Q. Please Introduce yourself.
I’m Sandeep Jayendran, and I completed my BS in Computer Science in 2005, from the University of South Carolina, USA, and then worked in the US for 6 years. In 2010, I chose to return back to Bangalore, and work for a large MNC, in the SAP IDM consulting space. I am an IT consultant / developer, with close to 11 years of work experience, and I finally chose to quit the corporate world in December 2014, to work full-time on developing my own ideas; Groovli is my first major startup.
Q. When and How did you think about Groovli.com?
Sharing music (a link from youtube, soundcloud, etc.) is one of the most popular actions on social networks, but once a song is shared, it stays relevant for about a week at most, after which it becomes irrelevant and lost in their social feeds.
With the status-quo, people are losing out on a lot of connections they could possibly make with other people who share similar tastes in music; they’re also losing out on discovering new music / artists that might interest them, while hiding right under their nose, buried within their existing social feeds.
Just because a song was shared last week, doesn’t make it a bad song; it’s still a good song, and a curated song at that; someone took the time out to share it, because they liked the song that much; and it doesn’t make sense that that piece of curated data should go into a silo and sit dormant and unused; but that’s exactly what was happening with the incessant / endless torrent of information within social networks.
Music is universal common ground; anyone who listens / loves music would love to listen to music shared within their social circle, or even by specific people within their social circle, in a streamlined manner; there currently exists no way to listen to all socially shared music painlessly; its this huge silo of data just sitting dormant, and unused after just a couple days of being posted to those social networks.
These were some of the base concepts behind the birth of Groovli.
Q. Introduce your Co-Founders and Team.
I’m currently the only founder / employee / developer working on Groovli; I have been responsible for all development on the project thus far.
Q. Explain more about your Groovli.com, how is it different from others?
Groovli is a social jukebox that is purely powered by music shared within your social circles, as well as outside them; this enables you to easily connect with and make friends with people sharing similar tastes in music, that you might have otherwise never had the opportunity to interact with. Using its streamlined UI you can easily listen / discover / appreciate & discuss new music & artists, sourced from within / as well as outside your social circles.
Q. What challenges did you face while setting up Groovli.com?
The biggest challenge I personally faced while building Groovli, was finding good reliable developers that were willing to work on sweat equity or a minimum stipend, keeping the bigger picture in mind; I dealt with this for about 4-5 months, while trying to find a developer that could come into assist with development, while still working on my full-time consulting job.
I finally realized that nothing was going to change, & I would never be able to find an enthusiastic, able coder that could assist me, full-time, & my idea would eventually get shelved, & start gathering dust. Instead, I quit my full-time consulting job in December 2014, to focus on this full-time.
Sometimes having to do things on your own can seem frustrating, quite daunting and next to impossible, but you eventually end up learning & accomplishing a lot more, rather than wasting your time having to deal with finding the “perfect resource”. Frustration, disappointment & failure, can be incredibly motivating.
Q. What’s the Current Path and future plan?
Groovli was launched publicly about 2.5 months ago, and we’re currently growing organically, through word of mouth; currently we’re trying to grow even more, by building & launching Groovli’s mobile app soonish.
Visit : Groovli.com