning Bangalore, Pune, and Mumbai to ascertain what users want.

“The conclusion was simple: artists need a stage and audience, and we have a plethora of real estate available in cafes and restaurants,” Pawan offers to explain. “Plus [the] eating out experience now needs to evolve and look for the next differentiator.”

There are venues in Bangalore such as Humming Tree and BFlat that have brought food and music together. Now, GuitarClub aims to create a stage in every cool cafe or restaurant around you. In the last six months, it has conducted 600 gigs across Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune.

The kickstart was their first gig last year with Hard Rock Cafe in Bangalore. They created a branded event – Unplugged Sunday – to pull footfalls on a typically slow day. The number of footfalls in six weeks more than doubled. That was six months ago.

“The quality and network of artists is varied,” says Kunal Joshi, regional general manager of JMS Corp, the company which runs Hard Rock Cafe.

GuitarClub now works with about 4,000 artists and has tie ups with over 40 cafes in Bangalore, including HRC, Bangalore Brew Works, Black Rabbit, and Big Pitcher. The startup has also done a pilot run for coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day.

Venue owners have seen higher footfalls generated from GuitarClub than Zomato.

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