Independent Musicians Are The Heart And Soul Of Flipsyde: Founder Meenaz Amreliwala

Flipsyde

In 2017, Meenaz Amreliwala and Rohan Sabharwal had a vision of uniting performance venues, equipment vendors, tutors and artists on one platform. Their mobile application Flipsyde was designed like a social network that would let venues and artists follow and discover each other. It took them over two years to create the app for both Android and iOS, run beta tests and iron out the bugs. They'd also spoken personally to over 250 venues in Mumbai and nearly a thousand artists and had them sign up.

By March 2020, ready to formally launch, the country went into a lockdown and venues across the country shut down. A month or two into the lockdown they realised they still had access to those thousand-odd independent artists, many of whom had begun churning out music like never before. In September, they both launched a news website Flipsyde.Live to cover everything related to the independent music scene in India.

Today, 8 months later, Flipsyde.Live is slowly emerging as one of the most loved music news websites, with their honest and fresh take on the music scene. Sabharwal (Under the pen name R. R. Rozario), has himself written a hundred-and-fifty articles and over 100,000 words on Independent musicians from all over India and the world. That's virtually a novel-length figure and more than most music journalists can achieve in such a short period. Sabharwal and Amreliwala have also interviewed the legendary Suzi Quatro!

Co-founders' image courtesy: Jaydatta Nikalje

Flipsyde has slowly branched out into ticket sales for online events. It is currently one of the cheapest ticket selling platforms, charging a mere 4% all-inclusive. Plus, their relationships with independent artists is stronger than ever, with many preferring the personal connection they have with the humans behind the service.

When asked about where things are headed in the current scenario, Amreliwala is quick to respond, "With everything that's happened, we've learned some valuable lessons. A personal connection with artists is very important. All the AI and customer care in the world cannot save you if your clients don't have that 'person' they can talk to. Someone who can guide them and be with them along the way. We're expanding slowly and making sure as we expand, we don't lose those connections. Our artists must have someone from Flipsyde on speed dial and should be able to approach us without hindrance. That's the next challenge and we're prepared for it!"

The duo are now reworking their app to accommodate three distinct verticals, the networking services that were part of the initial idea, native online events and ticketing and finally, creating Flipsyde-branded original content with artists.